scholarly journals A space to resist rape myths? Journalism, patriarchy and sexual violence

2021 ◽  
pp. 135050682110484
Author(s):  
Sofia Jose Santos ◽  
Julia Garraio ◽  
Alexandre de Sousa Carvalho ◽  
Inês Amaral
Keyword(s):  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Rape Myths ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Rape Case ◽  
Serious Injuries ◽  
Over Time

In September 2018, a controversial judicial sentence concerning sexual violence caused a public outcry in Portugal. The court decision invoked the alleged environment of mutual seduction, the use of much alcohol consumption, and the lack of serious injuries to justify the suspended penalty. Stemming from the idea that understandings of what journalism is and what it should be are profoundly ideological and that notions of what it means to be and to behave like a woman and as a man have been developed (and altered over time) based on shifting realities within generalised patriarchal structures, this article intends to critically analyse the news media coverage of the controversial judicial sentence on this rape case in Portugal exploring the implications objective-based journalism entails for gender equality. As such, it will identify the shortcomings of objectivity and its leeway when covering sexual violence exploring how objective-based journalism provides room to (re)negotiate practices, norms, identities, and meanings concerning sexual violence, particularly rape and rape myths, and questioning whether a margin of maneuvre is enough to deconstruct patriarchal assumptions of feminity, masculinity and sexuality.

scholarly journals Those who have the power get the coverage – Female politicians in campaign coverage in Austria over time

Journalism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146488492091635
Author(s):  
Lore Hayek ◽  
Uta Russmann
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Quantitative Content ◽  
Low Visibility ◽  
Female Politicians ◽  
Campaign Coverage ◽  
Election Coverage ◽  
Over Time

Politics in Austria is still a male business. Even though in 2017, women occupied 34 percent of the seats in Austria’s Nationalrat, female MPs are still underrepresented. Moreover, previous studies have shown that women receive substantially less media coverage than men do and this, for instance, disadvantages female politicians to male politicians in election campaigns. Our study seeks to contribute to this debate by adding a longitudinal perspective and substantially underpinning it with empirical data. We use quantitative content analysis to examine whether the election coverage of female politicians in Austrian news media has changed between 2008 and 2017. Our findings show low visibility of female politicians in Austrian campaign coverage that is even decreasing over time; furthermore, the political role a female politician occupies plays a crucial role for her media visibility.

The Impact of Rape Myths and Current Events on the Well-Being of Sexual Violence Survivors

2020 ◽  
pp. 107780122093778
Author(s):  
Gwendolyn D. Anderson ◽  
Rebekah Overby
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Rape Myths ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Political Event ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Current Events ◽  
The Impact

Rape myths perpetuate blaming survivors of sexual violence for their own victimization. Although research has explored how public and political discourse, current events, and media coverage of sexual violence impacts the well-being of survivors, few studies have examined it from the perspectives of participants as a significant event is unfolding. This study presents findings from semi-structured interviews with female, trans, and nonbinary identified survivors during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. We found most participants experienced the negative impact of rape myths, and victim blaming reactions from friends, family, and professionals, both initially and with renewed intensity during this high-profile political event.

Visual Landscapes and the Abortion Issue

2011 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deana A. Rohlinger ◽  
Jesse Klein
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Hegemonic Discourse ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Abortion Debate ◽  
Over Time

Despite increased scholarly interest in how activists use visuals in claim-making and mobilization, little is known about how mainstream news media visually represent social movements and their causes over time. Given the number of studies that argue that journalistic routines, norms, and conventions create hegemonic discourse around political issues, this gap is surprising. In this article, the authors examine whether the images used to visually represent the abortion issue are homogenized. Drawing on an analysis of 2,093 print and electronic news images associated with the abortion debate, the authors find that the visuals used in media coverage are very similar. Likewise, the authors find that the most frequently shown visual landscapes for the abortion issue are relatively stable across six different kinds of events including commemorations, incidents of clinic violence, legislation, Supreme Court decisions, presidential elections, and executive nominations. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications of this work for the study of social movements and call for more research on how visual landscapes influence audience understanding of both new and enduring issues.

scholarly journals Visualizing narrative patterns in online news media

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 919-946 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Koivunen-Niemi ◽  
Masood Masoodian
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
User Study ◽  
Online News ◽  
Illustrative Case ◽  
Narrative Patterns ◽  
Illustrative Case Study ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Over Time

Abstract News media play an important role in shaping social reality, and their multimedia narrative content, in particular, can have widespread repercussions in the public’s perception of past and present phenomena. Being able to visually track changes in media coverage over time could offer the potential for aiding social change, as well as furthering accountability in journalism. In this paper, we explore how visualizations could be used to examine differences in online media narrative patterns over time and across publications. While there are existing means of visualizing such narrative patterns over time, few address the aspect of co-occurrence of variables in media content. Comparing co-occurrences of variables chronologically can be more useful in identifying patterns and possible biases in media coverage than simply counting the individual occurrences of those variables independently. Here, we present a visualization, called time-sets, which has been designed to support temporal comparisons of such co-occurrences. We also describe an interactive prototype tool we have developed based on time-sets for analysis of multimedia news datasets, using an illustrative case study of news articles published on three online sources over several years. We then report on a user study we have conducted to evaluate the time-sets visualization, and discuss its findings.

scholarly journals Investigations of a journalistic blind spot

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (s3) ◽  
pp. 71-87
Author(s):  
Tine Ustad Figenschou ◽  
Elisabeth Eide ◽  
Ruth Einervoll Nilsen
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Quantitative Content ◽  
Over Time

Abstract Recent studies argue that the contemporary working class has largely disappeared from the news media. Another strand of literature demonstrates that the traditional labour beat has lost newsroom prestige due to changes in the established news media and crisis in the labour movement. Analysing how traditional working-class sectors are covered in mainstream newspapers and trade union magazines over time, we conduct a systematic, quantitative content analysis of 18 months of coverage from 1996–2017. We find a steady decline in media coverage throughout the period, indicating that the labour beat as an established specialisation is disappearing. Studying topical emphasis and source practices demonstrates marked differences between the newspapers and the trade union magazines: The mainstream newspapers are elite- and conflict-oriented (although not hostile in their coverage), while the trade union magazines largely reflect power structures and the interests of the labour movement. In the discussion, the main findings from the content analysis are explained by practitioners, to contextualise and provide insider perspectives on the findings.

Monsters, playboys, virgins and whores: Rape myths in the news media’s coverage of sexual violence

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon O’Hara
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Legal System ◽  
News Media ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Rape Myths ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Rape Victims

Much of the news media’s coverage of sexual violence perpetuates myths and stereotypes about rape, rapists and rape victims (Burt, 1980). This is troubling, as the news media shapes public opinion about rape (Soothill, 1991) and can affect policy-making, not to mention the running of the legal system itself (Emmers-Sommer et al., 2006: 314). The news media frequently portray rapists using monster imagery (Barnett, 2008; Mason and Monckton-Smith, 2008; Soothill et al., 1990), their victims classed either as ‘virgins’ attacked by these so-called ‘monsters’ or instead as promiscuous women who invited the rape (Benedict, 1992). These depictions can impact upon public opinion as the more frequently rape myths are used, the more accessible they become. This can be harmful to rape victims when individuals who subscribe to these myths are involved in the criminal justice system (Franiuk et al., 2008: 304–305). Through a lexical analysis of the newspaper coverage surrounding three news events gathered from three LexisNexis searches, this article assesses the use of rape myths within the British and American news media’s reporting of such violence.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Rae Flood
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Rape Myths ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Sex Crimes ◽  
Rape Victims ◽  
The Media ◽  
Rape Trials ◽  
American Society

This concluding chapter considers the myriad legal and medical reforms that have been established since the 1970s in enhancing access to justice for rape victims. At the same time the chapter looks at contemporary rape cases and the media storm surrounding them, once again confronting the racial rape myths that prevail in contemporary American society. The chapter argues that, while institutionalized support for those navigating the complexities of rape trials has grown in recent decades, historic myths about race, gender, and sexual violence still uncomfortably intervene in sensationalized media coverage of sex crimes and in the contemporary justice system, forcing us to continue to confront and challenge our own understandings of rape.

scholarly journals In the Name of Love: Power Relation and Revictimization on Sexual Violence Case in Courtship (Case Study of Court Decision)

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Nike Nadia
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Sexual Intercourse ◽  
Dating Violence ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Radical Feminist ◽  
Rape Case

<p>This paper aims to explain the dimensions of inequality power relations and revictimization that occurred in a rape case by seduction in dating violence context. Using the case study of court decisions and radical feminist theory as a tool of analysis, the author argue that the narrative ‘in the name of love’ used by perpetrators of sexual violence in personal relations is actually another manifestation of the inequality of power relations and become site of female body subjugation. Therefore, forms of exploitation that use a ‘proof of love’ narrative in cases of forced sexual intercourse should be identified as part of sexual violence.</p>

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