Article Version of Record

Cultural Models Shaping Stalking From a Content Analysis of Italian Newspapers

Author(s) / Creator(s)

Caputo, Andrea

Abstract / Description

The increasing spread of stalking in recent years has captured the community’s and media’s interest and highlighted complex legal, clinical and cultural issues. This phenomenon, far from being an individual problem, can be considered as a product of a growing culture that seems to reveal the crisis of current rules of social coexistence. This work aims at detecting the cultural repertoires that organise the stalking discourse, from an analysis of Italian newspaper articles, within a socio-constructivist paradigm. Emotional text analysis was conducted on a corpus of headlines and subheadings derived from 496 articles. These articles were published in major national newspapers and helped to identify four cultural repertoires (clusters) that characterise the social representation of stalking: gender violence and women’s social independence (Cluster 1), psychological violence and control as illusion of intimacy (Cluster 2), anomic violence and intolerant individualism (Cluster 3), domestic violence and women’s marital obligation (Cluster 4). These repertoires are conceived along three latent dimensions which respectively refer to the cultural functions of stalking (Factor 1), representations of the victim (Factor 2), and gender inequalities (Factor 3). The paper offers a key to a social contextualisation of stalking in Italy, in order to re-think work practices within institutional agencies that deal with this phenomenon.

Keyword(s)

stalking cultural models social representations content analysis socio-constructivism

Persistent Identifier

Date of first publication

2013-08-30

Journal title

Europe's Journal of Psychology

Volume

9

Issue

3

Page numbers

443–460

Publisher

PsychOpen GOLD

Publication status

publishedVersion

Review status

peerReviewed

Is version of

Citation

Caputo, A. (2013). Cultural Models Shaping Stalking From a Content Analysis of Italian Newspapers. Europe's Journal of Psychology, 9(3), 443–460. https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v9i3.604
  • Author(s) / Creator(s)
    Caputo, Andrea
  • PsychArchives acquisition timestamp
    2018-11-21T10:01:11Z
  • Made available on
    2018-11-21T10:01:11Z
  • Date of first publication
    2013-08-30
  • Abstract / Description
    The increasing spread of stalking in recent years has captured the community’s and media’s interest and highlighted complex legal, clinical and cultural issues. This phenomenon, far from being an individual problem, can be considered as a product of a growing culture that seems to reveal the crisis of current rules of social coexistence. This work aims at detecting the cultural repertoires that organise the stalking discourse, from an analysis of Italian newspaper articles, within a socio-constructivist paradigm. Emotional text analysis was conducted on a corpus of headlines and subheadings derived from 496 articles. These articles were published in major national newspapers and helped to identify four cultural repertoires (clusters) that characterise the social representation of stalking: gender violence and women’s social independence (Cluster 1), psychological violence and control as illusion of intimacy (Cluster 2), anomic violence and intolerant individualism (Cluster 3), domestic violence and women’s marital obligation (Cluster 4). These repertoires are conceived along three latent dimensions which respectively refer to the cultural functions of stalking (Factor 1), representations of the victim (Factor 2), and gender inequalities (Factor 3). The paper offers a key to a social contextualisation of stalking in Italy, in order to re-think work practices within institutional agencies that deal with this phenomenon.
    en_US
  • Publication status
    publishedVersion
  • Review status
    peerReviewed
  • Citation
    Caputo, A. (2013). Cultural Models Shaping Stalking From a Content Analysis of Italian Newspapers. Europe's Journal of Psychology, 9(3), 443–460. https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v9i3.604
  • ISSN
    1841-0413
  • Persistent Identifier
    https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12034/1204
  • Persistent Identifier
    https://doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.1396
  • Language of content
    eng
  • Publisher
    PsychOpen GOLD
  • Is version of
    https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v9i3.604
  • Keyword(s)
    stalking
    en_US
  • Keyword(s)
    cultural models
    en_US
  • Keyword(s)
    social representations
    en_US
  • Keyword(s)
    content analysis
    en_US
  • Keyword(s)
    socio-constructivism
    en_US
  • Dewey Decimal Classification number(s)
    150
  • Title
    Cultural Models Shaping Stalking From a Content Analysis of Italian Newspapers
    en_US
  • DRO type
    article
  • Issue
    3
  • Journal title
    Europe's Journal of Psychology
  • Page numbers
    443–460
  • Volume
    9
  • Visible tag(s)
    Version of Record