Media representations of camera sexual voyeurism in Singapore: a medicalised, externalised and community problem

Abstract

This article examines the Straits Times’ coverage of camera sexual voyeurism (CSV) incidents in Singapore from 2004–2017. Utilising critical discourse analysis, I argue that the threat CSV poses to Singaporean exceptionalism was cohered through three distinct media discourses. Internalisation, which focused attention on medical explanations that pathologised perpetrators. Externalisation, which attributed CSV to camera technology and pornography use. And community intervention, which focused on successful community policing responses to CSV. These discursive oscillations individualised, de-politicised and de-gendered CSV by constituting it as the reprehensible acts of a few behaviourally disordered individuals which could be addressed through medical treatment, lateral surveillance and responsibilisation. By examining media representations of CSV, this article explores whether extant myths and discourses surrounding sexual violence re-emerge in media coverage of technologically facilitated sexual violence (TFSV).

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