FRAMING SURVIVOR SPEECH: LOCATING THE VICTIM/SURVIVOR IN MEDIA ACCOUNTS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE

This thesis evaluates the role of survivor speech in discussions of sexual violence taking place in the media. By undertaking a case study analysis of the media coverage of three cases of ‘stranger rape’, child sexual exploitation and historic child sexual abuse respectively, the discursive contexts within which victim/survivors are giving their account of the experience are examined. The study focused on a selected set of discursive parameters which establish the specific contexts in which the voices of victims/survivors are presented to media audiences. These parameters are collated as discursive frames, within which each victim’s/survivor’s experience is formulated by the voices partaking in the conversation on sexual violence in the media. The identification of the frames of sexual violence was preceded by an analysis of the naming processes employed by these voices. Analysis of the case studies was focused on multimodal texts from print and broadcast media which offered input in the form of the voices of victims/survivors. Texts were sampled mostly from genres of current affairs and news features. This thesis also reviews the suitability of existing epistemologies and research methodologies for the examination of media-based conversations of sexual violence, focusing on distinctly feminist approaches of discourse analysis. By uncovering the discursive contexts which victims/survivors have to negotiate each time they speak out about their experience in the media, the analysis in this thesis is able to contribute a media studies-based perspective to debates about the process of surviving sexual violence and the corresponding positionality of the terms ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’