Chapter 4 Sexual Content in Soap Operas - Leicester Research ...

Sex and Sexuality: A Content Analysis of Soap Operas
Despite the prevalence of these concerns in the early 1980s as a result of the
HIV/AIDS outbreak, the debate over the ‗negative‘ effects of sexual content in the
media seems to have intensified and taken on a new urgency over the last ten years.
Two apparent reasons have contributed to bringing these worries to the fore. The
first centres on the dramatic changes in the media environment and landscape that
have occurred over the last ten to 15 years as a result of the advent and
mushrooming of new media technologies, particularly the internet: never before has
media sexual content been so readily available, whether on the internet itself,
through subscription cable channels or on mainstream television.
By the same token gaining access to sexual content, and to explicit sexual
material in particular, has also never been so easy, especially for young people: there
is ample evidence that not only can young people, including young children, readily
access sexual material in the media, but they actively seek it (BSC, 2001;
Buckingham and Bragg, 2003; Hanley, 2002; Helsper, 2005; Ofcom, 2005d). This
‗new media‘ environment has posed a considerable challenge to both parents and
media regulators in terms of creating a safe media environment for children and
young people (Ofcom, 2005a). Further, even at a broader societal level, regulating
the media has become politically problematic, as more than ever before consensus
on issues such as sexuality and the types of sexual portrayals that should or should
not be available in the media is no longer attainable in a pluralistic society
(Buckingham and Bragg, 2003; Gunter, 2002).
A further reason for the heightened concern stems from the changes observed in
the patterns of sexual behaviours among teenagers, the increase in the rates of
(unwanted) teenage pregnancies, and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases
(STDs). There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that the age at which
young people engage in sexual behaviours, and in sexual intercourse in particular,
has been steadily declining over the last three or four decades, and that the number
of young people who are sexually active has increased significantly in the western
world (Moore and Rosenthal, 1993).
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