Media Action Against Rape (MAAR) is a Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) research and capacity building project led by Bournemouth University and UNESCO in New Delhi.

Launched in 2018, this study was designed to map the journalistic challenges of reporting rape and sexual violence across India. MAAR was a research and capacity building project that served to engender sustainable impact—specifically, for rape reportage, journalism education, and resilience against gendered violence towards women.

Featured publications

Sexual Violence and the News Media:

Issues, challenges, and guidelines for journalists in India

Chindu Sreedharan and Einar Thorsen

‘This report on sexual violence and the news media in India is a more than welcome addition to existing literature on the subject. If the recommendations and guidelines are taken on board by news media organisations, it could result in a sea-change in coverage of sexual violence in the Indian media.’

Ammu Joseph
Journalist and Author

‘This study presents a wide-ranging, rigorous, and in-depth analysis of the relationship between news media and incidents of rape and sexual violence in India, both in terms of the stories told and the people who tell them. There is a persuasive analysis of a wide range of newspapers in multiple languages, coupled with in-depth interviews with an impressive number of journalists.’

Professor Karen Ross
Professor of Gender and Media, Newcastle University

‘An extremely thorough and thought-provoking report that contains precious analysis and many qualitative interviews with journalists. The pointers and recommendations to journalists at the end are excellent and can lead to a new form of journalism education which has been completely absent from all J-schools in India. This is an exceedingly useful report that should be made mandatory in newsrooms and all journalism training institutes.’

Vaiju Naravane
Professor of Journalism and Media Studies, Ashoka University, Sonepat

Published July 2021, free PDF available from: Unesco | Bournemouth University | Direct PDF

 

Hold Your Story: Reflections on the News of Sexual Violence in India

Edited by Chindu Sreedharan, Einar Thorsen and Asavari Singh

‘Hold Your Story is a vital, timely, and welcome addition to the literature on sexual violence in India. As the first book to focus exclusively on media coverage of rape – including different forms of such violence – it is an invaluable resource for journalists, media houses, journalism schools, and media critics and scholars. It is all the more unique because it examines various aspects of reportage across the country, in different types of media and several languages.’

Ammu Joseph
Journalist and Author

‘A much-needed addition to the almost inexistent literature on how the media covers sexual violence. Through lively essays and searching interviews, this extremely readable compilation reports, analyses and comments on the inadequacy, ignorance and bias that mark rape reporting in India.’

Professor Vaiju Naravane
Professor of Journalism and Media Studies, Ashoka University, Sonepat

Published November 2020, available from: Amazon Kindle (India) | Amazon Kindle (UK) | Amazon Paperback (UK) | Free PDF

Notes for the Media: Ordinary Indians, on the reporting of sexual violence

Edited by Chindu Sreedharan, Einar Thorsen and Asavari Singh

‘Finally! A book that reveals what Indians really think about sexual violence and the reportage on it. A plethora of voices secured across diverse social and economic strata, each interview presenting sharp insight about a burgeoning problem that refuses to go away.’

Nikhil Lakshman
Rediff.com

Published November 2020, available from: Amazon Kindle  (India) | Amazon Paperback (UK) | Amazon Kindle  (UK) | Free PDF

Awareness raising

Contributing to public debate and creating inclusive public spaces for conversation about news reporting of rape and sexual violence is a crucial part of the MAAR project. We work on both online and offline campaigns to help raise awareness and engage with a wide range of audiences and stakeholders.

Journalism about journalism: NewsTracker was an anti-rape web site that scrutinised the representation of sexual violence in the Indian news media. Led by Bournemouth University and Ashoka University, it published ‘journalism on the journalism of rape’. We believe news journalists have a crucial role to play in combatting sexual violence. They can question stereotypes; influence attitudes, beliefs; help us rethink the way we read, we write, we think about rape and solutions for rape. In total we published 177 original stories, which also formed the basis of two books. Read more about NewsTracker.

Events: MAAR hosted a series of events in November 2018 to coincide with the UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (25 November) and the #16days of activism campaign. These include panel debates in New Delhi, Bangalore, and Mumbai, as well as theatre performances in Pune and Chennai.

Capacity building

Our research and professional practice is designed to support journalists, NGO workers and educators who work with news reporting of rape and sexual violence. These are underpinned by our research and developed in consultation with industry stakeholders.

Newsletter and database: Tracking news reports of rape and sexual violence across a country as vast and diverse as India, a nation with thousands of national and regional news publications, is a painstaking task. Note This was our twice-weekly newsletter (in total more than 50 editions), curated from national and regional news sources, especially for those interested in the news reporting of rape and sexual violence. We also published the raw data that feeds our newsletter in a public Google Sheet as an additional resource.

Workshops: In the third phase of the MAAR project, we will conduct capacity building workshops in partnership with UNESCO and our project partners to train journalists in best practice guidelines on news reporting of rape and gendered violence. These will take place in urban and regional locations, or via online seminars due to Covid-19 restrictions.

Journalism curricula: Our guidelines are designed to support development of education curricula on news reporting of rape and sexual violence, which can be incorporated into all forms of journalism education to encourage sensitive reporting practices in future journalists.