Media Coverage on Occupy Wall Street

In October of 2011, the media could no longer ignore the thousands of protesters camping in Zuccotti Park calling themselves Occupy Wall Street with their battle cry of “We are the 99 percent” (Gitlin 50). The social movement began to bring awareness on economic inequality in which 99 percent of the wealth was controlled by one percent of the population. The name Occupy Wall Street began because the protestors were occupying the space outside of Wall Street through setting up tents and refusing to leave the location (Gitlin 26). As more and more protestors flocked to the camps, the movement broadened its goals to include a wide variety of issues including agriculture, housing and student loans. Described as lacking any clear-cut goals for the movement by the media, news pundits bickered over the credibility of the movement and if these protestors would create the next social revolution in the United States (DeLuca, Lawson, and Sun 491). The coverage of the movement varied from newspaper to newspaper, but the framing of coverage continued to show a disorganized, but large movement that showed no signs of stopping. As Occupy Wall Street gained momentum, the public became aware of sexual assaults occurring within the Occupy Wall Street camps. As a result of this information, media began covering these assaults as part of their Occupy Wall Street coverage.

This project will use a feminist media analysis of mainstream newspapers to explore the discourse around the ideology of sexual assault and women protesting in public space. I argue that the coverage of sexual assaults during Occupy Wall Street used a “blame the victim” narrative to link the participation of women protesting in public space to gender based violence. Feminist researc...

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... goal as feminists is to end gender-based violence, we must look at how dominant news outlets shape messages of sexual assault.

Not only does the Occupy Wall Street sexual assault coverage have repercussions for sexual assault survivors, but also it could create challenges as it relates to women occupying public spaces for public protests. Mass media displaying victim blaming narratives send a strong message to women that protesting can only occur using a narrow framework to accesses public space. The victim blaming messages can hinder women’s participation in larger social movements because of the fear of sexual assault occurring. By exploring the connections between women’s occupation of public space and sexual assault coverage, this project will demonstrate how pervasive and intertwined society’s understanding of sexual assault and the public/private divide is.