Katherine Harp

Professor Ehrenreich

Mass Communications and Behavior

13 November 2014

Content Analysis of Sex on Television

I chose to perform a content analysis on How to Get Away with Murder, "He Deserved to

Die" November 6, 2014 on ABC. How to Get Away with Murder is a primetime show that is

centralized around law students and the murder of their professor’s husband. The story is told

through flashbacks of each student’s experiences as well as flash-forwards of the murder.

The coding system that I developed was a simple one based upon the content that is

allowed on prime time television. There were six main categories that I divided all of the content

into such as physical, kissing, sexual intercourse, sex talk, dress, and nudity; from there I divided

those six main categories into subcategories such as implied sexual intercourse and depicted

sexual intercourse. I took each scene in the episode and saw if any of the content within those

scenes would fall into any of the above categories based upon whether or not they depicted an

aspect of one of the above categories. I did initially start out with smaller categories and

expanded each of them as the episode went on; for example, I had not originally coded for

attempted kiss and sexual name-calling but they both occurred within the episode.

There were a multitude of references to sex and sexuality within the “He Deserved to

Die” episode; the most prevalent references were open talk about sex, passionate kissing,

intimate touch, and sexual name-calling. I was surprised to see that sexual name-calling came up

four times in the hour-long episode, this was especially alarming since I had not originally coded

for sexual name calling to occur at all within the episode. However, I was not surprised to see

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that open talk about sex was the most prevalent item within the episode since it is a prime-time

drama and sex is usually a topic that is prevalent and easily depicted in dramas. When it comes

to being exposed to these various types of sexual media content I do wonder if it has an effect on

others and myself that watch these television shows. Initially, I knew that there was going to be

sexual content in the show but I was surprised at how much I wouldn’t have noticed if I was just

watching it and not coding it for these sexual content. Maybe priming myself to actually watch

the episode made myself more aware of the content I was actually watching, both sexual content

and violent content.

The sexuality in How to Get Away with Murder and other prime time dramas could affect

people’s behaviors and world-views in a skewed way, particularly in the realm of sexual content

and was is considered “normal”. If someone were to only view these types of content where

open sexual encounters with anyone is considered okay and normal, they too might think that

those types of encounters are normal. They can cultivate these ideas that calling women sexual

names and that all couples passionately kiss each other at any given time, which are not accurate

to the real world. These thoughts can become stronger and stronger the more someone watches

these types of television shows without critically thinking about the content that is presented to

them. After actively watching an episode, I myself found endless examples of talk about sex that

I initially wouldn’t have noticed compared to the actual depictions of sex. This could be due to

the cultivation of sex depicted on television is not as shocking anymore compared to the talk

which can easily be glazed over due to lack of attention.

Overall, I was both shocked and understanding of the different types of sexual content

presented in How to Get Away with Murder. Going forward, I would be interested in coding a

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comedy show just to be able to compare the different types of sexual content depicted in

different genres.

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