Press reporting on the problem of child sexual abuse is important in order to raise public awareness and promote prevention and intervention measures. However, studies in communication science show that reporting on the topic often has deficits, is sensationalistic, for example, and ignores questions of prevention and intervention. In an online experiment with around N=2700 adults in Germany, the Media Psychology and Media Design Group at Technische Universität Ilmenau investigated the question of how the readers evaluate the quality of reporting on child sexual abuse. The results showed that the media audience is able to differentiate between good and bad reporting quality, but is less critical than experts.
Quelle:
Döring, N. & Walter, R. (2024). An Experiment on the Press Coverage of Child Sexual Abuse: Can Readers Differentiate Between Good and Bad Reporting?Mass Communication and Society. eFirst. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2024.2335344