Cultural repertoires in the media's coverage of child sexual exploitation

Patel, TG

Abstract

This paper will discuss the media’s coverage of two child sexual exploitation (CSE) cases in Rochdale (Greater Manchester) and Rotherham (South Yorkshire), UK. These cases gained prominent media attention in the period between 2010 and 2015. The CSE involved young white female victims and male abusers of black and minority ethnic (BME) background, in particular of Pakistani heritage and of Muslim faith. The paper argues that the cases were narrated in the media entirely through a cultural repertoire, and drew on older racialised panics about the black (or in particular, brown) menace and white victims. This further presented racialized profiling methods as necessary. Apart from the obvious concern around racial profiling, there is also the problem that the crime of CSE becomes racialised – presented as a form of culturally-specific deviance, rather than one about gender and power. A consideration of the media’s racialised (re)presentation of these CSE cases takes into account their relative power in modern society, as well as their status, along with other elites, as joint-producers of information about race and racism.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• End Date: Sep 24, 2016
• Publication Date: Sep 23, 2016
• Deposit Date: Nov 28, 2016
• Book Title: Proceedings of Eurocrim2016 – 16th Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology (ESC)
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference