ABSTRACT

Sex violence is a sensitive topic that provokes public debate, due in part to the influential role of the media in taking crime cases out of the courts to the general public. This has led to a punitive attitude toward sex-offenders that has fostered the view of ‘once a sex-offender, always a sex-offender’. Using a linguistic analysis of Tweets, we examined how sex-offending and sex-offenders are portrayed by 782 Italian politicians. Results show that politicians shared fewer positive posts about sex-offending than the average of posts found on Twitter, with an emotional negative overtone dominating the sex-offending narrative rather than eliciting a cognitive response. Among emotions, anger was most prevalent, followed by sadness and anxiety. In addition, politicians’ portrayals of sex-offenders were consistently negative regardless of their political orientation. Social communication is critical in conveying unbiased information and fostering fruitful discussion about how to deal with sex-offenders, especially because politicians are responsible for making decisions and influencing legislation on such a controversial topic. A less emotionally driven response could promote a more evidence-based approach to managing sex-offenders prior to their release into the community, thereby increasing the likelihood of desistance from crime.

摘要

性暴力是一个引起公众辩论的敏感话题，部分原因是媒体在将犯罪案件从法庭上移交给公众方面发挥着重要作用。这导致了对性犯罪者的惩罚态度，形成了“一旦性犯罪者，永远是性犯罪者”的观点。通过对推文进行语言分析，我们研究了 782 名意大利政客如何描绘性侵犯和性犯罪者。结果表明，政治家分享的关于性侵犯的正面帖子少于 Twitter 上的平均帖子，情绪消极的暗示主导了性侵犯的叙述，而不是引发认知反应。在情绪中，愤怒最为普遍，其次是悲伤和焦虑。此外，无论政客的政治倾向如何，他们对性犯罪者的描述始终是负面的。社会沟通对于传达公正的信息和促进关于如何处理性犯罪者的富有成果的讨论至关重要，特别是因为政客有责任就这样一个有争议的话题做出决定和影响立法。减少情绪驱动的反应可以促进以证据为基础的方法在性犯罪者被释放到社区之前对其进行管理，从而增加停止犯罪的可能性。特别是因为政治家有责任就这样一个有争议的话题做出决定并影响立法。减少情绪驱动的反应可以促进以证据为基础的方法在性犯罪者被释放到社区之前对其进行管理，从而增加停止犯罪的可能性。特别是因为政治家有责任就这样一个有争议的话题做出决定并影响立法。减少情绪驱动的反应可以促进以证据为基础的方法在性犯罪者被释放到社区之前对其进行管理，从而增加停止犯罪的可能性。