Paedophilia discourses in Denmark: Towards a mixed method digital discourse approach

Together with his two colleagues Eva Koblauch Landstrøm and Sofie Høj Jeppesen, Associate Professor Jakob Johan Demant has published the article 'Paedophilia discourses in Denmark: Towards a mixed method digital discourse approach' in the journal 'Sexualities'.

Their study contributes novel digital mixed methods and findings on how fear of paedophilia affects parents and children’s bodily relations. The authors explore how norms for appropriate behaviour between parents and children are constructed in the public debate on a specific case, where a mother has playful contact with her son’s genitals. The case triggered a public debate with both negative and positive reactions. A Laclau and Mouffe-inspired analytical framework and internet-specific tools for data collection as well as processing contribute to the development of a new form of discourse analysis. This new discourse analysis is based on a combination of the digital tools word cloud and topic models, and a qualitative in-depth reading. By exploring discursive constructions and articulations of right and wrong, the study supports earlier findings that the online public unanimously agrees with the dictum of child innocence. However, Jakob Johan Demant et al. finds openness within the discourses on how to define respectively healthy and damaging parental behaviour towards children.

Jakob Johan Demant, Paedophilia discourses in Denmark: Towards a mixed method digital discourse approach, in 'Sexualities', 2017.