Title

Unnecessary roughness: ESPN's Construction of hypermasculine citizenship in the Penn State sex abuse scandal

Abstract

This essay undertakes an analysis of ESPN's coverage of the "Penn State sex abuse scandal" during the first week following the release of the November 2011 Grand Jury presentment, which indicted former Penn State college football defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky on 40 counts of criminal sexual abuse. Understanding ESPN's coverage-its particular framing of this story-is important and instructive, for it reveals how the news media shape public attitudes and opinions, pressure public officials, and model agentive citizenship in response to public traumas. Specifically, it is argued that ESPN's visualnarrative framing of the scandal perpetuates a hypermasculine (and heteronormative) fantasy of violent vigilante justice that reduces political agency to personal and private acts.

Document Type

Article

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708612446433

Keywords

citizenship, ESPN, hypermasculinity, news media, sexuality

Publication Date

8-1-2012

Journal Title

Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies

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