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The (re)presentation of sexual violence in the British broadsheet press: A feminist critical discourse analysis of the Sarah Everard case

By emma.brooks, on 29 May 2022

26th April:

The (re)presentation of sexual violence in the British broadsheet press: A feminist critical discourse analysis of the Sarah Everard case

Camila Montiel-Mccann, Liverpool

Male sexual violence against women and girls is a pervasive feature of patriarchal society (Ehrlich, 2007, 2014, 2021; Estrich, 1987). Yet, in Britain, less than one percent of reported cases of rape result in a conviction (Centre for Women’s Justice et al, 2020). Moreover, the erasure of victimhood is especially true when it comes to cases where the victim is a woman of colour (Crenshaw, 1989; Ehrlich, 2021). In this paper, I examine the reporting of sexual violence by Britain’s broadsheet newspapers from September 2020 until July 2021. Using feminist critical discourse analysis (Lazar, 2005), supplemented by feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis (Baxter, 2010), I aim to expose how systemic male violence is naturalised by the broadsheets in order to uphold and maintain patriarchal hegemony. My data shows that sexual violence is under-reported in the British press, with the exception of one case – the tragic kidnap and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard by a serving police officer in March 2021. This case sparked a national conversation about institutional misogyny in British society. Having originally concluded that Sarah’s white privilege was responsible for the national interest surrounding her case, I engage in a self-reflexive study that questions, not only the assessment of the case by the British press, but my own original assessment which viewed murder victims ‘through the prism of privilege’ (Day, 2021). I conclude that, whilst coverage of the Everard case did lead to some newspapers engaging in a more feminist analysis of British society as a whole, the majority of coverage (re)produced exceptionalising themes that characterise sexual violence as random and extraordinary, as opposed to systemic and institutional. Thus, paradoxically, the coverage of this case functioned to normalise the majority of sexual violence that does occur in Britain – that which occurs within cases of domestic abuse.

 

 

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