Moral disengagement in UK public discourse around sexual crime

Media reporting of controversial issues seek to reflect and shape public opinion. In this presentation, I will explore the role of the British national press in guiding social discourse around sexual offending. Data are drawn from several studies, which examine the linguistic underpinnings of newspaper stories about convicted cases of sexual crime, and the links between newspaper readership and attitudes towards individuals who have committed sexual offenses in the UK. Contrary to popular sentiment, no significant linguistic differences were found between tabloid-style and ‘quality’ broadsheet publications in relation to the linguistic makeup of articles on this issue. However, tabloids were found to use much more offensive descriptors for the perpetrators of sexual crimes within article headlines. Further, data from several studies are discussed, which link tabloid readership to negative attitudes towards ‘sexual offenders’. These findings are combined and explained using moral disengagement theory. Ongoing research looking at this theoretical account of public discourse will also be discussed.