Discursive construction of sexual assault: A qualitative analysis of news media reporting of ‘the Kavanaugh Case’

Abstract

Media coverage of sexual violence in political contexts has previously been shown to sensationalise the events by focusing on the impact ‘the scandal’ may have on a politician’s reputation and career rather than on the narrative of the victim. In late 2018, another political scandal appeared in newspapers worldwide, covering Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault on Christine Blasey Ford. This paper aims to explore how Blasey Ford’s allegations and the subsequent hearing which came to be known as ‘the Kavanaugh case’ were discursively constructed in UK national newspapers between 13 September 2018 and 24 October 2018. A feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis of 94 articles from UK’s 10 top-circulating national newspapers was employed to explore how heteropatriarchal power relations are continuously perpetuated within UK newspapers through instances of humanising of the perpetrator and framing allegations of sexual misconduct as (only) political game-playing.