A Study done at the Arizona State University reiterates something I have said repeatedly over the last ten years, the media's portrayal of domestic violence hinders services for male victims as well as for women who are violent. Thank you so much for doing this study, it's true progress in the making!
In this pilot study participants were asked to look at news stories about domestic violence. The results on how participants perceived men and women's violence proved out that there are major gender stereotypes in the media.
The participants felt that if a man was violent he should be punished but that there should be more leniency and understanding for a woman who is violent. Also, people made excuses for women's violence, i.e. she was probably defending herself or he must have done something to make her mad. One of the students working on the research mentions that male victims are portrayed as wimps for getting beat up by a girl and not real men.
Kellie Palazzolo, an assistant professor in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, Jennifer Scarduzio, a doctoral communications student, and two other graduate students worked on the project. The paper was accepted to the National Communication Association Conference and submitted to the journal Communication Quarterly.
In the article Ms. Palazzolo said hopes to take what they learned from this study and turn it into a prevention campaign that treats both male and females equally as having the potential to be aggressive in a relationship. I called and spoke with Ms. Palazzo about the research. I told her about our work, asked that she please keep us in the loop regarding her future prevention campaign and let her know that she could count on us to support that campaign.
To read the entire article, written by
Rheyanne Weaver, click here
