Finding Sarah Everard: A Critical Discourse Analysis Exploring the First Two Weeks of News Media Coverage Following Her Disappearance and Murder

Authors

  • Sim Gill University of Pennsylvania

Keywords:

performance, Sarah Everard, outrage, U.K. news media, violence against women and girls

Abstract

On March 3, 2021, Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old marketing executive, was last seen walking around Clapham Common in South London. Through the lens of a content and discourse analysis, this article analyzes a total of 525 news media headlines, covering the first 2 weeks of her disappearance and murder. This analysis unpacks the pedagogic process of the mediated performance of violence against women and girls (VAWG) to principally argue that the British news media construct a narrative arc that invites audiences to follow a curated ideal victim. The utility of this narrative leads Sarah to become a sympathetic narrative citation, to be called on by various interest groups when negotiating social performances of VAWG. Crucially, this article interrogates the power and affect behind news media performances of VAWG that privilege an ideological conception of the ideal victim, a disturbed perpetrator, a period of mourning, and a neoliberal discourse of justice.

Author Biography

Sim Gill, University of Pennsylvania

Sim is a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests concern the social and subjective effects of mediated discourse and institutional politics as well as the interrelationships between discourse, epistemology, and subjectivity. Before joining Annenberg, Sim worked in the British Civil Service graduate program known as the Fast Stream. She received her B.A. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Warwick and her M.Sc. at the London School of Economics, where she specialized in Media, Communications, and Development.

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Published

2024-01-14

Issue

Vol. 18 (2024)

Section

Articles

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