Sexual Violence in Canadian News Media: Feminist Possibilities and Challenges in the Era of #MeToo

Abstract

This study examines Canadian news coverage of sexual violence in the era of #MeToo, which sparked an unprecedented sharing of stories of sexual assault globally. These stories revealed the gendered nature of sexual violence, reaffirming its ubiquity in women’s lives, and demanded reforms to ensure accountability and justice for victim/survivors. In this paper, using thematic analysis and drawing on scholarship on gender, media, and violence against women, we identify and explore the key themes in the ways sexual violence — primarily its causes, contexts, and consequences — is reported, portrayed, and commented upon in Canadian newspapers. Our findings indicate that although there has been increased recognition of sexual violence as a widespread social and cultural problem, the patterns in media coverage remain uneven. On the one hand, feminist perspectives that understand sexual violence as rooted in power imbalances, specifically gender inequalities, and problematize the institutional failures in supporting victim/survivors have gained greater visibility in news media. On the other hand, news coverage remains fraught with sympathetic portrayals of perpetrators, skepticism toward victim/survivors, and a reluctance to contextualize sexual violence within broader gender norms and inequities. Overall, our analysis suggests that while feminist insights — about the nature, workings, and effects of sexual violence – have made their way into mainstream news discourse, their integration is limited, inconsistent, and precarious. This argument advances current debates on the possibilities and limits of news media to effectively address sexual violence, its roots and adverse consequences.