engleski

Analysis of Online Child Sexual Abuse News Comments: The Role of Media Coverage in Supporting Attitudes about Child Sexual Abuse and Stereotypes against Victims and Perpetrators

The objectives of the research were to determine what attitudes towards child sexual abuse(CSA), victims and perpetrators are represented in the direct comments on child sexual abuse news, whether there is a difference in commenting with regard to the description of the victim, perpetrator, and abuse in the news and whether there is an association between the specific attitudes. Quantitative and qualitative content analysis was used to analyze all CSA news published on the Jutarnji.hr news portal during 2015 (N = 78) and affiliated online Facebook comments (N = 531). The frequency of different attitudes and stereotypes within comments was recorded for each CSA news. The most prevalent were stereotypes about perpetrators, attitudes that shift responsibility from perpetrators to other persons and institutions, attitudes about CSA prevention and suppression and stereotypes about male victims. Use of the pejorative terms to describe a perpetrator, detailed descriptions of the CSA event, the disclosure of victims’ identities and consensual words to describe abuse have supported stereotypes about victims and perpetrators in the news comments. Such media coverage creates an unfavorable environment for detecting CSA and victims’ recovery.

child sexual abuse (CSA) ; media coverage ; attitudes towards CSA ; stereotypes ; content analysis ; online news comments

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