We offer the first quantitative analysis of rape culture in the United States. Observers have long worried that biased news coverage of rape — which blames victims, empathizes with perpetrators, implies consent, and questions victims’ credibility — may deter victims from coming forward, and ultimately increase the incidence of rape. We present a theory of how rape culture might shape the preferences and choices of perpetrators, victims and law enforcement, and test this theory with data on news stories about rape published in U.S. newspapers between 2000 and 2013. We find that rape culture in the media predicts both the frequency of rape and its pursuit through the local criminal justice system. In jurisdictions where rape culture was more prevalent, there were more documented rape cases, but authorities were less vigilant in pursuing them.
Does Rape Culture Predict Rape? Evidence from U.S. Newspapers, 2000–2013 Available to Purchase
*The authors thank the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA) (Sweden), the Women and Public Policy Program and the Dean’s Research Fund at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Behavioral Laboratory in the Social Sciences at Harvard for their generous financial support of this project. We also thank Susanne Schwarz and our team of 11 undergraduates (Natalie Chang, Vicente de la Torre, Renzo Falla, Jessica Fournier, Nora Garry, Alice Han, Ren Jie Teoh, Kelsey Jost-Crecgan, Lauren Kang, Laura Riccardione, Andrew Wyner) for their excellent research assistance. We received helpful comments from Dan Hopkins and other participants at the 2014 APSA meeting, and the UNSCR 1325 Research Working Group of the FBA. The authors are grateful to the many subject matter experts we consulted in the course of this project, especially Soraya Chemaly.
Baum MA, Cohen DK, Zhukov YM (2018), "Does Rape Culture Predict Rape? Evidence from U.S. Newspapers, 2000–2013". Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Vol. 13 No. 3 pp. 263–289, doi: https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00016124
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