Nationwide Newspaper Coverage of Rape and Rape Culture on College Campuses: Testing Community Structure Theory

Excerpt

For centuries, the topic of sexual assault, specifically rape, has been taboo. Only recently has the silence been broken, the topic of rape and rape culture now addressed as a public issue deserving attention. Rape can happen to anyone at any time, even at locations that should offer protection, such as the seemingly safe bubble of a college campus. “Among undergraduate students, 23.1% of females and 5.4% of males experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation” (Conoscenti and McNally 2006). Sometimes, these cases are surfaced and exposed via media, but coverage can raise ambiguities about the “true victims” of rape, generating concern for media scrutiny that might deter rape victims from speaking up to seek justice. Although “human rights” as an umbrella concept may receive relatively little attention in US media, specific types of rights violations can indeed attract media interest, including a subset of threats to women’s physical integrity rights: campus rape and rape culture. Investigating coverage of that issue can illuminate larger questions about the extent of media “responsibility” for coverage of human rights generally. …