Media Portrayals of Victims of Sexual Assault and Misconduct

An ever expanding body of research has shown that public perception of various groups is influenced by their portrayal in the media; media representation can affect opinions regarding public policies specific to minority... [ view full abstract ]

An ever expanding body of research has shown that public perception of various groups is influenced by their portrayal in the media; media representation can affect opinions regarding public policies specific to minority groups, influencing implicit biases and social constructs and molding group members’ understandings of their own place in society. In the last few years, media coverage, and overall visibility, of victims of sexual assault and misconduct has significantly increased. Newspaper coverage of high-profile individuals accused of sexual misconduct - actors, producers, and politicians - has sparked the “#MeToo” movement, which aims to raise awareness of sexual misconduct and violence. In the wake of such extensive coverage, we wanted to explore the major changes that have taken place in how newspapers cover sexual misconduct, and how these changes reflect or relate to the larger social context in which they unfolded. Our research touches upon these questions by utilizing methodologies involving computer-assisted coding to perform lexical sentiment and collocation analyses. In doing so, we look at over 20,000 articles mentioning sexual violence and misconduct in national American newspapers. Given our interest in high-profile cases, our project’s time frame is the 14 months before and after the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal. Similarly, for an analogous high-profile case involving sexual misconduct in recent years, our time frame is the 14 months before and after the Access Hollywood tapes of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump were released.