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Room for Improvement: How does the Media Portray Individuals Who Engage in Material Depicting Child Sexual Abuse?

The media has a powerful ability to shape public perceptions. Given the current disjuncture between social attitudes and the law in relation to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) it is important to explore the representation of CSAM offenders in the media. The aim of this exploratory study was to id...

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Autores principales: Christensen, Larissa S., Pollard, Katarina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8898075/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35283619
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12119-022-09945-x
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author Christensen, Larissa S.
Pollard, Katarina
author_facet Christensen, Larissa S.
Pollard, Katarina
author_sort Christensen, Larissa S.
collection PubMed
description The media has a powerful ability to shape public perceptions. Given the current disjuncture between social attitudes and the law in relation to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) it is important to explore the representation of CSAM offenders in the media. The aim of this exploratory study was to identify how CSAM offenders are depicted in the print media. Newspaper articles published from 1 August 2019 to 31 August 2020 on CSAM offenders in Western countries were searched. A qualitative content analysis was employed, revealing three themes across the 56 articles: (1) the headings of the articles downplayed the abusive offending; (2) offender’s motivations indicate heterogeneity in offending; and (3) sentencing remarks communicated denunciation and the harms of offending. While the first theme identified that there is still space for improvement in the reporting of these crimes, the second theme indicates the various motivations portrayed should assist the public in identifying that these offenders are heterogenous in their motivations, thus potentially countering some previously held stereotypes. Finally, the denunciation and the harms taken from the messages delivered by the judiciary in the sentencing remarks could offer a positive educational tool for some members of the public. These findings should be valuable for media, law enforcement, and psychology disciplines.
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spelling pubmed-88980752022-03-07 Room for Improvement: How does the Media Portray Individuals Who Engage in Material Depicting Child Sexual Abuse? Christensen, Larissa S. Pollard, Katarina Sex Cult Original Article The media has a powerful ability to shape public perceptions. Given the current disjuncture between social attitudes and the law in relation to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) it is important to explore the representation of CSAM offenders in the media. The aim of this exploratory study was to identify how CSAM offenders are depicted in the print media. Newspaper articles published from 1 August 2019 to 31 August 2020 on CSAM offenders in Western countries were searched. A qualitative content analysis was employed, revealing three themes across the 56 articles: (1) the headings of the articles downplayed the abusive offending; (2) offender’s motivations indicate heterogeneity in offending; and (3) sentencing remarks communicated denunciation and the harms of offending. While the first theme identified that there is still space for improvement in the reporting of these crimes, the second theme indicates the various motivations portrayed should assist the public in identifying that these offenders are heterogenous in their motivations, thus potentially countering some previously held stereotypes. Finally, the denunciation and the harms taken from the messages delivered by the judiciary in the sentencing remarks could offer a positive educational tool for some members of the public. These findings should be valuable for media, law enforcement, and psychology disciplines. Springer US 2022-03-05 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC8898075/ /pubmed/35283619 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12119-022-09945-x Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Article
Christensen, Larissa S.
Pollard, Katarina
Room for Improvement: How does the Media Portray Individuals Who Engage in Material Depicting Child Sexual Abuse?
title Room for Improvement: How does the Media Portray Individuals Who Engage in Material Depicting Child Sexual Abuse?
title_full Room for Improvement: How does the Media Portray Individuals Who Engage in Material Depicting Child Sexual Abuse?
title_fullStr Room for Improvement: How does the Media Portray Individuals Who Engage in Material Depicting Child Sexual Abuse?
title_full_unstemmed Room for Improvement: How does the Media Portray Individuals Who Engage in Material Depicting Child Sexual Abuse?
title_short Room for Improvement: How does the Media Portray Individuals Who Engage in Material Depicting Child Sexual Abuse?
title_sort room for improvement: how does the media portray individuals who engage in material depicting child sexual abuse?
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8898075/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35283619
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12119-022-09945-x
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