Violence against Women Digitized: An Analysis of Times of India Online Videos after the Delhi Gang Rape

Abstract

This study examined Times of India's online portrayal of violence against women during the summer of 2013, about six months after the Delhi Gang Rape. We used a purposive sample of news videos reporting violence against women that were published on the Times of India website. We performed textual analysis to answer two research questions. First, how was violence against women portrayed in TOI's online video footage? And second, how do such portrayals contribute to our understanding of the role of new media in communicating social conflict to their audiences? That the videos contain both visual and auditory components was conducive to the study's purpose due to the graphic nature of violence, and thus news decisions regarding imagery and sound become crucial to understanding how media construct these events. Results show that in cases of violent crime against women, the survivor was violated twice: by both the perpetrator and the media as she is neither treated with dignity nor is her privacy respected.