This essay undertakes a detailed frame analysis of print media coverage
of the Matthew Shepard murder in three nationally influential newspapers
as well as Time magazine and The Advocate. We contend that the media's
tragic framing of the event, with an emphasis on the scapegoat
process, functioned rhetorically to alleviate the public's guilt
concerning anti-gay hate crimes and to excuse the public of any social
culpability. It also functioned ideologically to reaffirm a dominant
set of discourses that socially stigmatizes gay, lesbian, bisexual,
and transgendered persons and to hamper efforts to create and enact a
social policy that would prevent this type of violence in the future. A
concluding section considers Burke's notion of the "comic frame" as a
potential corrective for the media's coverage of public tragedies.
Guys and Dolls, a BBC documentary premiering in 2007 sketches out the lives of four men in relationships with silicone-fleshed, anatomically correct Real Dolls (RDs).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.