Assessing the Impact of Media on Blaming the Victim of Acquaintance Rape

Abstract

Along with the trauma experienced by rape victims due to their assault, many victims also suffer secondary victimization due to the negative reactions of those around them. Among these negative reactions, perhaps the most damaging is the tendency to blame victims for their assault, particularly in cases of acquaintance rape. The current research explores the role of news media coverage in promoting a victim blaming culture in the United States. In Study 1, I content analyzed 179 articles reporting sexual assaults from two newspapers. These media over-reported stranger rapes and underreported acquaintance rape relative to actual frequencies, a tendency that may promote stranger rape as “real rape” and discount the victimization of acquaintance rapes. Articles were further evaluated for the presence/absence of victim blaming language and other attributes of victims, and comparisons were made based on political leaning of the news source, accompanying photography, journalist gender, and overall word count. These analyses provided some indications of objectivity (e.g., few differences based on political leaning of news source emerged), but there was a greater tendency to use victim-blaming language in reports of acquaintance rape than stranger rape. Study 2 explored the extent to which participants recognized differences in victim blame across high and low victim blaming articles and the influence of a positive or negative assailant photograph on evaluations of victim blame. Perceivers indeed recognized differences in victim blaming, such that high victim-blaming content led readers to blame the victim more. However, accompanying photography had no influence on these perceptions. In Study 3, I demonstrated that victim blaming tendencies in news articles have significant downstream consequences. Specifically, following exposure to a high blaming article, participants were more likely to blame the victim of an unrelated case of sexual assault, and to endorse rape myths. The findings of this research demonstrate the importance of the media in shaping public perception of rape victims, particularly victims of acquaintance rape.