Disadvantaged or Socially Marginalized: A Case Study

Chloe Hooper’s 2006 article about the coronial inquest into the death of an Aboriginal man in custody on Australia’s remote Palm Island provides a fascinating case study to showcase Martin’s new Virtue Paradigm and Virtue Map model. Martin’s application of her model to Hooper’s ‘The Tall Man’, a story commended by the Walkley judges for its immense empathy and exceptional attention to detail, demonstrates the power of emotion in the successful telling of stories about the disadvantaged or socially marginalized. Bourdieu’s notion of habitus and Rifkin’s theory of settler common sense provides the framework for Martin to explore her argument that journalists, such as Hooper, construct their own imagined virtuous community of readers.