Applied Economics Lunch Seminar

Du 24/10/2023 de 12:30 à 13:30

Salle R2.21

STRICOT Maëlle (PSE)

Does news coverage of violence against women affect its reporting and judicial treatment? Evidence from French administrative data

This paper explores how news coverage of violence against women (VAW) affects the reporting and judicial treatment of sexual and domestic violence. I combine high-frequency data on French TV news content with new administrative data on all cases handled by the judicial system in France. Exploiting the quasi-random timing of news in the short run, I find that prosecutors are less likely to dismiss a case after news coverage of VAW crimes. The effect amounts to a 2% increase in prosecutions of perpetrators of VAW in the week following the news coverage, mainly for domestic violence. There is no detectable impact of news on VAW crimes on the propensity to report sexual or domestic violence, but news on law and social affairs relating to VAW leads to a small increase in reporting. The results suggest that the media can influence prosecutors’ decisions, which corresponds to a critical stage in the judicial process as around 80% of complaints are dismissed at this stage. These findings imply that documenting and talking about VAW is important to raise prosecution and combat such violence.