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Chapter 5. Does Gender Make a Difference? The Influence of Female Victimization on Media Coverage of Mass Murder Incidents
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chapter DOES GENDER MAKE A DIFFERENCE? The Influence of Female Victimization on Media Coverage of Mass Murder Incidents Janice E. Clifford, Carl J. Jensen III, and Thomas A. Petee Mass murder has immense appeal to the news media, which exploit many of its newsworthy features—randomness, extreme violence, multiple victims , and unlikely offenders—for public consumption. It might be argued that the violent content of news simply reflects the concerns, values, and interests of the intended audience (Zimring & Hawkins, ). Although violent news may be marketed like other consumer products, it has a number of effects that warrant inquiry. The premise that violent imagery has a potential for encouraging aggressive behavior among viewers has been the focus of a significant body of research (Comstock & Strasburger , ; Donnerstein, Slaby, & Eron, ; Huesmann, ). Some studies report that exposure to violence leads to aggressive behavior (American Psychological Association, ; Berkowitz & Geen, ; National Institute of Mental Health, ; Phillips, , Surgeon General’s Scienti fic Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior, ). Other studies suggest that viewers who are predisposed to aggressive behavior are attracted to television shows and movies that have violent content (Berkowitz, , ). An alternative explanation sees media as a precipitating, but not a causal, factor (Phillips & Carstensen, ). The news also has the power to shape public perceptions of social problems such as violence or mass murder. These perceptual effects, alternatively , have justified different lines of research, including process studies regarding the manner in which news workers construct the news, audience research that might shed light on the perceptual effects of the news, and content studies like this one. One premise that has gained increasing acceptance in the popular media is that females are overrepresented as mass murder victims. According to at least some pundits, mass murder is a form of femicide in which perpetrators disproportionately seek out female rather than male· · · · does gender make a difference? victims (Palmer, ; Steinem, ). The focus of the present study is to examine how newspapers and television news networks handle mass murder incidents and, in particular, whether they fuel misconceptions regarding mass murder femicide.To that end, we examine whether news accounts accurately mirror official statistics regarding mass murder. We also analyze whether media coverage of mass murder events is skewed (i.e., whether victims’ gender affects levels of reporting, coverage in the national as opposed to local outlets, and/or the amount of space or time devoted to the story). Literature Review Crime is a mainstay of newspaper reporting. Research findings reported by Chermak () indicate that between and of the total space available in the media is allocated to coverage of crime. Most of this news focuses on crime incidents themselves rather than criminal justice policies or issues. Further, crimes are generally presented independently and not conveyed within the context of patterns or causality. Chermak () argues that the news accounts about crime “do not accurately reflect the realities of crime” (Chermak, , p. ). The news emphasizes violent acts, which in reality occur only rarely. For example, property crimes are much more prevalent than violent crimes, yet they are often ignored in media reports (Chermak, ). Several other studies (Chermak, ; Cohen, ; Sheley & Ashkins, ) have reached the same conclusion : News stories focus on personal crimes and, in particular, murder. Crime is such an important part of daily news that coverage defies national trends. While national crime rates were declining during the s, the media continued to emphasize violent events, according to Chermak (). Fedler and Jordan () reported similar findings based on crime coverage in the Orlando Sentinel Star for a three-month period in . Although violent crime represented only of all felonies, it received of the media coverage. Breaking down violent crime coverage further, the most common offenses (assault and robbery) received the least coverage, whereas less common events (murder and arson) received the most (Fedler & Jordan, ). The media demonstrably skew the homicide problem, according to two important studies that looked at factors predicting whether homi- [52.91.255.225] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:09 GMT) · · janice e. clifford, carl j. jensen iii, and thomas a. petee cides were covered (Sorenson, Manz, & Berk, ) or factors predicting the extent of coverage (length and number of articles) (Paulsen, ). By comparing official police records with articles from the Houston Chronicle for the period –, Paulsen () found that two-thirds () of all homicides were included as news stories in that newspaper. Characteristics of the homicide incidents that received more rather than less coverage included familial or...