TY - JOUR
T1 - Tertiary education students’ attitudes to the harmfulness of viewing and distributing child pornography
AU - Prichard, Jeremy
AU - Spiranovic, Caroline
AU - Gelb, Karen
AU - Watters, Paul A.
AU - Krone, Tony
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Little research has examined public support for criminalising viewing and distributing child exploitation material (CEM). Using an online survey of 431 undergraduate students from Australia, we explored perceptions of the harmfulness of CEM. The majority of respondents agreed that viewing and distributing CEM lead to further production and had a negative effect on victims. Although 93% of respondents agreed that CEM involving real child victims should be illegal, 22% did not agree that CEM involving pseudoimages should be illegal. Those who demonstrated higher levels of agreement with explanations of the harmfulness of CEM were more likely to be female, to have achieved postsecondary qualifications, to have never viewed pornography, to support censorship of pornography, and to believe that CEM involving pseudoimages of children should be illegal. The implications of these findings are discussed.
AB - Little research has examined public support for criminalising viewing and distributing child exploitation material (CEM). Using an online survey of 431 undergraduate students from Australia, we explored perceptions of the harmfulness of CEM. The majority of respondents agreed that viewing and distributing CEM lead to further production and had a negative effect on victims. Although 93% of respondents agreed that CEM involving real child victims should be illegal, 22% did not agree that CEM involving pseudoimages should be illegal. Those who demonstrated higher levels of agreement with explanations of the harmfulness of CEM were more likely to be female, to have achieved postsecondary qualifications, to have never viewed pornography, to support censorship of pornography, and to believe that CEM involving pseudoimages of children should be illegal. The implications of these findings are discussed.
KW - Australia
KW - child pornography
KW - law
KW - social aspects
KW - surveys
KW - undergraduates
UR - http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/uws:31429
U2 - 10.1080/13218719.2015.1042419
DO - 10.1080/13218719.2015.1042419
M3 - Article
SN - 1321-8719
VL - 23
SP - 224
EP - 239
JO - Psychiatry, Psychology and Law
JF - Psychiatry, Psychology and Law
IS - 2
ER -