Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pressing global issue that endangers women worldwide. Societal reactions to this type of violence are deciding factors for victims’ mental health and help-seeking behaviour.Previous research has shown that victim-blaming attitudes in IPV remain prevalent, especially among men and individuals with sexist beliefs. Considering the recent rise in popularity of online content supporting traditional gender roles and sexism among young people, it begs the question of whether such content influences victim-blaming, and if content supporting contrasting ideas has the opposite effect. Using an online questionnaire containing a hypothetical scenario on IPV, this vignette study analysed how agreement with sexist online content and feminist online content influence both victim-blaming and perpetrator responsibility attitudes among a predominantly young sample (N=210).Results indicate that agreement with sexist online content is associated with an increase in victim-blaming and a decrease in perpetrator responsibility attribution, however, these effects lose their statistical significance when variables measuring general sexist attitudes are included in the regression. Agreement with feminist online content is also associated with a statistically significant increase of perpetrator responsibility attribution and a decrease in victim-blaming, although statistical strength and significance are once again lost when general sexist attitudes are accounted for. These results suggest that general sexist attitudes, specifically hostile sexist attitudes, have a stronger influence on victim-blaming and perpetrator responsibility attribution compared to agreement with sexist and feminist online content, potentially due to a mediating or moderating effect of the latter.Future research should analyse the causal relationship between sexist attitudes and exposure to various types of online content as well as study how different constellations of IPV might be influenced by the consumption of sexist or feminist online content.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-69430 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Porcedda, Alessandra |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Institutionen för kriminologi (KR) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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