| The earliest reports of sexual assault appeared in the yellow press of European and American newspapers in the late 19 th century,and it was only at the end of the20 th century that the issue of sexual assault was gradually put on the public agenda and the gender and power system behind the issue began to be re-examined.At the same time,various social affirmative action movements and the awakening of women's consciousness encouraged a large number of victims to dare to complain and tell their experiences of sexual assault,bringing the issue from the shadows to the foreground,prompting the public to face this social problem and providing social support and trauma care for the vulnerable victims.The media's coverage of sexual assault has undoubtedly gradually become a powerful cultural tool for spreading the issue of sexual assault,focusing on and understanding the victim's experience of sexual assault and leading the public to reflect on the institutional culture behind it.Therefore,this study is relevant to media coverage of sexual assault events.This study takes the reports on sexual assault in The Beijing News during the fifteen-year period from 2006 to 2020 as the research object,and finally takes 201 valid reports as the research sample.With the theoretical support of frame theory,this study uses content analysis and textual analysis to analyze the basic features and changes in the reports on sexual assault,study the media image presentation of the characters involved in The Beijing News under the current framework of sexual assault reports,and from this perspective,point out some problems in The Beijing News' s reports on sexual assault and make suggestions.The study found that when reporting on sexual assault incidents,The Beijing News mainly focuses on the news genre,supplemented by commentary.After the rise of the anti-sexual harassment movement in 2017,the number of reports showed a steady growth trend,and the focus of the reports gradually changed from investigating and exposing the basic situation of sexual assault incidents to discussing the encounters of those involved in sexual assault and focusing on the legal system and public opinion controversies.The report's position is more objective and neutral,and the framework of the report is "factual narration","identity inquiry","rule of law and justice",and "accountability and supervision"."The framework of the report is mainly narrative,and the report form is relatively fixed,which reflects that The Beijing News,as a traditional mainstream media,can respond to the conflict between "official discourse" and "civil discourse" to a certain extent and actively The newspaper is able to guide public opinion.At the same time,the coverage of sexual assault cases in The Beijing News is mainly focused on underage and student groups,which basically creates a media image of victims who are proactive in defending their rights,make public complaints against suspects,have a prominent image of suffering,are impeded in defending their rights,and have an "imperfect" tendency.For the suspects,the typical media images are those of "ordinary people" who possess certain resources and power,are cold-blooded,distorted and inhumane,and are on the margins of society and have the opportunity to commit entrapment.In general,its coverage of sexual assault incidents reflects a certain degree of journalistic professionalism,but there are still problems such as a single mode of reporting,excessive description of sexual assault details,a single inquiry into the identity of victims,a lack of attention to the rights and subjects of victims,and a lack of humanistic care.At present,the research and attention to sexual assault reporting in domestic journalism and academia are mostly focused on children and media ethics,and there is a lack of investigation into the changes of sexual assault reporting and the construction of media images of current characters.Therefore,this paper selects a relatively representative newspaper,The Beijing News,and focuses on the changes in its coverage of sexual assault,and summarizes the presentation of the media image of characters under the current reporting framework,so as to provide some reference for the subsequent coverage of sexual assault issues. |
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