Journalistic Coverage of Sexual Violence against Children in Brazil Impact: Social and Behavioural Change Conference

"The level of public awareness on sexual violence against children in Brazilian society has grown in recent years due to more qualified media coverage."

This presentation outlines the communication strategy of ANDI Communication and Rights with regard to the media and sexual violence against children from the period 2000-2010. These results were presented at a meeting hosted by The Communication Initiative on March 29 2011 ("Social and Behavioural Change Research Results: Strategic Implications") in Geneva, Switzerland.

Opening slides present context, such as: the fact that poverty and inequality levels are still very high; 40 million people watch television news programmes; politicians regularly have newspapers as their main source of information; internet accessibility is growing fast; and "[t]raditional media influences social media (and not the other way around...)." Sexual violence against children is described as a problem that has cultural roots and is difficult to measure due to issues such as shame, fear, and illegal activity. The problem of sexual violence against children is multi-causal, but poverty continues to be a relevant factor.

Media development in this context is described as involving the following roles:

• Set and frame the agenda in the public sphere around critical issues, in a pluralistic manner;
• Supply reliable and contextual information for citizens; and
• Exert public oversight on government officials and public policies.

ANDI's specific strategies to enhance the quality of the coverage of sexual violence against children are described; they are three-fold:

1. MOBILISATION, including: the Tim Lopes Investigative Journalism Contest; pitching stories for regional and national outlets; daily help-desk for journalists and sources of information from civil society; and an online database of qualified sources of information.
2. CAPACITY BUILDING, including: workshops for journalists and civil society organisations; grants for undergraduate dissertations; publications/websites (e.g., 3 guides/manuals on media and sexual violence: 1 for journalists, 1 for public officials, and 1 for information sources from civil society).
3. MONITORING AND EVALUATION, including: regular monitoring of 50 newspapers (sexual violence as one of the main issues/keywords) and in-depth analysis of sexual violence coverage in 2000 and 2006.

The evaluation data provided in this presentation are based on ANDI's media monitoring work. All stories (physical and/or online content) focusing on children are clipped on a daily basis. The classification tool (questionnaire) covers more than a 150 items and is defined in consultation with experts on media studies and on children's rights issues. News story structure is analysed by different criteria: main and secondary themes, quantity and diversity of sources of information consulted, mentions of public policy and legislation, and mentions of solutions to the problems covered. Each news story is read following the content analysis parameters; findings are fed into database software.

Selected findings:

• News coverage on stories involving sexual abuse/exploitation of children was found to evolve 200% in 10 years - from 2,004 in the year 2000 to 6,024 in the year 2009.
• The impact of the Tim Lopes Journalistic Contest is described in terms of quantitative data (Tim Lopes stories versus stories on sexual violence in general and children's rights in general). Also, there was found to be an impact of this contest on the journalistic culture - e.g., winning journalists "gain a much deeper understanding of the problem and commit to it even if [they] change outlets/jobs" and they "become focal points within their newsrooms." The Tim Lopes contest has also been found to have impacted public policies/the state system. For example, there was an improvement of the ECA (Brazilian Bill of Children's Rights) through Amendment 485 regarding child pornography on the internet, after a story on the subject was published by a weekly magazine.
• ANDI didn't develop a specific methodology for measuring impact of its work with regard to journalistic coverage of sexual violence against children, but the organisation cites accomplishments such as the following: public awareness about the National Day to Combat Sexual Violence, May 18, has grown annually (ANDI played a central role in it); President Lula made the issue a priority regarding his social policies; a congressional investigation panel on the issue was established; and there was significant growth in the number of calls to the national hotline.

Learnings and challenges are outlined, for example:

• It is central that public policies have a clear communication component beginning at the planning stages.
• Permanent and sustained action with newsrooms is key.
• Journalists talking to journalists (peer-to-peer approach) works much better than experts telling people what is right.
• A collaborative attitude works better with the newsrooms than a conflictive approach ("but you must keep enough independence to criticize when necessary!").
• There is a limitation on what can be achieved, due to the outlets' commercial decisions and editorial policies: In some of them, coverage of violence continues to be sensationalistic.
• Another significant limitation: The Brazilian media landscape has a deficit regarding democratic policies on communication, but communication policies are on the agenda right now in Brazil and Latin America. The debate is gaining momentum.