Rallying against rape

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Rallying against rape

Framing the Delhi gang-rape case in the

Indian English-language press

Master Thesis Mediastudies

University of Groningen

Anne Floor Lanting (1688081) Date of submission: 05-06-2015 Supervisor: Dr. A. Heinrich

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Abstract

The gang-rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a bus in Delhi on the 16th of December 2012 brought international attention to India’s problem of violence against women. The incident lead to widespread protests across the country and highlighted gender justice as one of the most challenging issues confronting Indian society. This study researches how Indian English-language print media, The Times of India, the Hindustan Times, The Indian Express and The New Indian

Express, represented the gang-rape case in the three weeks following the incident. Qualitative content analysis was used to evaluate articles that were published in the timeframe between the 16th of December 2012 and the 5th of January 2013. 292 articles were analyzed throughout the entire study. Results indicate that the coverage mainly focused on the societal context of the case, mainly mentioning the public outrage that followed the rape case and discussing actions that could be undertaken in the light of the case by the police, the government or the judicial system. Only a little more than a tenth of the articles focused on the victim and a little less than a tenth focused on the perpetrators. When the victim and the perpetrators of the gang-rape were mentioned, they were mostly simply referred to by features as age, gender and occupation.

Keywords

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List of figures

Table I Main article frames per newspaper………..47

Table II Sub frames in total sample………....57

Table III Sub frames in TOI……….67

Table IV Sub frames in HT………...70

Table V Sub frames in IE……….72

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INTRODUCTION

In the evening of 16 December 2012, after boarding a bus in South Delhi with a male friend, a 23-year old female physiotherapy student was attacked and gang-raped by a group of six males, including the driver of the bus and a minor. The victim’s friend, in turn, was beaten unconscious. After the assault, the men threw the pair out of the running bus, onto the roadside. Here they were discovered by a passerby, their injuries so severe that they were rushed to hospital. On 29 December 2012, after thirteen days of medical treatment, the young woman died from her injuries that included severe internal bleeding and brain damage(Human Rights Watch, 2012). In the days following the rape and the victim’s subsequent death, protests were staged in Delhi, at India Gate and outside government buildings. Inhabitants of India’s capital cried out over the government’s failure to provide security for women and pass tough anti-rape laws. Soon after these first protests in the capital, the demonstrations spread to other major cities of India, like Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad (Belair-Gagnon et al., 2014). Even though many rapes occur in India every year -a little more than 24.000 cases were reported in 2011 (Rao, 2013)- the viciousness of the attack and the scope of the protests even drew the attention of international media. The case “brought international attention to India’s problem of violence against women” (Belair-Gagnon et al. 2013). Indian and international media referred it as the “Delhi Gang Rape,” “Delhi bus rape,” or “ Delhi rape,” and reported on the case and the subsequent protests in detail (Drache & Velagic, 2013).

The Delhi gang-rape case is especially interesting because of its tremendous effect on public debate and public action in India. Not after every rape case does the country erupt in protests. Vikas Bajaj, a journalist for The New York Times who was stationed in India for four years, gives an explanation of the vast effect the case has had in India itself. The journalist states that, next to the brutality of the attack, the young women’s gripping story as the first in her family to pursue a higher education caused this case to stir the emotions deeply. According to Bajaj the Delhi gang-rape caused great public discomfort because it came to symbolize the collective condemnation of millions of Indian women (The New York Times, 2013). It is clear now that this case was reacted to differently than the many other rape cases that were reported and covered in the media in India before. The case highlighted sexual violence against women and the emergence of gender justice as one of the most challenging issues confronting Indian society (Drache & Velagic, 2013). Thus, the way the media has chosen to cover this story is of great interest and importance.

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Helen Benedict. Yet the majority of previous research on the topic has focused on news coverage in the western media. Without much restraint one can assert that the position of women in the west is very different from their position in India. Thus it is also important to study the news coverage of sexual violence against women in India. The scholars Ammu Joseph, Kalpana Sharma and Sonia Bathla have undertaken research in the latter topic, yet their research stems from a period prior to the Delhi gang-rape. They focus on cases of sexual violence that didn’t have such a vast effect in India as the Delhi gang-rape did.

Authors like Valerie Belair-Gagnon, Smeetha Mishra & Colin Agur (2014) and Daniel Drache & Jennifer Velagic (2013), did study the coverage of the Delhi gang-rape, yet a detailed analysis, focusing solely on the representation of the Delhi gang-rape in the print media is what is still missing from the literature. This is where this study comes in. This thesis aims to reach a detailed understanding of how the Indian English language print media covered the Delhi gang-rape case. The research question that is central to this thesis is:

How was the Delhi gang-rape case represented in the Indian English-language print media?

To answer this research question, this thesis examines how the rape itself, the victim and her perpetrators were represented in Indian English-language newspaper coverage. In this study, the coverage of the four newspapers The Times of India, the Hindustan Times, The Indian Express and The New Indian Express represent the Indian English-language newspaper coverage of the Delhi gang-rape. Within the analysis of this coverage, the notion of framing plays a big role. The implicit meanings in Indian news reports about the Delhi gang-rape are explored by examining principles of selection, emphasis and presentation in these reports. What information is given, what is emphasized and what type of language is used are important questions in this examination.

There are three sub questions that underlie the main research question of this study. The first of these sub questions is: How was the gang-rape itself represented in the Indian

English-language print media? This question relates to how the act of rape was represented and in which context, if any, it was placed. The second sub question relates to the victim of the case, namely:

How was the gang-rape victim represented in the Indian English-language print media? This question addresses the manner in which the victim was referred to and what was discussed when she was mentioned in the coverage. The last sub question relates to the perpetrators of the rape, namely: How were the perpetrators of the gang-rape represented in the Indian English-language

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because the manner in which the Delhi gang-rape was represented and explained in the newspaper coverage has the potential to shape perceptions of and ideas about the case that are prevalent in society. According to Stephanie Bonnes (2013) the manner in which the media reports on rape has the potential to create, re-create and maintain either equality or inequality within societal understandings of rape (p.223).

This thesis first sets out a theoretical background, providing context for the analysis of the coverage of the Delhi gang-rape. The opening chapter of this thesis establishes an understanding of the cultural meanings of being a woman in India and the nature of violence against women in this country. Previous research on Indian coverage of women’s issues, including rape, is also discussed here. The next chapter focuses on the concepts of hegemony and ideology and their relation to gender & the media. Central to this discussion is the idea that the media play a role in maintaining the dominant position of men in society. The third chapter of this thesis focuses on the representation of women and sexual violence against women in the media. First attention is paid to the stereotypical portrayals of women in the media, after this, the focus is on the media representation of sexual violence against women. A concept that is relevant here, is the notion of framing. This concept relates to how (news) stories are composed and structured through certain principles of selection, emphasis and presentation. The role framing plays in the coverage of rape is illustrated with an overview of previous research on the framing of rape. The last part of the third chapter concentrates specifically on how victims and perpetrators of rape are often depicted and framed in news stories.

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CHAPTER 1 THE MEDIA AND WOMEN IN INDIA

Before diving into the representation of violence against women in the Indian media, it is crucial to establish an understanding of the cultural meanings of being a woman in India and the nature of violence against women in this country. This chapter will first explore the status of women and women’s issues in India. This exploration will provide some context within which the coverage of women and women’s issues in the Indian press can be understood. The characteristics of this coverage will be discussed in subchapter 1.2.

1.1 The status of women in post-independent India

After independence from Great Britain was declared in India, the second wave of the women’s movement emerged in the country. This time, the approach was political. There was an increased awareness of women’s oppression and the need for emancipation. The domination of women within the patriarchal social structure was questioned and democratization was called for. This second wave of the women’s movement was initiated by internal changes in India in the 1970s and the international growth of feminism. Sonia Bathla (1998) states that the internal changes were connected to political repression, the failure of the Indian government to provide for the economic needs of poor people and the government’s neglect of human rights issues (p.54). The author argues that an explicit model of democracy in India guarantees most legal and political rights to women, yet ‘the Indian state remains undemocratic and patriarchal in its practices’ (p.24).

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Rape, as an issue concerning women, caught special attention as a part of civil liberties issues in India in the 1970s and it still remains a common phenomenon in the country. The rape of a teenage girl by two drunken policemen in the state Maharashtra in 1980, often referred to as ‘the Mathura rape case’, sparked off the first big anti-rape campaign in India. This first campaign focused on the legislation surrounding rape cases (Joseph & Sharma, 2006, p. 108-109). According to Bathla (1998), rape victims in India often have to deal with humiliating treatment by insensitive policemen and doctors, inadequate rape laws and trials which question their character (P.57-58). The author states that, in the country, rape has been considered ‘an attack on women’s chastity and not an offence against human rights and dignity.’ She also argues that it is also often seen as an act of sexual frustration rather than an act of violence and domination. Moreover, the blurred definition of rape and consent under the Indian law often treats women as the accused ( p.58-59). Thus it can be concluded that people in Indian society are, to a certain extent, used to an anti-woman attitude in the form of violence against women.

1.2 The coverage of women and women’s issues in India

Even though neglectful attitudes towards women and violence against women are ever-present issues in Indian society, the role of the Indian press in representing women’s issues and the women’s movement has not been researched much (Bathla, 1998, P.23). Ammu Joseph (2006) confirms this, she states that the few academic studies on the representation of women and the coverage of gender issues in the Indian print media in the period since 1994 suggest that progress on the topic has been slow and unsteady.

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Thus, one could say that Indian new reports on crime and violence involving women as victims portrayed this violence as simple, individual, occurrences rather than as a broader issue.

Next to Bathla and Joseph, Shree Venkatram (2002) is one of the few who has studied the coverage of women’s issues in the Indian press. She carried out a 50-year longitudinal analysis of Hindi and English-language newspapers, paying attention to issues specifically of interest to women. Over those five decades, English dailies had increased women-related news from 3.6 percent to 13 percent, and Hindi dailies’ coverage of women’s issues had increased from 5 percent to 11 percent. In her study, Venkatram uncovered biases that were prevalent in the newspaper coverage. She concluded that the examined newspapers had failed to take note of women’s concerns, denied women’s achievements and disproportionally emphasized the beauty of females and the behavior and way of dressing that was preferred for them (Venkatram, 2002, in Byerly & Ross, p. 42).

On the basis of their evaluation of the coverage of gender issues in the Indian media, Ammu Joseph & Kalpana Sharma (2006) assert that women are not missing from the media anymore, whether as journalists, or as subjects or sources of news. Yet, the authors state that this improved visibility of women in the Indian media does not directly translate into gender equality in terms of the content on the pages. Joseph and Sharma state that it seems as if women must be victims of sob stories or heroines of success stories to catch the attention of the Indian media these days. They also claim that ten years of research on Indian newspaper coverage revealed that the issues of special concern to women which also truly caught the attention of the media were dowry death, rape and ‘sati’.

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Rape in the Indian press

In India, as in many other countries, different forms of violence against women frequently occur. Of all these crimes, rape seems to be one that generally is considered far too commonplace and abundant to appear in countrywide headlines. A series of cases of public prominence, in Delhi and Bombay- the political and commercial capitals- was needed to rekindle the media’s attention for rape. In the first decade of the 21st century, the most prominent cases were the rape of a 17-year-old college student by a policeman in Bombay in April 2005 and the gang-rape of 20-year-17-year-old student in Delhi a month later. According to Joseph & Sharma (2006) mainstream media coverage of rape in India has followed a predictable pattern the past quarter of a century. Long stretches of routine reporting (selected from police handouts) were broken by short periods of intensive and voluminous coverage set in motion by cases that happened to grab the imagination of the media and, subsequently, the public. The authors state that the cases that are most likely to arouse imagination and controversy are crimes committed in the metropolitan cities that involve a victim or perpetrator from the middle or upper class. The treatment of rape cases often then exposes an urban, middle/upper-class bias (p.100-101).

Joseph & Sharma studied the coverage of five Indian English-language newspapers, namely The Indian Express, the Hindustan Times, The Hindu, The Statesman and The Times of

India. In all these newspapers, rape made it to the front page at least once (2006, p. 110). The authors found out that the editorial and features pages of most of these papers were more reactive to the rape issue than the news sections. When the news sections did contain reports on the issue, these news reports did not contribute a great deal to a better understanding of the rape issue (2006, p.116). According to Joseph & Sharma (2006), The Indian Express, one of the newspapers also analyzed in this study, adopted a liberal stance on rape (p.76). They also state that The Indian

Express and the Hindustan Times, another newspaper included in this study’s analysis, take pride in being more plainspoken. Both papers present news about violent events much more explicitly than the other Indian English-language newspapers do (p. 78). Of all the five papers studied by the authors, The Indian Express was the quickest in commenting on the rape issue in India. In terms of focus, its editorials on the rape issue stood out as the only ones that handled rape straightforwardly as a tool of women’s oppression (2006, P. 111).

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only these women get such treatment (p. 101-102). The authors conclude that Indian media coverage of rape is still (in the 21st century) rather varied. According to them, it ranges from being serious, concerned and gender-sensitive through being quick, insincere, superficial and celebrity-centered to being sensational, irresponsible and invasive. Yet on the whole, the definition of rape, its main, fundamental causes and its impact on victims were aspects that were not thoroughly elaborated on in the Indian media (Joseph & Sharma, 2006, p. p. 108-109).

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CHAPTER 2 DEFINING IDEOLOGY, HEGEMONY & GENDER IN RELATION TO

NEWS

However much one would like to believe news media are entirely neutral, they are not. The fact that women and women’s issues have long been under- and misrepresented in the media, points to a (explicit or unintentional) partiality of the media. That it is impossible for the media to be utterly neutral relates to the fact that society, and thus also the media, is not free from hierarchy. There are groups within society that seem to dominate over others. Men, for instance, are often seen as a dominant group in relation to women. The dominant, powerful positions of groups are often sought to be maintained, this maintenance of a social order is known as ‘hegemony’. With the continual fight for, recreation and defending of hegemony comes ideological struggle. This chapter will first explain the concepts of hegemony and ideology in more detail. The media is thought to have a role in creating and defending hegemony and thus is also engaged in ideological struggle. What all this means in relation to gender in the news will also be discussed in this chapter.

2.1 Ideology and hegemony in the news

The maintenance of a particular social order in society is arrived at through the exercising of power within societal institutions (Bathla, 1998, p. 66). The notion of hegemony explains how and why ‘dominant’ groups in society constantly renegotiate their powerful positions in relation to the ‘oppressed’ groups. Since men are often identified as a ‘dominant’ group over women, they are considered the ‘elite group’ that strives to maintain power. To do this, the elite group must rule by winning public consent for an (economic) system that privileges those already in dominant positions. This public consent is won when the hegemonic definitions of the powerful are naturalized and made to seem ‘normal’ and ‘neutral’. These definitions of the powerful are then presented to everyone as if no other definitions are possible, as if they are common sense. Cynthia Carter & Linda Steiner (2004) state that the media contribute to the processes of gaining public consent. They argue that media texts never simply mirror reality, but rather construct hegemonic definitions of what should be accepted as ‘reality’ (p.2). In this line, Gitlin (1980) asserts that the work of hegemony lies in imposing standardized presumptions over events and conditions that must receive coverage (in Van Dijk, 2009, p. 197).

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According to her, ideological struggle comes with the continuing renewal of, fight for, recreation and defending of hegemony. According to Van Dijk (2009) ideologies are beliefs or mental representations and thus a form of social cognition. He defines ideologies as the fundamental, taken-for-granted beliefs that underlie the social representations shared by a group, promoting fundamental norms and values which may be used by the social group to impose, defend or struggle for its own interests (p.193). In this line, Meyers connects ideological struggle with the feminist movement, stating that this movement challenged the standard dominant ideology of gender. Not only ideology and gender are connected, ideology also plays an important role in the (news) media. Ideologies are namely largely (re)produced by text, talk and communication, thus also largely through the news media (Van Dijk, p. 193).

The media may not purposefully contribute to producing ideologies and controlling the news on the part of powerful sources, but the ideological character of the news is embedded in the methods of journalists and their dependence on material provided by specific institutions and sources. According to Sonia Bathla (1998), journalists may not perceive their work to be hegemonic since they incorporate the principles of neutrality and objectivity, yet they take in the views of the powerful and share their hegemonic assumptions (p.82). Meyers (1997) states that the news values that underlie journalists’ work establish a framework that reinforces the dominant ideology while marginalizing, trivializing and framing any challenge to it as deviant or dangerous (p. 22). Meyers (2008) thus asserts that ‘the news supports values, beliefs and norms of ruling elite’, whom exert social, economic and political power within a hierarchal society. According to the author, hegemony is at its most effective when its ideological basis appears natural. Thus, to effectively maintain support for the ruling elite, the news must appear neutral and mask its ideological roots. The ‘neutrality’ of the news is gained through language use and word choice. News stories are constructed in such a way that their ideological nature is disguised and the stories seem natural and grounded in daily reality (p. 96). Ideology researchers thus suppose that the analysis of media texts can highlight the ideological (gendered) assumptions that underlie the narratives of these texts (Carter & Steiner, 2004, p.14). According to Van Dijk (2009), ideological analysis of the news is interesting because it allows one to see how the news distorts the real events, ‘the facts’ (P.195). The author states that the social relevance of this type of news analysis lies ‘in making explicit the implied or indirect meanings or functions of news reports’ (Van Dijk, 1988 in Meyers, 1997, p.14). According to him, analysis of news discourse is able to reveal the (mostly unintentional and not explicit) ideologies of journalists (Van Dijk, 2009, p. 196).

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gender over the other, sexism starts playing a role. Van Dijk (2009) identifies sexism as a patriarchal gender ideology, that by definition is polarized between us (men) and them (women), and in particular between us (‘real’ men) and them (feminists). In this line, sexist ideologies are also polarized between positive self-characterizations of men (for instance as strong and independent) and other-descriptions of women (as weak and dependent), hereby creating opposed identities (p.201). Sexist ideologies could have an effect on the way men and women are represented within the coverage of sexual violence. According to Sarah J. Jackson (2013) the coverage of rape must be understood as performing important ideological work within society because of the complicated nature of public understanding of gendered violence and the ways in which these understandings intersect with ideologies of race, sexuality, class and ethnicity (p. 48).

2.2 Gender, identity and the news

Ideology plays a role in many aspects of daily life; it even plays a part in the social construction of sexual difference between men and women, a concept which is known as gender. According to Cynthia Carter (2012) gender relates to definitions of masculinity and femininity (p. 370). Ideology underlies the construction of these definitions and the media indirectly contributes to this construction. Gender, thus is not a ‘natural’ fact. According to Carter & Steiner (2004) it is a false assumption that there are universal and uniform definitions of gender that apply to all cultures across time (p.3). There is no pre-existing reality that underlies the meaning of the categories masculine and feminine, instead ‘the media were involved in actively producing gender’ (Gill, 2007 in Carter, 2012). The definitions of these two concepts relating to gender are a site of struggle; a number of competing meanings are possible at any given time (Meyers, 1997, p.29). The media are used as means to spread, confirm or contest constructions of gender identity. Thus, the media assist the public in developing ideas about masculinity and femininity. The idea that masculinity and femininity are opposites and that boy and girls are fundamentally different is key to the gender stereotypes emergent in the Western media (Carter & Steiner, 2004, p.12). Socially prescribed gender norms are embedded in the different definitions of masculinity and femininity that are disseminated by the media.

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‘system of structures and practices that sustains inequities between the experiences, responsibilities, status, and opportunities of different social groups, especially women and men’. Meyers (1997) states that idea that the ideals, values, and opinions of white, heterosexual, middle- and upper class men are the dominant ideology within society is central to the notion of patriarchy (p.7). In this line, Steiner (1999) asserts that white middle-aged men are often constituted as a powerful, undiversified category that holds the authority to define and redefine reality for everyone else(p.234).

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CHAPTER 3

REPRESENTING WOMEN AND FRAMING SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Women and women’s issues, like sexual violence, are increasingly finding their way onto the pages of the newspapers. The first section of this chapter will focus on how women generally function in news stories and which stereotypes regarding a women’s role and behavior appear within these media portrayals of women. The next sections of this chapter will more specifically concentrate on news accounts of sexual violence against women, first examining how all forms of sexual violence against women were defined and represented and then zooming in on how rape has been depicted in the news. The third and fourth section of this chapter will examine how (news) stories of rape are generally composed and structured through certain principles of selection, emphasis and presentation. In other words, they will discuss how cases of rape have been ‘framed’ in the media.

3.1 The portrayal of women in the media

The media, by representing women in certain ways, add to beliefs of what it means to be ‘a woman’. When the notion ‘representation in the media’ is used, it refers to how certain concepts are used to tell stories. Thus ‘representation of women in the media’ relates to how women function in news stories. It addresses how women are ‘used’ to tell stories or, more specifically, what role women play in these news stories. By studying how women generally function in news stories, one can also shed light on what role women, and more specifically the female victim, will play in news stories of sexual violence against women. News coverage of sexual violence against women namely cannot be separated from news coverage of women in general (Meyers, 1997, p.3).

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concerns (Meyers, 1997, p.3). According to Robert M. Seiler (2006), feminists aim to challenge the gender assumptions (including notions of appropriate roles and behavior) that are prevalent within society and try to achieve a more emancipated and free existence for both women and men, favoring equality between the two. The principal goal of feminist research is to weaken the gendered inequality that permeates cultural life. It is not sufficient to just document inequalities; description and critique of inequalities are the starting points of larger attempts to restructure the social world.

Carolyn M. Byerly and Karen Ross (2006) are both professors of mass communication that have published a great deal of work considering the representation of women in the media. According to them, many studies which attempted to map the different portrayals of women in the news media have exposed a pattern of marginal presence of women on the one hand (as actors and sources in the stories) and stereotyping on the other (p.40). The notion of stereotypes is often employed within analytical accounts of the representation of women in the news media. In this research context, Stuart Allan (2010) defines stereotypes as consisting of ‘standardized mental pictures’ which offer sexist judgments about women whereby their subordinate status within a male-dominated society is reinforced (p.159).Cynthia Carter and Linda Steiner (2004) look at the stereotyping of women in a similar way. They argue that till the end of the 1980s, media portrayals of women tended to stick with a narrow set of sex role stereotypes, mainly limiting women to a domestic private sphere that experienced low social status compared to that of men (p. 13-14).

Feminist media researchers largely assume that these limited portrayals of women, contribute to sexist and harmful attitudes. Many of these scholars argued that sexist stereotypes promote the belief that women should always confirm to so-called ‘traditional’ female sex roles and thus discourage the public in being accepting of strong, assertive, independent and self-confident women (Carter & Steiner, 2004, p. 14). John McManus and Lori Dorfman (2005) thus argue that several critical feminist scholars have discovered definite and consistent problems when it comes to objective reporting about issues of particular importance to women, like intimate partner violence. In this line of thought, Stuart Allan (2010) argues that the codes of objective reporting itself are specifically gendered and easy to spot in the news. According to him, this gendered specificity is clear in a reporters use of generic pronouns like ‘he’ to refer to both male and female actors in the news, or an explicit marking of gender when the news actor is female, or male-centered ways of referring to women , like ‘wife’ and ‘girlfriend’(p. 162-163).

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portrayed as independent individuals (p.23). Bearing the above in mind, Margaret Gallagher (2003) argues that the media has a role as a source of oppression. This role was documented in reviews initiated by UNESCO. These reviews uncovered the patterns of discrimination operating against women in society that the media conveyed. Through the absence, trivialization or condemnation of women in the media content, these patterns amounted to the “symbolic annihilation’ of women, a term first coined by Gaye Tuchman in 1978. This general critique rapidly became positioned around two central axes. Firstly, the analyses of the structures of power in which women are systematically subordinated and secondly the focus on the representation and the production of knowledge in which women are objects rather than active subjects (Gallagher, 2003, p.19-20).

3.2 Sexual violence against women in the media

When it comes to sexual violence, women are also often subordinated and treated as objects. In the context of this thesis, sexual violence against women is referred to as sexual and physical acts of aggression directed specifically at women by men. These men can be either strangers to the victim or their acquaintances. News accounts of male violence inflicted upon women have appeared in the news on a regular basis since popular newspapers emerged in the nineteenth century (Allan, 2010, p.164). From the 1970s onwards, the coverage of rape in the media began increasing. According to Gary W. Potter and Victor E. Kappeler (2012), there is a massive over-representation of violent and sex crimes in the written press (p. 4-5). In this line of argument, Keith Soothill & Sylvia Walby (1989) state that there clearly is some discrepancy between the facts about sex crimes and the ideas about these crimes that many people have. This is, in part, due to the manner in which the media covers sex crimes, since news reports are one of the main sources of information available to the public about rape and other forms of sexual violence (p. 14).

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Sonia Bathla (1998) tries to clarify this unbalanced attention to these two different forms of sexual violence. She states that sexual violence perpetrated by an acquaintance of the victim might receive less media attention because these cases are often not reported to the authorities. Thus, these cases require greater effort to be covered (p. 100).

Within research regarding the coverage of sexual violence against women, problems such as distorted story selection, gender stereotyping, and the lack of attention for the structural causes of gender violence are often discussed (Worthington, 2013, p. 105). A pattern that often emerges from research into the topic is that the coverage of sexual violence against women is mostly led by events rather than issues. Sonia Bathla (1998) is one of the authors that discusses this pattern, she describes an event as ‘a discrete happening which is limited by time and space’. An issue, on the other hand, is not limited by time and can be brought on by a series of (similar) events. According to Bathla, an issue contains subjectivity, debate and analysis. While focusing on separate events means viewing these events at face value (p.85). Like Bathla, Meyers (1997) also observed that there was little space for debate about underlying causes and solutions in the coverage of sexual violence against women. The author states that the representation of sexual violence against women as isolated and random incidents reinforces the understanding that these sex crimes are a matter of deviance and are only related to the specific situation of the ones involved and have nothing to do with the patriarchal power relations that structure sexual relations. Meyers concludes that the press denies the social roots of sexual violence against women and ignores the fact that individual incidents fit within a larger social problem (p. 117-118). Sexual violence against women is thus personified and its social impact trivialized (Surette, 1998 in Garcia, p. 23).

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representations could mislead the audience into perceiving these distortions as fact, because the media are thought to reflect real life.

3.3 Representing rape

There are many different definitions of rape and several assumptions surrounding the issue. These definitions and assumptions will first be addressed before going into a more detailed discussion of the media representation of rape. The scholars Roger Simpson and William Coté (2006) understand rape as the forced violation of another person’s body, which can occur amongst women and amongst men, as well as between a man and a woman. However, men raping women is the most common form of rape (p.204). Simpson & Coté emphasize that rape is not about sex in the usual sense of the word, because the violent traumatic effects of it are out of place with the feelings of consensual sexual relations. According to the authors, the defining feature of rape is the deliberate choice of a person to damage someone else’s autonomy over their body (p.204-205). In this line, Helen Benedict (1992) characterizes rape as a form of torture. She asserts that, like a torturer, ‘the rapist is motivated by an urge to dominate, humiliate or destroy the victim’(p.14).

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Defining framing

By now it is clear that the news coverage of rape and other forms of sexual violence against women is not value free. News reports on the topic, like any other news story, are composed and structured in ways that express value-laden messages about issues central to the coverage. This composing and structuring of news coverage is often referred to as ‘framing’. This notion relates to certain principles of selection (which information is included and excluded), emphasis and presentation (for example which words are used to refer to certain actions and actors). Before detailing how the principles of selection, emphasis and presentation play out in the news coverage of rape, the general concept of framing will be explained.

Erving Goffman’s text Frame Analysis has had a big formative influence on the theory

of framing and thereby on present-day media research. An assumption within Goffman’s theory is that frames help the public to make sense out of events. In this way, framing necessarily involves a process whereby seemingly meaningless aspects of an event are made meaningful. According to Goffman, we tend to understand events in terms of primary frameworks and the type of framework we use provides a way of explaining that certain event (Goffman, 1974 in Allan, 201, p.74-75). Frames generally define problems, make moral judgments and support specific remedies. Entman, Matthes, and Pellicano (2009) define framing as ‘selecting some aspects of a perceived reality’ and constructing messages that highlight connections among these specific aspects of reality in ways that promote a particular interpretation. According to the authors, reporters and news editors usually engage in framing without the intention of pushing specific policies or political goals forward(p.176). Frames can be seen as tools for journalists, enabling them to process large amounts of information quickly and routinely. The prevailing frames in news coverage gain a seemingly natural or taken-for-granted status by way of repetition and the regularity of news discourse (Gitlin, 1980 in Allan, 2010, p.75-76).

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episodic (event-centered) framing. The distinction between these two types of framing is relevant to the analysis in this thesis because, as discussed earlier in this chapter, the coverage of sexual violence mostly seems to be led by events rather than issues and very little attention appears to exist for the causes of and solutions to sexual violence. This suggests the possibility that within the coverage of the Delhi gang-rape, episodic/event-oriented framing also will be prevalent, focusing on specific events that took place within the whole case instead of on the causes and solutions to the general problem of violence against women in India.

The framing of rape

By examining what role framing plays in the coverage of rape, the implicit values about sexual violence against women that underlie news reports on the topic can be uncovered. Nancy Worthington (2013) analyzed framing in online news stories about the gang rape of a teenage girl in Richmond, California. She discovered that dominant framing during the pretrial phase of coverage dealt primarily with explaining the inexplicable; why such a brutal attack took place at all. Worthington detected four different frames that fit within this dominant framing. Three of these relate to the place and societal context in which the rape took place and one relates to the character of the perpetrators. The latter frame will be explained later, in a section of this chapter that focuses specifically on the framing of the perpetrators of rape.

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Shannon O’Hara (2012) also investigated framing in news reports about rape. She explored the ways in which the British and American media framed and portrayed three specific cases of sexual violence. The author found out that, in one of the three cases she examined, the press was concerned with how the town where the rape took place and the rapists’ families were affected by the rape, instead of focusing on the rape’s negative impact on the victim (p. 252-253). O’Hara concludes that the impact of the sexual violence on the victims was largely overlooked in all three cases she analyzed, she asserts this had the effect of trivializing the crime (p. 256).

Within the studies discussed above, the researchers mostly determined relatively broad thematic frames that emerge on the level of, at the least, a sentence, or even a passage. Yet, even the use of single specific words in news reports about sexual violence reveals implicit values about the cases of sexual violence that are covered in the news report in question. Sarah J. Jackson (2013) discovered significant details relating to word choice in her examination of mainstream television news coverage of the kidnapping and rape of a twenty-year-old female in America. The television news sources she studied avoided the word ‘rape’ to describe the crime and instead used more vague descriptions that weakened the severity of the crime. Descriptions that were used to describe the rape were, for instance, “psychically, mentally and sexually abused,” and “sexual assault”. Jackson also discovered that the news sources framed the crime as unique and unreal by using words that suggested an exceptional nature of the crime, like “unspeakable” and “incomprehensible” (p.52). She also discovered that nearly half the stories about this case on CNN constructed the class of the perpetrators as relevant to understanding the crime (p. 56). Jackson furthermore found out that CNN consistently used sensationalistic language to describe the rape. Terms CNN used to describe the crime were “horror movie,” “perplexing,” “bizarre” and “shocking”.

3.4 Framing the victims and perpetrators

Next to examining how the act of rape itself is often framed in the news media, it is also important to discuss how the two major actors within instances of sexual violence against women are framed in the coverage on the topic. These two major actors are the (mostly male) perpetrators and the female victims. Examining the principles of selection, emphasis and presentation that are used when representing perpetrators and victims of sexual violence can reveal common biases about, and stereotypes of these actors that are implicit in the news coverage.

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Naming and victim-blaming

This section will focus on the female victims of rape. How these victims were framed inform us on who victims are seen to be and which roles victims are presumed to play in their victimization (Garcia, 2012, p.20). Ross & Byerly (2006) explicitly argue that the coverage of rape often sustains stereotypes about victims and victimization. The authors state that women who are the prey of male violence are often described as ‘victims’, thereby defining these women as consistently passive and dependent, their lives entirely governed by the impulses of men (p.42). According to Saraswati Sunindyo (2004) the female victim of violence can become seen as a heroine and start functioning as a symbol of (desire for) justice (p.92). But, on the other hand, the media can also sexualize the victim, repeatedly referring to her appearance, seeing her as sensual and sexual (p.93).Within the portrayal of female victims the notion of rape myths (touched upon briefly in the previous subchapter) again plays an important role. The majority of the rape myths that Benedict (1992) identified in her studies of the coverage of sex crimes relate to the representation of the victim. Benedict states that, because rape is often considered the same as sex, victims of rape are often believed to have tempted their attackers through their looks and sexuality. Herein lies the presumption that women provoke rape by behaving carelessly, failing to prevent themselves from tempting their attacker. According to Benedict, the illusion that women invite sexual assault commonly leads to the belief that only openly ‘loose’ and promiscuous woman are raped (p.15-16). This idea again lies close to another rape myth, namely that rape is a punishment for past acts and behavior. Within this myth, the rape victim is blamed for having provoked the crime, if not due to her behavior just preceding the attack, then because of her general lifestyle (Benedict, p.17). This practice is often referred to as ‘victim-blaming’.

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sober (p. 20). Stephanie Bonnes (2013) also engages in this discussion on victim-blaming. According to her, a woman who does any of the following: dressing in a revealing way, engaging in promiscuity, drinking too much alcohol, is often perceived as someone who would always consent to sex and is thus incapable of being raped (p. 211).

In their research on the coverage of intimate-partner violence, John McManus and Lori Dorfman (2005) looked for frames that implied or explicitly stated the cause of the violence (p.50). They identified three victim-blaming frames which are relevant to the analysis of the news coverage on the Delhi gang-rape in this thesis. The first of these three frames is described by the authors as “the victim may have contributed to the violence by wearing sexy/revealing clothing or engaging in flirtatious behavior”. The second is described as “The victim may have contributed to the violence by becoming impaired by drink, drugs, etc.” The third and last victim blame frame that is also relevant to my own analysis is described as “The victim may have contributed to the violence in another way, perhaps having been married many times, being argumentative, nagging, flaunting success, etc.” (p.54).

Not only the notion of victim-blaming is relevant to the discussion of the framing of female victims of rape. The details of the words used to describe these victims also reveal implicit values surrounding violence against women. Zeynep Alat (2006) studied the structure of sentences and the use of words in Turkish news stories of violence against to discover implicit meanings in these stories. Among other things, Alat aimed to find out whether there was a linkage between the naming of perpetrators and the naming of victims. The author discovered that victims were referred to as girls, wives or mothers when the perpetrator was labeled as evil and the crime seen as intolerable. On the other hand, when the actions of the perpetrator were seen as tolerable, the victim was hardly mentioned at all (p.302). Stephanie Bonnes (2013) also examined the words used in the coverage of rape to describe the victim and the perpetrators. She focused on the news coverage of this topic in South Africa. In the majority of the articles Bonnes analyzed, the rape victims were described only as ‘girls’ or ‘women’ instead of as victims or survivors. According to the author, restraint from using the latter terms serves to de-emphasize the role of the perpetrator and attribute blame to the victim. She states that the avoidance of the labels of victim and survivor demonstrate a lack of sympathy for the victim and can show doubt that the woman was actually raped (p. 217).

De-emphasizing and dehumanizing the perpetrator

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perpetrators of rape in the news. This too will help reveal underlying attitudes about sexual violence against women. In the discussion in the previous section, about the framing of victims of rape, the notion of victim-blaming was an important point. This victim-blaming also influences how the perpetrator is represented, the responsibility for the violence is namely lifted from the perpetrator and shifted to the victim.

News coverage of rape not only relieves perpetrators of the responsibility for their crime by implicitly blaming the victim for it. Sometimes new stories implicitly place the blame for rape on external factors that might have influenced the perpetrators. In their analysis of the coverage of intimate-partner violence, McManus & Dorfman (2005) identified a four frames through which the blame was placed on external factors, instead of wholly on the perpetrator. The authors labeled these as ‘suspect-mitigation frames’. Two of these frames are relevant to the analysis in this thesis. The first of these frames is described as “The suspect may have ‘snapped’, acting spontaneously and out of character”. This frame suggests that the suspect is actually a nice guy, a good spouse, and a good parent. The second relevant suspect-mitigation frame is described as “The suspect may have acted violently at least partly due to drinking or drug use”. Bonnes (2013) also recognizes that news reports often minimize the responsibility of the perpetrators by placing blame on outside factors. The author adds that the attackers are often humanized by the provision of details about their life that suggest they are a good person. The readers are hereby led to believe that the rapist is actually “not the type that would rape” (p.212). Bonnes discovered that the terms ‘men’ or ‘boys’ were preferred to refer to the attackers, instead of terms like perpetrator, assailants or rapists. Author states that the blame for the rape can be placed on the victim when the coverage of a rape incident avoids naming the attackers in terms of their actions (p. 218).

Apart from the de-emphasis of the role of the perpetrator and the mitigation of their responsibility for the crime, another pattern has been discovered in the news coverage of rape. This pattern is the media’s tendency to set perpetrators of sexual violence apart from ‘normal men’. Worthington (2013) recognized this pattern after analyzing online news about a gang-rape in Richmond, California. One of the frames the author identified in this coverage characterized the rape as being so brutal that the perpetrators must have been ‘abnormal’. Worthington labeled this frame “Abnormal” assailants, she states that it is typical of rape news in general(p. 108).

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facts. Soothill & Walby state that this selectivity tends to mask the general reality of sexual crimes, while still setting the tone of what the public reads about sexual violence (p.34). Meyers (1997) adds to the critical discussion of the representation of the attacker as a deviant monster. She asserts that this portrayal allows ‘normal’ men distance themselves from the committers of these sex crimes (p.10). Through representing sexual offenders as (sexually) deviant outcasts, the fact that rape is a serious social problem that requires a social reform solution is denied (Byerly & Ross, 2006, p. 42-43). The general reality of sexual violence namely is that it occurs frequently and is not only perpetrated by seemingly ‘abnormal’ men who live on the edge of society, but at least as often by seemingly ‘normal’ men.

The manner in which the media reports on rape, its victims and its perpetrators can potentially create, re-create and sustain either equality or inequality within public understandings of rape, Thus, it is important to remain critical of media reports on rape. Bonnes (2013) argues that when journalists choose to foreground the role of the perpetrators (instead of de-emphasizing it), sympathise with the victims (instead of implicitly blaming them) and don’t downplay certain incidents of rape, the public might adopt a view of rape that generates more justice for rape survivors (p. 223).

3.5 Towards a more gender-sensitive reporting

Considering the conclusions drawn in most of the studies discussed in the previous subchapters, one would be inclined to infer that the majority of the coverage of (sexual) violence against women is distorted and biased, minimizing the seriousness of the violence and often blurring the responsibility of the perpetrators. Most of the feminist media scholars will most likely not consider this type of reporting very progressive in its (implied) attitude towards violence against women. Thus, some of them advocate increasing the gender-sensitivity and progressiveness of reporting.

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is the avoidance of sexist stereotypes that either blame the victim or mitigate the responsibility of the suspect. The author also stresses the importance of paying attention to the role of social structures, like gender, race and class in bringing about and normalizing sexual violence. The fourth and final criterion Worthington establishes is the incorporation of perspectives of victims of sexual violence and/or their advocates (p.345).

In line with this last criterion that was set down by Worthington, Karen Byerly (1999) states that news coverage on violence against women can be considered to have a feminist frame when the new stories place analyses of women’s victimization central to the story, and when victims are allowed to talk about their experiences in their own words (p. 391). Elizabeth K. Carll (2003) also strives for progressive reporting on violence against women. According to her, merely reporting individual incidents and statistics in the news isn’t sufficient and can even be misleading; the way in which this information is crafted is what she finds most important (p.1609). Carll states that all aspects of violence and all of its forms need to be addressed both through public policy and the mass media to educate the public. She believes that high-profile news stories, if constructed accurately, can help raise social consciousness (p.1607).

3.6 Main research questions and hypotheses

The previous research regarding the coverage of sexual violence discussed above has discovered that the majority of the coverage of (sexual) violence against women is event-centered, distorted and biased. Cases of violence against women are often treated as isolated, random incidents that are a matter of deviance. The seriousness of the violence is often minimized while blurring the responsibility of the perpetrators by placing blame on outside factors, like the use of mind-altering substances like alcohol and/or drugs. Moreover, previous studies also observed that victims of sexual violence were blamed for the rape, since the coverage implied that the victim’s were responsible for what happened to them because they dressed and/or behaved in a way that ‘invited’ their attacker. Furthermore, perpetrators of rape were often described as deviant, different from ‘normal men’, hereby creating the image that only deviant outcasts are the type of men that rape.

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RQ 1: How was the gang-rape itself represented in the Indian English-language print media?

Hypotheses 1 : Presumably, a great deal of the newspaper coverage of the Delhi gang-rape case

condemns this specific crime and places it in the context of prevalent sexual violence against women in India. The coverage might also describe the gang-rape as exceptional in terms of severity and brutality when compared with other rapes.

RQ 2 : How was the gang-rape victim represented in the Indian English-language press? Hypotheses 2: Presumably, most of the newspaper coverage of the Delhi gang-rape does not

ascribe traits and behaviour to the victim that could make her seem like a ‘bad girl’ and thus also does not ascribe partial responsibility for the rape to her, but rather views the victim with sympathy. The coverage might also mention that the victim was raped despite of her behaviour.

RQ 3: How were the perpetrators of the gang-rape represented in the Indian English-language press?

Hypotheses 3: Presumably, much of the newspaper coverage of the Delhi gang-rape case

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CHAPTER 4 METHODOLOGY

In this thesis a content analysis of the frames used in the Indian English language press to portray the Delhi gang-rape case of December 2012 will be applied. More specifically, a qualitative content analysis will be used. A content analysis is useful in the context of this research because it helps to uncover how the newspapers wrote about the Delhi gang-rape. It helps to reveal how the analysed newspapers portrayed the rape, it’s perpetrators and the victim. Before going into more detail on how the content analysis was carried out, the first section of this chapter will explain which sample was used, why this sample was chosen and how it was collected. After that, the method of content analysis will be explained in the second section, here it will also be made clear why this method was chosen in the context of this thesis. The third section of this chapter will discuss the tools that were used for the content analysis of the newspaper articles, namely the coding scheme and the codebook. The last section of this chapter will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the method used in this thesis.

4.1 Sample

A sample the of the Indian press coverage of the Delhi gang rape is taken from four Indian English language newspapers: Hindustan Times, The Times of India, The Indian Express, and The

New Indian Express. By analysing four different Indian newspapers an idea can be formed of the Indian press coverage of the Delhi gang-rape. The more Indian English language newspapers are included into the analysis, the more certain it will be that the results are exemplary of the Indian English language newspaper coverage of the Delhi gang-rape as a whole. These four specific newspapers were chosen because they are all national daily newspapers that are accessible through the digital database LexisNexis. Two of the chosen papers are the market leaders in its category (English-language) and the other two are not in the top five of the most circulated English dailies in India (Indian Readership Survey, 2011). The two market leaders were chosen together with two less widely circulated newspapers because the latter might differ in tone from the more popular newspapers. Moreover, two newspapers from the top five of most circulated Indian English language dailies are not accessible via the digital database LexisNexis.

The Times of India (TOI) is the most widely read English newspaper in India, with a circulation of over two million. TOI’s readers are largely Hindu’s (Deb, 2005). According to the non-partisan World Press organization (2011), TOI is a conservative newspaper. When founded,

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India and Hindustan Times (HT) have its headquarters in the national capital, Delhi, the city where the gang-rape discussed in this thesis took place. Hindustan Times (HT) is the other market leader among the Indian English language papers, it has a circulation of around one million. The World Press Organization (2011) describes HT as centrist. The paper was founded by the liberal English speaking Indian nationalist elite as a response to the colonial press. The same goes for

The Indian Express and The New Indian Express (Lankala, 2006, p.90). As the names suggest,

The Indian Express and The New Indian Express are newspapers with the same background. The predecessor of both papers was the Indian Express, which started in 1931 in Chennai. In 1999 the newspaper’s publisher, the Indian Express Group, split up. The southern editions of Indian

Express took the name The New Indian Express (NIE) and the northern editions retained the original title, with “The” added as a prefix : The Indian Express (IE). IE ‘s headquarters are in Delhi and the paper has a reputation as one of Delhi’s better newspapers. IE is said to be influential in government and political circles, despite its relatively small circulation. The paper is seen as centrist and has run stories critical of the Hindu right (Deb, 2005). NIE’s headquarters are in Chennai, a city on the south-eastern coast of India. It has the 9th place in the ranking of the most widely read English newspapers in India and is known for its daring, anti-establishment tone (Indian Readership Survey, 2011).

The sample was collected through the digital database LexisNexis. The articles taken from these four newspapers had to mention the Delhi gang-rape of December 2012 and deal with sexual violence against women in India. The keywords ‘Delhi’, ‘gang-rape’ and the alternate spelling ‘gangrape’, were used with the ‘OR’ connector to do an advanced search within LexisNexis. With this search, articles mentioning the Delhi gang-rape anywhere in the entire text were obtained.

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The search for the sample was carried out with the following search string: ((Delhi) W/5 (gangrape)) OR ((Delhi) W/5 (gang-rape)) AND LENGTH >(350) AND ATLEAST2 (gang-rape) OR (gangrape). The three keywords ‘Delhi’, ‘gang-rape’ and ‘gangrape’ were used because the crime took place in Delhi and the rape had six perpetrators, thus it can be characterized as gang-rape. ‘gang-rape’ and its multiple ways of spelling (gangrape and gang rape) were always used in relation to the crime on the 16th of December 2012. Searching for articles in LexisNexis with the keywords ‘Delhi’ and ‘rape’ – and the same timeframe and parameter for article length as above- results in mainly the same articles as the aforementioned search string does. Both combinations of keywords, ‘Delhi’ and ‘rape’ or ‘Delhi’ and the multiple spellings of ‘gang-rape’, result in articles that use the spelling ‘gang rape’ (with an interspace). As most of the articles seem to relate to the rape case of December 16th 2012 as ‘the Delhi gang rape’, the keywords ‘Delhi’, ‘gangrape’ and ‘gang-rape’ are adequate.

In the aforementioned search string, W/5 stands for ‘within five words of’. This was chosen as a parameter because the sample had to exist of articles mentioning the gang-rape in Delhi on 16 December 2012 specifically. When the keywords are mentioned close together it is much more likely that this is the case. When the words are mentioned separately somewhere in the entire text, chances are that another gang-rape, possibly in another city, is being discussed and Delhi is mentioned as an aside.

In the search string used within this thesis, the parameter of minimum article length was set at 350 words because in this thesis the analysis of the articles focuses on the verbal content. The articles have to provide enough verbal content to analysis, thus short articles- consisting of less than 350 words- were left out of the sample. The last part of the search string ‘AND ATLEAST2 (gang-rape) or (gangrape)’ entails that the articles included in the sample had to mention either one of the keywords at least twice. This was added as a parameter because if the keyword ‘gang-rape’- or its alternate spelling- is mentioned more than once in an article, the chances are greater that this article doesn’t just mention the Delhi gang-rape as an aside, but is actually about this specific crime and deals with sexual violence against women in India.

The search string discussed above resulted in the following sample: 178 articles in TOI, 89 articles in HT, 95 articles in IE and 41 articles in NIE. These numbers were the results after the duplicate options in LexisNexis were adjusted to ‘moderate similarity’. This duplicate option automatically filters out the doubles and other articles that are very similar to ones already occurring in the sample.

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perpetrators after the lead paragraph. The manual selection process resulted in the following final sample: 138 articles in TOI, 65 articles in HT, 55 in IE and 34 articles in NIE. Thus in total 292 articles were selected for analysis. The unit of analysis used was the individual article.

4.2 The content analysis

This thesis makes use of a qualitative content analysis of media frames. The aim of content analysis in journalism studies has been that of examining how news output reflects social issues, values and phenomena (Hansen & Machin, 2013, p.86). Content analysis was chosen as the method of this study because the aim of this thesis is to examine how the Indian English-language press, through media frames, reflected the social issue of sexual violence against women in the context of the Delhi gang-rape of December 2012. The goal of this thesis is in line with the general aim of content analysis within journalism studies.

According to Lasswell, Lerner and Pool (1952) “content analysis is a technique which aims at describing, with optimum objectivity, precision, and generality, what is said on a given subject in a given place at a given time” (as cited in Macnamara, 2005). To realize this aim of description, content analysis examines a sample of (news) media output and classifies the content according to a number of dimensions (Hansen & Machin, p.98).In the case of content analysis of media frames, the sample (be it newspaper articles or news broadcasts) is classified according to different frames that are prominent in the respective media output. The content analysis assesses and describes these frames (Matthes & Kohring, 2008, p.258). The content analysis in this thesis classifies the selected newspaper articles of the TOI, HT, IE and NIE on the topic of the Delhi gang-rape according to the news frames prominent in this coverage. In the analysis these frames are assessed, described and examined in terms of their presence in the sample.

A news frame is a rather abstract variable that is hard to identify in content analysis. There are different methodological approaches to the identification and measurement of frames and frame categories. Five broad approaches can be distinguished: a hermeneutic approach, a linguistic approach, a manual holistic approach, a deductive approach and a computer-assisted approach. These five approaches are not mutually exclusive, the different approaches can be combined. (Matthes & Kohring, p. 259). That is also the case in this thesis, which takes a linguistic and a manual holistic approach to the identification and measurement of news frames in the Indian English language press coverage of the Delhi gang-rape.

Rallying against rape