COVERAGE OF CASTE-BASED SEXUAL VIOLENCE: Dalit Survivors’ perceptions of their representations in Indian news media

Multiple studies highlight that only a fraction of the actual rape cases garner media attention as news outlets disproportionately focus on cases of extreme brutality. This research aims to examine Indian news media’s coverage of sexual violence with an intent on privileging survivors whose voices seem underrepresented among scholarly work in Indian media studies. What are Dalit women survivors’ perceptions of how news media construct the realities of sexual violence? What can their experiences reveal about why women engage with the media?

The research adopts a critical postcolonial lens utilising Homi Bhabha’s concept of the ‘third space’ as a vantage point for examining Dalit survivors’ negotiation of identities during their media engagements as well as media’s representations of survivors. It engages with notions of injustice using ethical inquiry as a tool to advance human rights and social transformation. New and recent research on journalistic deontology related to sexual violence and on survivor discourse strategies are organically incorporated within the critical postcolonial framework to derive recommendations for policy, guidelines for media, and directions for future work in the field.

The research methodology encompasses two distinct parts. In the preliminary stage, a total of sixteen online news articles of two prominent cases of rape coverage by four news outlets in English (8 articles), Tamil (4 articles), and Hindi (4 articles) are analysed using frame analyses. These will inform the researcher about recurring themes, tropes, and significations to be built into the second stage of study comprising a multi-step, staggered, semi-structured interviews with survivors, social activists, and journalists. The research analyses qualitative data utilising a constructivist grounded theory approach where interviews, findings, and theory refinements are iterative processes informing each other during multiple stages of data collection. The study has implications for Indian news reportage on sexual violence and for lawmakers and marginalised communities as it aims to provide actionable recommendations to address inequities, imbalances, and irregularities in media coverage.

Keywords: Dalit survivors; representation; identity; third space; survivor discourse; journalistic deontology; postcolonial; constructivist grounded theory