“She Lied”: Exploring trends in newspaper reports of alleged false rape accusations

• In Event: Media and Sexual Violence

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore trends in the media’s coverage of alleged false rape accusations over time. Research estimates the prevalence of false reports of rape and/or sexual assault is between 2 and 10 percent. Nevertheless, it is still a commonly held belief that women lie about rape and sexual assault. Consistent with the backlash argument, we hypothesize that news coverage of alleged false rape accusations will increase in proportion to women’s gains in equality with men. Furthermore, we use an inductive approach to explore how reported victim-, perpetrator-, and incident-related characteristics may drive news coverage of alleged false rape accusations. To examine these trends and characteristics, the current study performs a content analysis of newspaper articles published in The New York Times between 1950 and 2010 that reported on instances of rape and sexual assault.

Authors

• Dixie Rocker, Florida State University

• Jennifer M. Brown, Florida State University

• Ashley Rubin, University of Toronto

• Ted Chiricos, Florida State University