Knocking Amanda Knox: How newspapers put women on trial

Narbutas, Alisa (2016) Knocking Amanda Knox: How newspapers put women on trial. Masters thesis, Griffith College.

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Abstract

For centuries, newspapers have been the basis for passing on information to the general public. They take on the important part of setting the agenda and defining what is news. When it comes to the reporting of crime, it has always been the combination of not only informing the public but also entertaining them. As women offenders are not as common as male offenders, they are more appealing to the media and at the same time represent a more vulnerable group. This especially applies to women accused of murder. Amanda Knox is one of these women. She became a victim of character assassination, while she was on trial for allegedly murdering her roommate while doing a semester abroad in Italy. Knox’s private life was on constant display, exploiting her sexuality, her physical appearance and not fitting into the scheme of perfect womanhood. Through a content analysis of four different publications, over the period of her arrest until her first conviction, her representation in Irish and British newspapers was found to be similar judgmental. Knox was constantly represented in terms of her gender, while the second offender, her former boyfriend Raffaelle Sollecito was spared and hid behind Knox’s media limelight.

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