‘Cover Your Drink!’ – A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Responsibilisation of Women in Spiking Awareness Posters.

By Freya Carr,

Leeds Beckett University.

The nighttime environment can be viewed as a fun social setting to enjoy a drink with friends, but it soon feels dangerous as the threat of spiking looms over women. This gendered environment, where women are repeatedly urged to look after themselves and prevent themselves from being needle spiked or having their drink spiked, has become an unsafe place where women can no longer enjoy themselves without the danger of spiking presenting itself. Expanding on current research on spiking in the night-time economy (NTE), specifically in relation to women – who have been proven to be more likely to fall victim to this crime – this research investigates how women are responsibilised to protect themselves from spiking and how perpetrators hold much less responsibility than potential victims.  The Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of spiking awareness posters, which were collected for this research, looked closely at the presentations, language, and truth modalities of the posters, and how these combined factors responsibilised women as a result. The analysis showed that women are much more likely to be responsibilised in spiking awareness posters than men, with the force of gendered stereotypes coming into play – resultantly expressing the burden which women, as a group, must face in being their own forms of crime prevention to protect themselves, and each other, from spiking attacks. With women often being told how to behave and how to look after themselves in the NTE, these outside factors have detrimental effects on how women perceive their safety and how responsible they are for it. More research is needed, to further fully understand the extent of this issue, however this research will still unpack the issues surrounding women being responsibilised in potential spiking scenarios, and the consequences of this.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16041644

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