Schwark Sandra
Department of Psychology, Bielefeld UniversityBielefeld, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2017 May 16;8:774. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00774. eCollection 2017.
To study visual representations of sexual violence, photographs accompanying German Internet news articles that appeared between January 2013 and March 2015 ( = 42) were subjected to thematic analysis. Two main themes, consisting of several sub-themes, emerged from the data. The first theme was "rape myths," illustrating a stereotypical view of sexual violence. It consisted of three sub-themes: "beauty standards," referring to the fact that all women in our sample fit western beauty standards, "physical violence," as most images implied some form of physical violence, and finally "location," suggesting that rape only happens in secluded outdoor areas. These findings suggest that the images from our sample perpetuate certain rape myths. The second theme was "portrayal of victimhood," referring to the way victims of sexual violence were portrayed in photographs. The analysis of the sub-theme "passivity" showed that these portrayals fit a certain stereotype: the women were shown to be weak and helpless rather than individuals with agency and able to leave their status as a victim. Further sub-themes were "background," "organization of space," "camera perspective," and "lighting." We discuss these findings in relation to possibly reinforcing rape myths in society and as an issue in creating a biased perception of women who have experienced sexual violence.
为研究性暴力的视觉呈现，对2013年1月至2015年3月期间德国互联网新闻文章所配的照片（共42张）进行了主题分析。数据中出现了两个主要主题，每个主题又包含若干子主题。第一个主题是“强奸谬见”，体现了对性暴力的刻板看法。它由三个子主题组成：“美貌标准”，指我们样本中的所有女性都符合西方的美貌标准；“身体暴力”，因为大多数图片都暗示了某种形式的身体暴力；最后是“地点”，表明强奸只发生在偏僻的户外区域。这些发现表明，我们样本中的图片使某些强奸谬见长期存在。第二个主题是“受害者形象的塑造”，指照片中对性暴力受害者的呈现方式。对“被动性”这一子主题的分析表明，这些呈现符合某种刻板印象：照片中的女性被表现得软弱无助，而非有自主能力、能够摆脱受害者身份的个体。其他子主题包括“背景”“空间布局”“相机视角”和“光线”。我们将结合这些发现在社会中可能强化强奸谬见以及在对遭受性暴力的女性形成偏见性认知方面所产生的问题进行讨论。
