Constructing Bullying Perpetrators and Victims: How Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation Help Create Victims and Bullies in Media Discourses

Date

2015

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

University of California, Irvine

Abstract

To explain the categories of bully and victim in the bullying discourse I performed a qualitative form of content analysis, known as ethnographic content analysis, on three sets of news articles about bullying. The three data sets were compiled through a Lexis-Nexis search of the names “Tyler Clementi”, “Phoebe Prince”, and the term “racial bullying”. An analysis of the discourse shows that victims and bullies are constructed along gendered, racialized, and sexualized lines. The discourse on victims can be read as upholding discriminatory systems of patriarchy and heteronormativity based on the explanation of suicide as an expected or predictable response to homophobia and sexism. The discourse on bullies focuses primarily on gender distinctions in bullying (the mean girl or relational aggression discourse) and descriptions of bullying behavior as normative and correctable, and also as unalterably pathological. Finally, the bullying discourse contains evidence that less attention is paid to racial bullying incidents. When attention is directed at racial bullying, the media response tends to focus on the emotional and potentially unruly responses of the minority victims, and these victims are expected to take responsibility by moving on and not focusing on the bullying incident. (Author Abstract)

Description

Keywords

child abuse, research, adolescents, teens, youth, minorities, LGBTQ, news, victim blaming

Citation

Foreman, Victoria Philice. (2015). Constructing Bullying Perpetrators and Victims: How Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation Help Create Victims and Bullies in Media Discourses. (doctoral dissertation). University of California, Irvine.

DOI