Cultivating Realities through Media: Coverage of Child Sexual Abuse in News and its Impact on Women of Lahore

  • Dr. Faiza Latif Assistant Professor, Department of Mass Communication, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore
  • Dr. Irem Sultana Assistant Professor, Department of Mass Communication, Government College University, Faisalabad
  • Fareena Khan BS (Hons.) Mass Communication, Department of Mass Communication, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore
Keywords: Awareness, TV, News coverage, Child Sexual Abuse (CSA), Fear, Women, Mainstreaming, Resonance

Abstract

The phenomenon of Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) is witnessed across the globe. Like other countries, this issue is also prominently highlighted by media in Pakistan. However Pakistani media in general covering this brutal act, add sensationalism and drama to it with the objective of glorifying the whole incident. With this in view, this study tends to focus on the impact of TV news coverage of CSA and the attitude of women towards the issue. The objectives of the study are to find out the role of television news coverage of CSA incidents in creating awareness and its impact on the perception of the women regarding the area under study. The sample size of the study was 200 women (housewives) residing in Lahore. For studying the TV news coverage and its impact survey method was used for data collection. The theoretical framework of the study was Cultivation Theory. The results of the study revealed that the TV news coverage of CSA played its vital role in order to create awareness among women about this issue. The findings also indicated that there was a strong positive relationship between the two variables i.e., TV news coverage of CSA and awareness among women. The study determined that TV news coverage of CSA was a major medium of increased fear or insecurity to some extent among women since a weak positive relationship between the two variables was observed.

Published
2020-05-29