Constructing “Bad Girls”: Representations of Violent Girls in the Canadian and U.S. News Media

Abstract

ABSTRACT Through a mixed-methods content analysis of media articles published in top-circulating Canadian and US news outlets, we explored the transnational media construction of girls’ violence. Four interconnected themes emerged. Across the Canadian and US news media, girls were depicted as sinister villains who enjoyed violence, uncivilized animals who unleashed terror, harlots fueled by jealousy and obsession, or sympathetic average Janes whose violence was not symptomatic of their character. Although there were no statistically significant differences in the prevalence of the themes by country, qualitative comparisons revealed nuanced differences in the manifestation of themes. Whereas the American coverage uniquely sexualized girls, the Canadian coverage cast girls in relation to boys, either through their own manipulation of boys or through violence motivated by jealousy or obsession. Similarly, we found evidence of a more nuanced racialization of girls in the United States whereby girls of Color were constructed as uncivilized sub-humans. In contrast, the dehumanization of girls was most salient in Canadian news coverage of high-profile cases of girls’ violence. We conclude with a discussion of the study’s implications of findings for understanding the specificity and generalizability of media narratives related to girls’ violence.