It’s “vile” but is it violence? A case study analysis of news media representations of non-consensual sexual image-sharing

Late in 2016, a news story broke of a “porn-sharing site” on which over 2000 sexual images of Australian teen girls, from over 70 high schools, were uploaded without their consent. News media characterised the website as “vile” and “depraved”. However, the extent to which the actions of the site-users constituted a form of sexual violence remained opaque in the reporting. This paper examines the coverage of this news story as a case study to explore the ways expanding scholarly and activist understandings of sexual violence in the digital age are—and are not—reflected in news reporting on this case. Applying a critical feminist and Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis to news coverage, it is argued that the discursive construction of non-consensual sexual image-sharing is evolving and contested. Feminist insights into the gendered, cultural and systemic quality of these practices are making tentative in-roads into news coverage. At the same time, assumptions surrounding digital sexual self-expression for teens continue to elide considerations of consent, and the violence of these acts is discursively minimised.