@article{ref1,
title="Visual representations of sexual violence in online news outlets",
journal="Frontiers in psychology",
year="2017",
author="Schwark, Sandra",
volume="8",
number="",
pages="e774-e774",
abstract="To study visual representations of sexual violence, photographs accompanying German Internet news articles that appeared between January 2013 and March 2015 (N = 42) were subjected to thematic analysis. Two main themes, consisting of several sub-themes, emerged from the data. The first theme was &quot;rape myths,&quot; illustrating a stereotypical view of sexual violence. It consisted of three sub-themes: &quot;beauty standards,&quot; referring to the fact that all women in our sample fit western beauty standards, &quot;physical violence,&quot; as most images implied some form of physical violence, and finally &quot;location,&quot; suggesting that rape only happens in secluded outdoor areas. These findings suggest that the images from our sample perpetuate certain rape myths. The second theme was &quot;portrayal of victimhood,&quot; referring to the way victims of sexual violence were portrayed in photographs. The analysis of the sub-theme &quot;passivity&quot; showed that these portrayals fit a certain stereotype: the women were shown to be weak and helpless rather than individuals with agency and able to leave their status as a victim. Further sub-themes were &quot;background,&quot; &quot;organization of space,&quot; &quot;camera perspective,&quot; and &quot;lighting.&quot; We discuss these findings in relation to possibly reinforcing rape myths in society and as an issue in creating a biased perception of women who have experienced sexual violence.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1664-1078",
doi="10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00774",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00774"
}