Rape Myths in Print Journalism the Introduction

¶ … Rape Myths in Print Journalism

The introduction of the article written by Franiuk, et al. (2008) is designed to show that the media feeds a culture of rape myths, making those myths more acceptable. The authors hypothesize that these myths are more prevalent in the male population as opposed to the female population, and that the myths would be less prevalent overall if they were not popularized by the media (Franiuk, et al., 2008).

Literature that was reviewed for this article addresses two issue -- the Kobe Bryant case specifically, and the idea of rape myths in media culture overall (Franiuk, et al., 2008). Both of these are important for the study, because the information the authors are seeking to collect is not just about the Kobe Bryant case. It is also about the way the media treats rape victims and how there is often a perpetuation of stories that are written with a definite "spin" toward the victim lying about her experience (Franiuk, et al., 2008). A number of studies and other documents back up the media's treatment of the rape myth and victims of rape (Franiuk, et al., 2008). That is part of what makes a good literature review -- providing plenty of information from a variety of reputable sources that backs up the hypothesis. Part of the issue with rape myths is a gray area as to what people believe constitutes rape. Those assaults that are violent and where the parties do not know one another are more likely to be considered is rape, where date-rape and similar issues are not (Franiuk, et al., 2008).

Methods

There were two studies actually done. In the first one, there was an analysis of the content of 156 news articles on the Kobe Bryant case to see if they contained rape myths and other influencing statements (Franiuk, et al., 2008). There were two coders used, and they coded each article for its use or lack of seven different rape myths. The second study was designed by the researchers and used to assess the causal impact of being exposed to rape myths in news articles (Franiuk, et al., 2008). The goal was to see how many articles actually contained these types of myths, and whether those myths really do play a role in whether the person reading the article believes the victim to be guilty or innocent (Franiuk, et al., 2008).

Results

The first study showed that 65.4% of the articles had at least one rape myth in them, with the average being 1.66 rape myths per article (Franiuk, et al., 2008). The articles ranged from some having no rape myths to some that had as many as 15 (Franiuk, et al., 2008). Some myths were also seen more than once in an article (Franiuk, et al., 2008). When the 62 participants in the second study read the article, they were less likely to think of Bryant as being guilty, due to the wording in the article they read (Franiuk, et al., 2008). Before they read the article, their overall opinion of Bryant's guilt or innocence was generally in the middle of the scale, with a marked shift after reading the article.