News Coverage of Intimate Partner Violence: Impact on Prosocial Responses

News Stories of Intimate Partner Violence: An Experimental Examination of Participant Sex, Perpetrator Sex, and Violence Severity on Seriousness, Sympathy, and Punishment Preferences

“…Other scholarship has investigated the relationship between sympathy toward the victim and prosocial behavior to intervene or report IPV. For example, Carlyle, Orr, et al (2014) found a positive relationship between sympathy and prosocial behavior and also acknowledged a debate about mediators and temporal ordering. Studies like these illustrate the utility in examining sympathy for the victim as a way to understand the emotionality of the reader following exposure to an IPV news story.…”

“…News stories have the potential to promote increased public support and involvement in prevention efforts, and participants' rating of IPV seriousness as a public health concern can be used to evaluate this construct. Given the media's influence on public responsiveness to social issues like IPV, as well as the emphasis on increasing public awareness as a strategy for IPV prevention (Campbell & Manganello, 2006;Carlyle, Orr, Savage, & Babin, 2014;Wolfe & Jaffe, 1999), investigating changes in IPV seriousness caused by media portrayals is prudent. Because of the prevalence of IPV, even incremental changes in ratings of IPV seriousness may have an impact on the public health burden caused by IPV.…”

“…Favored consequences for the perpetrator are an important outcome to examine to understand the effects of IPV media portrayals (Graham, Weiner, & Zucker, 1997;Palazzolo & Roberto, 2011;Pavlou & Knowles, 2001). Within the IPV literature, these favored consequences are referred to as punishment preferences and include a range of attitudinal, judgmental, and judicial preference variables that describe an action of interest following exposure to a media portrayal (Carlyle, Orr, et al, 2014). In the present study, the punishment preference of interest is to place the perpetrator in jail.…”

“…In fact, content analyses of IPV news stories consistently reveal that incidents are often separated from any consideration of social or cultural contexts (Carll, 2003;Carlyle, Scarduzio, & Slater, 2014;Carlyle, Slater, & Chakroff, 2008;Sellers, Desmarais, & Tirotti, 2014). Other research has established that news stories reduce the public's feelings of responsibility about IPV (Carlyle, Orr, Savage, & Babin, 2014). In summary, individuals perceive IPV to be an individual or relationship issue, not a social or cultural problem, and their feelings of personal responsibility about IPV situations outside of their own relationships are frequently minimal, if any.…”

Fatal attraction : intimate partner violence among black LGBTQ relationships.

“…Research suggests that television media plays a pivotal role in shaping viewers' interpretation and response to gender-based violence. For instance, researchers argue that media desensitizes viewers to violence and impedes in their willingness to intervene in dangerous situations (Carlyle et al, 2014;Collins & Carmody, 2011;Hust et al, 2013;Kohlman et al, 2014;Mullin & Linz, 1995;Palazzolo & Roberto, 2011).…”