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Abstract

The news media play a substantial role in shaping society's perceptions of social issues, including domestic violence. However, minimal research has been conducted to examine whether news media frame stories of femicide within the context of domestic violence. Using frame analysis, the present research compares newspaper articles representing 113 cases of femicide that define the murder as domestic violence to a random sample of 113 cases without coverage defining the femicide as domestic violence. Findings indicate that both groups are represented by multiple frames, including a previously unidentified frame that places the femicide in the context of domestic violence as a social problem.

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... The media plays a crucial role in shaping the public perception and understanding of femicide within the context of gender violence. Recently, there has been growing interest in researching the media's role in preventing violence against women (Dolors Comas-d'Argemir 2015) and in examining media (mis)representations of such violence (Lane Kirkland Gillespie, T. N. Richards, E. M. Givens and M. D. Smith 2013). The media significantly influences contemporary social and political debates by determining which issues gain publicity in the public sphere (S. ...
... At the public policy level, naming and framing a problem is the first step towards creating collective resources or policy solutions. Thus, how news media outlets portray and frame the issue of femicide can influence the audience, shaping societal perceptions of such violence and its potential solutions (Gillespie et al. 2013). The power of traditional media can either restructure social norms and influence public opinion on issues like femicide or reinforce stereotypes and maintain the status quo. ...
... Media theorists note that violence against women and femicide are often represented through episodic or thematic frames (P Easteal, L Young and A Carline 2018; E Balica 2018), with episodic framing being more common (J Fairbairn and M Dawson 2013). Gillespie et al. (2013) identify seven media frames of femicide: "(1) A common-place frame, (2) an isolated incident frame, (3) a frame that blames the criminal justice system, (4) a victim blaming frame (6) a framework that minimized the femicide by focusing on a crisis in the life of the victim/perpetrator and (7) a domestic violence frame as a broader social problem framework" (Gillespie et al. 2013, 237). The literature detects two techniques within these frames: direct and indirect blaming. ...
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International media research has recently emphasized the coverage of “partner homicides” in news media outlets with specific focus on the traits/characteristics and the forms of femicides. This led us to consider the ways in which news media outlets construct, portray, affect audiences and certain groups of individuals through the representations of such crimes. Through thematic content analysis of crime news, the purpose of this study is to determine how femicide victims are portrayed by major news media outlets in the Republic of Cyprus. The research consisted of an analysis of 366 femicide-related articles referring to 37 femicides that took place from 2006 to 2020. The data were analyzed to determine effects on newsworthiness, public perception, and patterns of victim blaming. The phenomenon of victim blaming emerged from the analysis as a recurring frame, both in a direct and indirect manner. Such blaming strategies include the usage of language with negative connotations in descriptions of the victim, such as highlighting their “promiscuous” pasts, and the attribution of “male honor”-related motives to the perpetrators, using sympathetic language to describe the perpetrator, highlighting the victim’s mental or physical problems, and so forth.
... Through the deliberate emphasis on particular facets of a narrative whilst omitting others, the media's framing can amplify the prominence of certain viewpoints whilst concurrently diminishing and understating the significance of alternate perspectives (Carlyle et al., 2014;Coleman & Thorson, 2002;de Vreese et al., 2011;Meyers, 1994;Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007;Thorson, 2001;Tiscareño-García & Miranda, 2020). Media frames generally have three components: sources-from which stories of violence are reported (e.g., police authorities)word choice or language-which also influence how IPV is framed by press media-and context-which can refer to the context of the violent episode (e.g., social context the event reported by the media took place) (Gillespie et al., 2013;Meyers, 1994). In this context, press media often adopts an episodic framework when reporting on partner abuse, portraying social issues as discrete incidents devoid of contextualization or broader interpretation (de Vreese, 2005). ...
... The most present frame (40%) was abuse is objectionable. However, most articles portrayed dating abuse as a mild crime, and the seriousness of partner abuse was minimised Gillespie et al. (2013) They searched newspaper articles online A total of 113 cases of femicide that defined murders of women by partners as domestic violence (DV) reported in newspaper articles were compared with 113 cases without the coverage of femicides as DV Four frames were present in both groups: ...
... A total of eight articles presented results on the newspaper portrayal of IPV-related femicide (Bullock, 2007;Gillespie et al., 2013;Lalli & Gius, 2014;McManus & Dorfman, 2005;Richards et al., 2011Richards et al., , 2014Sims, 2008;Tiscareño-García & Miranda, 2020). According to the results, it appeared that episodic framing was the most used one (Bullock, 2007;Gillespie et al., 2013;Richards et al., 2014;Sims, 2008). ...
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Introduction Media framing encompasses the intentional curation and arrangement of relevant information, revolving around a central theme, to fashion a unified storyline. This article aims to explore how the news media frame women who have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV). By understanding these perceptions, it is possible to gain insight into societal attitudes and biases, shaping how IPV is perceived, discussed, and addressed within our communities. Methods The review was pre-registered on the PROSPERO database of systematic reviews (registration number: CRD42022347911). Moreover, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA statement) was followed. A total of 17 articles were selected from 8158 search results across four databases: PubMed, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science. Data collection was conducted in 2022. Results The 17 articles were divided into two groups: the media framing of women with an IPV experience and IPV-related femicides. Episodic framing was the most used frame in both groups. Moreover, a tendency to minimise the violence that occurred, to use inappropriate language, to blame the women, and to confound violence with love and sex resulted in both groups. Conclusions News media tend to depict women who experienced IPV in a stigmatising way, but the review highlighted that media could make a positive impact by increasing public awareness and promoting more positive portrayals. Policy Implications The review offers recommendations to develop policies and practises that can train media professionals to avoid perpetuating stereotypical images of women who experienced violence and report in a responsible and ethical ways.
... Even though femicide is a global problem, the media studies published in English are dominated by the reading of media coverage from the United States and these tend to be the most highly cited in academic articles (Brodie, 2021). Hence, these studies mostly used local news (Bullock & Cubert, 2002;Gillespie et al., 2013;Richards et al., 2011;Taylor, 2009;Wong & Lee, 2021), and their findings may not be generalizable to countries with different socio-political contexts, media landscapes, and in which race and ethnicities have different implications (Brodie, 2019). ...
... Studies on media representation of GBV in many countries have identified various structures that blame women for their own victimization (Boonzaier, 2022). Research on the United States news proposed that domestic violence is interpreted through four frames: the police frame, just the facts, people are different from us, and victim-blaming and excusing the perpetrator (Bullock & Cubert, 2002;Gillespie et al., 2013). Rae Taylor (2009) described victimblaming strategies in IPV femicides including the use of negative language to describe the victims, highlighting that the victim did not report previous violence, her decision to not continue with the legal processes of previous violence, interaction with another man, suspicion of infidelity or being the mistress of the killer, and describing the IPV in terms of equal blame for woman and man, all explained as situations that contributed to her murder. ...
... 10. Use of victim-blaming strategies and gender stereotypes with implicit evaluation such as not reporting previous violence or not continuing with the legal processes (Gillespie et al., 2013;Taylor, 2009), the use of alcohol and drugs (Alméras & Montaño, 2007;Gutiérrez Aldrete, 2022;Juárez Rios, 2021;Ravelo Blancas, 2017), the insinuation of promiscuity (Alcocer Perulero, 2014;Taylor, 2009). References to not taking care of herself or exposing herself to danger (González, 2018;Slakoff & Brennan, 2019), going to a party, late at night (Fernández López, 2017; García Guevara & Guachambosa Paredes, 2019;Ravelo Blancas, 2017). ...
Article
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Research on femicide news revealed discriminatory narratives against the victims in specific cases and social contexts. This article uses a quantitative approach to analyze the news content that serves to create social representations of victims and perpetrators. We propose a methodology based on examining independent elements in the descriptions, identifying extratextual patterns, and providing the data to compare the social representations of intimate partner violence (IPV), familiar, and non-IPV femicides. Three online news outlets were analyzed from July 2014 to December 2017, creating a corpus of 2,527 articles. The results revealed that it is more common to create negative representations of victims than negative representations of the perpetrators.
... Researchers have studied the role newspapers play in public perceptions of intimate partner violence because they can influence and determine how society sees and reacts to it (Alat, 2006;Bullock, 2007;Bullock & Cubert, 2002;Gillespie et al., 2013;Meyers, 1996). So far, scholars have criticized newspapers for largely ignoring, negatively stereotyping, skewing, and distorting intimate partner violence against women in their coverage. ...
... This also gave the issue an episodic slant, framing IPVAW as a personal problem or a oneoff crime (Richards et al., 2011). Gillespie, et al. (2013) also found that the language used endorsed "traditional representations of females or gender stereotypes" (p. 226). ...
... In covering IPVAW in Nigeria, these newspapers also blamed the victim and exonerated/excused the perpetrator. This corroborated previous studies' findings on IPVAW using framing theory (Bullock & Cubert, 2002;Maxwell et al. 2000;Evans, 2001;Gillespie, et al., 2013). The problem with this frame is it is powerfully linked to patriarchal beliefs about women as the property of men and pushes violence as an appropriate punishment for women whose behaviors are culturally inappropriate. ...
Article
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This article explores how three national newspapers cover the cases of intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) in Nigeria from 2015 to 2017 to contribute to global research on mediated representations of violence against women. The study focuses on how Nigerian newspapers, The Guardian, Punch and Vanguard, reported the IPVAW cases from 2015 to 2017, and how they covered and framed IPVAW. Using quantitative content analysis, we found that the newspapers used episodic framing, blamed the victims, and exonerated/ excused the men’s actions. The implications of these findings are discussed.
... Such terms represent crimes against women as individual cases and shed light on the personal relationship between perpetrator and victim. As a consequence, media coverage often ignores that misogynist violence in heterosexual partnerships is a global rather than an individual problem (Gillespie et al., 2013;Isaacs, 2016). Over the past decades, research has established a specific term for the structural phenomenon of murders of women: femicide (Russell & Van de Ven, 1976;Russell, 2011). ...
... In a similar vein, a content analysis of femicide portrayal of 292 domestic homicide reports by a Florida metropolitan newspaper between 1995 and 2000 showed that female victims are often blamed by the use of negative language, accentuating their relations to other men and highlighting their choices of not reporting former incidents (Lloyd & Ramon, 2017;Taylor, 2009). More recent framing analyses of newspaper reports on deadly domestic violence against women have shown that a high proportion of newspaper articles in the U.S. normalizes misogynist crimes as commonplace, isolated incidents or as individual loss of control by the perpetrator (Gillespie et al., 2013;Richards et al., 2011). Such evaluations of misogynist crimes and murders are corroborated by the use of headlines like "domestic drama," "crime of passion," or "love killing" (Exner & Thurston, 2009). ...
... A last concern is that we only tested our expectations in one country context. Femicides and the media framing of femicides is a global problem (Gillespie et al., 2013;Isaacs, 2016), so embedding a similar study design in another country context would help to generalize the findings. This is why we aimed for a second study in which we reduced Note. ...
Article
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We conducted two framing experiments to test how downplaying femicide frames affect readers' reactions. Results of Study 1 (Germany, N = 158) indicate that emotional reactions were increased when a femicide was labeled as "murder" compared to "domestic drama." This effect was strongest among individuals with high hostile sexism. Study 2 (U.S., N = 207), revealed that male compared to female readers perceived a male perpetrator more as a loving person when the crime was labeled as "love killing" compared to "murder." This tendency was linked to higher victim blaming. We recommend reporting guidelines to overcome the trivialization of femicides.
... A general consensus on femicide definition would also lead to a distinction between femicides and "mere" female murders and to specific research to distinguishing their forensic-pathological features. To this day, there is good literature on forensic pathology research in the field of female homicides [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27], although at an international level, comparison is severely limited by the heterogeneous classification of the murder of women around the world. Briefly, most reduce the phenomenon to cases of intimate partner violence, while others include all cases of murder of women. ...
... Studies focusing on the murderers (Table 1) document a wide predominance of partners or ex-partners regardless of geographic region [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][22][23][24][25][26][27]. In the studies, most cases report current relationships rather than broken ones, this agrees with the finding of a substantial proportion of cases where the motive for the murder is the decision of the woman to end the relationship. ...
... Perhaps surprisingly, comparing femicide with the murder of women, our study shows a negative association between femicides and indoor homicides. Literature shows that sharp injury and gunshot are the most common causes of death in female murders, although some variations exist probably related to different availability of guns and usage habits in geographic regions [10][11][12][13][14][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][25][26][27]. Only the study of Fong, in Taiwan, revealed 2,6% of intimate partner murderers using guns, while in non-intimate partner homicides guns were never used. ...
Article
In a previous work, authors have proposed a medico-legal definition of femicide as the murder due to the failure to recognize the right of self-determination of women. The aim of this paper was to apply the proposed definition to a cohort of cases to characterise femicides and female homicides and assess whether femicides can be considered a distinct entity or not. A comparison between female and male homicides was performed to assess common and distinctive features. Femicides were identified and compared to the cohort of non-femicide female murder. Results were compared to those reported in published forensic studies. Significant associations between female and male homicides were found for sex and partner/ex-partner offender, sex and indoor homicide and sex and asphyxia as dynamic of death emerged. A higher prevalence of indoor homicides and asphyxiation and of partner relationships were documented in female homicides. Gunshot, blunt injuries and cut wounds are well represented in both types of homicides. Most affected sites are back and chest in male homicides, and head, breasts, pubis, and limbs in female homicides. When comparing femicides and female homicides, a positive association between strangulation as harmful mean and a negative one between femicides and indoor homicides were found. Male and female homicides can be considered as two distinct victimological phenomena. Focusing on femicide allows to establish injuries and circumstantial patterns, that could represent evidence of a specific murder. More studies with a standardized data collection are needed to corroborate the theory of this paper.
... The question of identity in cases of IPF losses is even more intriguing and complex, as offspring are simultaneously the children of a murderer and a victim of the same crime, and are subjected to societal stigmas connected to homicide (Sharpe, 2015) and domestic violence (Felson & Palmore, 2018;Gillespie et al., 2013). Nevertheless, only one study focused, in part, on the self-perception of bereaved offspring, most of whom were under the age of 18 at the time of the interview (Alisic, Groot, Snetselaar, Stroeken, Hehenkamp, & van de Putte, 2017). ...
... Moreover, Israel is characterized by a clear hierarchy of death; at the top are army reservists and at the bottom are homicide victims (Levy, 2013;Mahat-Shamir et al., 2020). These cultural and social perceptions constitute IPF losses as extremely negative and stigmatic, as they reflect a taboo of homicide within the domestic praxis (Felson & Palmore, 2018;Gillespie et al., 2013;Sharpe, 2015). Within this cultural and social space, which has significant effects on individual narratives (McLean et al., 2007), offspring bereaved to IPF are ought to engage in one of the main tasks in bereavement: a revision of one's identity as a survivor (Gillies & Neimeyer, 2006). ...
... Participants felt that society evaluates them based on their relation to each of their parents (IPF perpetrators and victims), rather than based on other characteristics, they fear the shame of being devaluated by others. Indeed, murder and domestic violence, although unfortunately prevalent, are socially taboo, and those involved are often stigmatized (Felson & Palmore, 2018;Gillespie et al., 2013;Sharpe, 2015). Thus, participants fear becoming their parents, and they fear that society might identify and devaluate them as such according to societal stigmas relating to their loss. ...
Article
The current qualitative study aimed to examine the narrative identities of women bereaved to intimate partner femicide. Eleven adult Israeli female offspring whose biological mothers were murdered by their biological fathers were interviewed for the purpose of this study. Due to the uniqueness of their loss experience and circumstances, participants’ identity is narrated as a “trisonance”: They are not like their fathers, their mothers, nor as society perceives them. This very particular route for identity reconstruction as a means of psychological survival is discussed in light of the literature on identity construction and bereavement and derives recommendations for practice.
... The majority of the studies reviewed in this paper, conclude that the general approach of the media's news coverage frame femicides as isolated incidents of violence and as common homicide but not in the context of violence against women and a bigger problem (Shayovitz, 2018,) and (Sutherland et.al, 2017) and (Shalva Weil, 2018). Even if crimes of this nature attract publicity and the interest of the audience, they are usually framed with insensitive or sensationalized titles based mostly on the socially constructed gender stereotypes of each society enhancing victim blaming (focusing on what they were wearing, their general behavior, if they were under alcohol or drug influence, if they remained in abusive relationship or left) and hinder the true causes of the murder and its social dimension (Richards, 2013). The contextualization of these news lack in depth approach of the phenomenon and provide a simplistic justification, which in most cases the perpetrator seems to differ from the rest of the society (mental illness, psychological break down, economic and social status etc.) and he is easily identified among the "common people" (Sutherland et al, 2015). ...
... Based on the priory scholar researches on Femicide and media presentation, the best method to proceed is the qualitative method of content analysis and case study. These methods are useful in order to identify, organize and retrieve data (Richards, 2013) However, the data available for Greece concerning violence against women and Femicide do not exist. ...
Thesis
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In the last decades, the media effect on the issues of domestic violence and violence against women has been thoroughly examined and there is abundant literature covering the phenomenon but very little investigation has been devoted to examine the portrayal of femicide in the news coverage in European countries and more specifically, in Greece. The present study will examine the Greek media news coverage on femicide, examining the crime news stories regarding the language used in the articles, the description of both victim and perpetrator and the sources of the journalists. This investigation is based on the theoretical approach of communication gender theories exploring the representation of women in the media over the years and the relation of both genders in the news. The findings of the research are explained through the feminist theories approach to identify whether violence against women and its fatal stage, femicide, are regarded as social problem in the Greek society. Implications of the findings and future research are discussed. Key words: Mass Media, femicide, violence against women
... Sellers et al. (2014) noted that incidents involving female perpetrators are reported less frequently but depicted as more severe and often framed as acts of self-defense. Gillespie et al. (2013) and Richards et al. (2014) highlighted common issues in femicide reporting, such as an over-reliance on police sources and a lack of relationship context. Resimic (2016) argued that framing femicide explicitly as domestic violence in news coverage could enhance awareness and lead to better policy responses. ...
Article
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Purpose This study investigates the media representation of domestic violence within four Chinese regions (mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) by analyzing 58,162 newspaper articles over 21 years (2000–2020). The main research question was to explore the differences in domestic violence coverage framing among these regions. Methods Correspondence analysis and co-occurrence network analysis were employed using the K.H. Coder software for text analysis, providing a comprehensive comparison across regions. Results Mainland China's press adopts an individual framework, portraying domestic violence as a "private" matter related to family disputes. Hong Kong and Macao primarily utilize an institutional framework, attributing responsibility to local governments. Taiwan combines cultural/structural and integrational frameworks, emphasizing community protection and sexual abuse prevention. Conclusions Significant variations in frames exist across the four Chinese regions. Understanding these differences can foster coordinated efforts to support survivors and raise public awareness effectively. This research contributes to comprehending domestic violence discourse and its portrayal in diverse cultural contexts.
... However, interest in this topic intensified only in the last quarter of the XX century (Dobash & Dobash, 2015, p. 23), and increased drastically after that period. Nowadays, the media has a particularly significant role when it comes to criminal offences in general, including femicide (Koç, 2022; Gillespie et al., 2013;Richards et al., 2014). Beside many interests in this topic, there is a huge number of definitions of femicide, due to the disagreement of authors as to what femicide should include (Walklate & Fitz-Gibbon, 2023, p. 31;Cook et al., 2023). ...
Article
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This paper addresses femicide in the Republic of Serbia. The research is focused on four parts: profile of perpetrators of these criminal offenses, legal qualification of criminal offence, prosecuting and punishing perpetrators of femicide. The results of the study shows that there are ten types of femicide in Serbia and indicate that the perpetrators of femicide are usually unemployed persons, both male and female, most often 46–60 years old, with a elementary school, and poor financial status. The largest percentage of criminal proceedings for femicide are finally completed within one or two years. The largest number of perpetrators were found guilty and sentenced to long prison terms. The percentage of perpetrators who committed criminal offences in a state of mental incompatibility and who were sentenced to a security measure of compulsory psychiatric treatment and confinement in a medical institution is not negligible.
... It tends to perpetuate traditional gender roles and reinforce harmful stereotypes associated with romantic relationships. Violence, frequently fatal, is commonly perceived as a singular eruption of anger, attributed to "losing control" instead of being portrayed as the culmination of a pattern of abuse, violence is rationalized and normalized, and framed as an isolated incident that was deemed unforeseeable and unavoidable (Gillespie et al., 2013;Herbst & Gez, 2012). Even in societies increasingly aware and sensitive to gender equality, romantic love is often exploited by the media to legitimize a man's perceived need to regain control over his female partner (Gius & Lalli, 2014). ...
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This study examines the influence of romantic narratives on perceptions of intimate partner violence (IPV) and its legitimization. Through two experiments, we investigate how romantic themes in narratives shape views of victims, offenders, and the legal consequences of IPV. Participants read journalistic pieces depicting acts of violence varying in relationship details and motives. Experiment 1 (n = 182) explored romantic versus non-romantic motives within romantic relationships, while Experiment 2 (n = 352) expanded to non-romantic relationships. Our findings consistently reveal a tendency to attribute greater accountability to victims when a prior romantic relationship with the offender is mentioned. Furthermore, narratives featuring both romantic motives for violence and romantic relationships are associated with increased victim blaming and anticipation of more lenient punishment compared to narratives devoid of romantic themes. Gender-specific responses were also observed. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of the portrayal of IPV victims as "non-ideal victims" and societal stereotypes surrounding romantic love.
... Instead, the studies made in Canada and the USA about the coverage of IPV murders did not take into account intersectional conditions (i.e. Fairbairn & Dawson, 2013;Gillespie et al., 2013;Taylor, 2009). ...
Article
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Research on media representations of gender-based violence GBV murders from multiple social contexts is available, but no literature review study. This work assesses this gap by examining 213 studies that analysed empirical evidence from 45 countries. Our mixed methodology provides a mapping of the literature in a scientific and transparent process. Our results show that the representation depends on the media type and not the country. The most analysed are news, finding victim-blaming, perpetrator-justification, and otherization narratives, but these were also found in other media. Social media, literature, and artistic materials help increase the visibility of activists and victims, can convey the context of GBV help to social awareness, or reproduce stereotypes that minimize, naturalize, and legitimize GBV.
... In trying to understand the perpetration of GBV, many disciplines have posited theories ranging from individual and relationship level to socio-cultural and political level explanations [2]. Regardless, the health consequences and economic cost of GBV have been well established both in Canada and globally [3][4][5][6][7][8]. Given that 1 in 3 women experience violence at some point in their lifetime, the personal, health, and economic costs position GBV as a significant public health concern and pandemic [9,10]. ...
Article
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Bolstering women’s resilience in the context of gender-based violence (GBV) requires attention to structural conditions needed to support women to thrive, particularly in rural communities. This cross-sectional study explored how resilience was influenced by structural violence in rural Ontario among women experiencing GBV (n = 14) and service providers in the GBV sector (n = 12). Interviews were conducted and revealed forms of structural violence that undermine resilience for women experiencing GBV in rural communities, including 1) housing- gentrification, short-term rentals of residential properties, and long waitlists, 2) income- fighting for enough money to survive, 3) safety- abusers gaming the system, and 4) access- successes and new barriers. Structural conditions must be attended to as they are prerequisites required to build resilience.
... However, scientific research on the subject has shown that news coverage is reluctant to deconstruct stereotypes of gender violence, ultimately concealing the aggressors by blaming the women (Berns, 2001;Sanematsu, 2011;Gillespie et al., 2013). A recent study conducted by Leal et al. (2020) demonstrates the reluctance and problems many media forms have in treating physical and symbolic violence against women as gender issues. ...
Article
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The main objective of this paper is to identify the combative elements in the professional practices of American journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, focusing on investigative reports on sexual violence against women published in the New York Times. For this case study, a qualitative analysis was carried out on the book She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement and on the 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning reports authored by these same journalists. The results show that these journalists conducted a thorough investigation, legitimizing female speech by bringing to light the complaints of women victims of sexual harassment. The commitment these journalists have to confronting aggressors and uncovering facts that are concealed by powerful figures, such as Donald Trump, is also evident.
... The literature on the representation of IPH in the news media has mainly focused on male-perpetrated homicides (Easteal et al., 2019;Gillespie et al., 2013). While broader in scope, studies on IPV and IPH representation indicate the presence of stereotyping against men (Hanson & Lysova, 2021). ...
Chapter
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Female perpetrators of intimate partner or spousal homicide are a significant and under-recognized issue. The fact that women are much less likely than men to perpetrate violent criminal offenses, and are more likely than men to become victims of spousal homicide, has diverted attention of the public, academics, and practitioners away from women who kill their intimates. A dominant perspective in the field—a gender paradigm—has focused on female victims who kill their male abusers primarily in self-defense or in an attempt to escape the abuse, and thus has also hampered our understanding of female perpetration of intimate partner homicide in its full complexity. This chapter provides a summary of contemporary views of the female perpetrator in the context of intimate partner homicide, including various perspectives that explain it, differential (more lenient) treatment of female perpetrators in the criminal justice system, and more favorable public perception and media portrayal of women who kill their partners.
... News media are key to understanding how society and the general population react to a topic (Cullen et al., 2019;Dijk, 1995). News can influence public perceptions and consequently, social policies (Carlyle et al., 2008;Cullen et al., 2019;Gillespie et al., 2013;Maydell, 2018), which is the case with GBV with news media being one of the main sources of information. Media may report available help resources added to the piece of news (Comas-d'Argermir, 2015). ...
Article
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Despite being an underreported topic in the news media, gender-based violence (GBV) undermines the health, dignity, security and autonomy of its victims. Research has studied many of the factors that generate or maintain this kind of violence. However, the influence of the media is still uncertain. This paper used Big Data techniques to explore how GBV is depicted and reported in digital news media. By feeding neural networks with news, the topic information associated with each article can be recovered. Our findings show a relationship between GBV news and public awareness, the effect of well-known GBV cases, and the intrinsic thematic relationship of GBV news with justice themes.
... The media's definitions of a profession can influence public perception and knowledge of its specific meaning. Public perceptions can be shaped by media coverage, including perceptions of social issues such as domestic violence (Gillespie et al., 2013). If the media's definition is negative, the profession may receive a negative image as well. ...
Article
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As an event that grabs the public's attention, domestic violence (KDRT) is still making headlines in various mass media lines, including cyber media. This study aims to identify cases of domestic violence reported by the cyber media Hulondalo.Id and describe the categorization patterns made by the media to frame domestic violence events in Gorontalo. The method used in this study is a qualitative method with a framing analysis tool from Murray Edelman. The results showed that the cases of domestic violence published by the cyber media Hulondalo.Id were quite diverse. In the news, certain categorizations are formed for perpetrators and victims of domestic violence. This form of categorization becomes a pattern of media framing of cases of domestic violence that occurred in Gorontalo. The pattern made by Hulondalo.Id places the perpetrators as coercive, drunken, sadistic, barbaric, and persecuting figures. Meanwhile, the victim is positioned as a helpless figure, a patient young wife, and a poor woman. Ideologically the media position themselves as siding with the victim. But the textual facts prove that the Hulondalo.Id cyber media tends to exploit the identity of the victim rather than the identity of the perpetrators of domestic violence.
... Research has analyzed how media frame crime in the United States (Gillespie et al., 2013;Kort-Butler & Habecker, 2018), with a few studies also focusing on photojournalism practices (Kim & Kelly, 2008). Those scholars found the visual representation of the perpetrator of crime to be serial killers (Wardle, 2007) and that visual representation of crime news differed by country (Rafiee et al., 2021). ...
Article
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A content analysis of U.S. digital news reveals that the visual coverage of criminal jury trials mainly focuses on defendants and law enforcement officials. The U.S. digital news still often use mugshots to portray Black/African American defendants, and law enforcement officials are significantly overrepresented as White and male. In partial contrast to past news coverage, Black/African American defendants are not depicted in handcuff at the crime scene or slovenly dressed more often than defendants from other ethnic groups.
... Although external parties to the violence were frequently portrayed as a sole or joint victim of the domestic violence incident, in an average of 20.35% of the examined articles across the Australian states the perpetrator of the violence was framed as the primary victim. This aligns with findings by Easteal et al. (2015), as well as Meyers (1997), Gillespie et al. (2013), and Lee and Wong (2020) concerning the tendency of the media to displace responsibility for violence to parties other than the perpetrator. ...
Article
Newspaper media plays a significant role in forming a public understanding of domestic violence. This article analyses 554 articles from 24 newspapers across Australian states and territories published between 2000 and 2020 that describe specific instances of domestic violence. It examines whether such violence is framed as a systemic issue or as a collection of individual events, as well as how such representations of perpetrators and victims displace both "blame" and "victimhood." Although positive aspects of reporting can be observed, the tendency within newspaper articles to blur distinctions between perpetrators and victims distorts the true scale of domestic violence in Australia.
... Newspaper accounts of DV frequently omit important contextual information about how structural and systemic barriers contribute to DV (Bullock & Cubert, 2002;Fairbairn & Dawson, 2013;Gillespie et al., 2013;Ryan et al., 2006;Seely & Riffe, 2021;Sellers et al., 2014;Singh & Bullock, 2020). For instance, one study found that only 10-34% of newspapers included such context (Richards et al., 2011), and another reported that newspapers rarely framed DV as stemming from the perpetrator's coercive control and male privilege (Lindsay-Brisbine et al., 2014). ...
Article
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated incidences of domestic violence (DV). The framing of DV within media sources contributes to the public's understanding of DV. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), this paper explores representations of safety within newspapers' reporting of DV during the pandemic. The sample included newspaper articles (n = 31) from U.S. newspapers. The analysis involved multiple rounds of coding and employing "structured questions." These articles depicted limited courses of action for DV survivors and represented safety as unattainable. Safety was constructed in four ways: homes are unsafe, social services are overburdened, government failures, and the elusiveness of safety. These discursive formations provide insight regarding "idealized" social responses to DV.
... Gender-based violence against women as a structural problem is mainly addressed when there is a current occasion, such as the annual release of the crime statistic on intimate partner violence on the International Day to End Violence Against Women (November 25th). This finding is in line with many other studies showing that violence against women is often portrayed as isolated incidents instead of a social problem (Bullock and Cubert 2002;Carlyle, Slater, and Chakroff 2008;Gillespie et al. 2013;Morgan and Simons 2018;Sutherland et al. 2019). This way of reporting suggests that the violence occurred dependent on the respective persons involved in it (Cullen, O'Brien, and Corcoran 2019), it furthers the social problem of intimate partner violence to be understood as a private matter. ...
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Violence against women is a prevalent issue worldwide, even in countries highly ranked on Gender Equality indices. Every third day, a woman in Germany is killed by an intimate partner, and many experience sexual violence at least once in their lifetime. How media report violence against women is significant for understanding the extent of violence in society and for requesting solutions in the public. This study analyzes the salience of violence and the nature of reporting in a broad sample of German print news (n = 3489) between 2015 and 2019 with a specific focus on intimate partner violence as opposed to crimes committed by strangers and the role of perpetrator origin. Results show that especially intimate partner violence is underreported and needs to be of extreme degree to be reported. Situating violence against women within a broader social context rarely happens, again, especially not for intimate partner violence. Since New Year’s Eve in Cologne, perpetrator’s origin has increasingly been mentioned. Although non-German perpetrators are not overrepresented in media reporting on violence against women, it is especially them, whose violence is put into a larger context. Opposed to that, national perpetrators’ violent acts are presented as single incidents.
... There are four frames that are commonly used by the mainstream media in preaching domestic violence, namely normalizing the domestic violence (domestic violence as a regular incident among other criminal cases such as murder, etc.), isolated incidents (describing crimes as unforeseen without discussing the possibility of abuse committed against victims), blaming the justice system while normalizing the domestic violence), as well as blaming the victim by minimizing the actions of the perpetrator. This left the media with the opportunity to use its influence in identifying domestic violence as a wrong thing (Gillespie, Richards, Givens, & Smith, 2013). ...
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This study is conducted to find out how Magdalene.co as an alternative, gender sensitive media frames the issue of domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. They use the victim’s perspective in reporting domestic violence amidst mainstream media’s tendencies to objectify victims and use sensationalism as a news frame. The study will be examined with a framing analysis method that explores four dimensions, namely problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and treatment recommendation, by using the theory concept of gender sensitive journalism and alternative media. This research is expected to help us identify and evaluate the role of alternative, gender sensitive media in reporting gender issues at critical times. The results showed that Magdalene.co is on the side of the victim by implementing the role of advocacy journalism, providing solutions, reviewing the root causes of domestic violence and explaining how pandemic situations hampered domestic violence services institutions to work in handling cases and made it difficult for victims to access help. Magdalene.co also has a unique standing point in framing conflict management aspects of domestic violence, because it discusses the importance of perpetrator’s rehabilitation instead of focusing solely on handling victims.
... Например, указывается на низкий уровень публичной дискуссии в одном из регионов США: в большинстве случаев домашнее насилие подавалось просто как набор фактов о преступлении (то есть отсутствовал нарратив, связанный с проблематизацией ситуации), в СМИ редко приводились мнения жертв или их представителей, лишь в одном из десяти случаев давалась информация о том, как можно избежать проблемы (например, ссылки на телефон доверия) [Seely, Riffe, 2021]. Домашнее насилие действительно нередко описывается в СМИ именно в полицейской тер минологии, поскольку правоохранительные органы чаще всего служат источником информации о том или ином деле, диктуя способы его описания [Gillespie et al., 2013]. Исследователи также обращают внимание, что преступления на бытовой почве, совершенные мужчинами и женщинами, описываются в СМИ поразному. ...
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На протяжении последних десяти лет в публичном поле идут активные дискуссии о проблеме домашнего насилия в России. В 2017 г. побои в отношении близких родственников были декриминализованы, а закон о семейно-бытовом насилии так и не был принят, хотя неоднократно вносился в Государственную думу. Цель настоящей статьи — анализ контрриторических стратегий, которыми пользуются участники дискуссии, отрицающие наличие или важность проблемы насилия между интимными партнерами. На основе анализа более 1,4 тыс. публикаций о проблеме домашнего насилия в девяти ведущих печатных СМИ России за период с 2010 по 2020 г. мы выделяем и описываем шесть стратегий депроблематизации в соответствии с классификацией, предложенной П. Ибаррой и Дж. Китсьюзом. Кроме того, мы выделяем не попадающую в классификацию седьмую стратегию, делающую акцент на материальной компенсации за насилие. Мы анализируем роль акцента на патриархальных ценностях в каждой из выделенных стратегий, а также делаем выводы об их возможной связи с общественными мнением о данной проблеме. Благодарность. Публикация подготовлена в ходе проведения исследовательского проекта «Безопасность и виктимность населения России: социальные, экономические и культурные факторы» № 21-04-029 (Научно-учебная группа «Социально-правовые исследования») в рамках Программы «Научный фонд Национального исследовательского университета “Высшая школа экономики” (НИУ ВШЭ)» в 2021-2022 гг. Авторы выражают признательность Регине Игоревне Решетеевой за совместную работу в рамках научно-учебной группы над первым этапом данного проекта.
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Anti-trans fatal violence refers to the hate-motivated murder of transgender and gender-diverse individuals. This study examines news media coverage surrounding 36 victims of anti-trans fatal violence in the United States in 2022. A qualitative content analysis of news articles ( n = 75) reveals that journalists often frame anti-trans fatal violence as a systemic issue while highlighting the perspectives of queer organizations/advocates when discussing the murder of transgender individuals.
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The article investigates the tensions between feminist conceptualizations of sexual violence and the persistence of patriarchal discourses that challenge it resulting in a justification of violence and misogynistic representations in a Uruguayan TV program. We argue that the return of conservative discourses that question sexual harassment accusations, reinstate gender differences, and gender inequality by installing a new normativity and naturalization of violence against women. Through the analysis of representations, evaluations, and discourse strategies deployed in two episodes of a high rating debate TV show centered on sexual violence, we show the victims are not recognized as such. There is a recontextualization of the sexual violence situation by which participants in the TV show challenge the policies and practices that have been recently established to prevent and sanction sexual violence. The findings evidence certain cultural transformations in the threshold of moral sensibility that define what is acceptable or not and make visible a patriarchal backlash.
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Acknowledging the importance of focusing on media’s communication for studying linguistic sexism, we propose a new method to analyze a corpus of texts via a machine learning approach built around an original training-set. We seek to establish a framework of the current use of talking about women in newspapers that expands beyond merely the objective forms of discrimination by also measuring the degree to which it implicitly conveys sexist messages through combination of words, expressions, and lexical aspects of language. As an illustrative example, we then apply such an approach to around 15,000 Italian newspapers’ headlines to investigate the impact of newspapers’ political orientations on the linguistic choices made by journalists in writing articles’ headlines.
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The article deals with the visual and linguistic representation of alleged perpetrators through personalization in news reporting from The Telegraph’s online media platform. The analysis shows how visual message, along with verbal labelling in the text, represent different groups of alleged perpetrators as more or less ‘dangerous’ in news reports. Agency is analyzed through a focus on the lens range and its influence on perceived social distance, the angle of the shot and its role in the understanding of social relations, as well as the direction of an alleged perpetrator’s gaze in images as a way of social interaction with the viewer. The photos of alleged perpetrators appear in The Telegraph with the aim of informing the public about the danger these individuals pose, as well as legitimizing the actions of law enforcement institutions. It appears that verbal and visual identification of these individuals is done with the intention of ‘excluding’ the most dangerous social actors, such as ‘murderers’, from ingroups.
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RESUMO – O objetivo principal deste artigo é identificar os elementos combativos que caracterizam as práticas profissionais das jornalistas norte-americanas Jodi Kantor e Megan Twohey, centrando-se nos trabalhos investigativos sobre violência sexual contra mulheres publicados no New York Times. Para o estudo de caso, realizou-se uma análise qualitativa do livro Ela disse: os bastidores da reportagem que impulsionou o #MeToo e de reportagens de autoria de ambas as jornalistas, pelas quais receberam o Prêmio Pulitzer de 2018. Os resultados indicam que as jornalistas realizaram uma investigação exaustiva, caracterizada por legitimar falas femininas, ao visibilizar as denúncias de mulheres vítimas de assédio sexual. Também é evidente o comprometimento das jornalistas em confrontar os agressores e revelar os fatos silenciados por figuras poderosas, como Donald Trump. ABSTRACT – The main objective of this paper is to identify the combative elements in the professional practices of American journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, focusing on investigative reports on sexual violence against women published in the New York Times. For this case study, a qualitative analysis was carried out on the book She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement and on the 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning reports authored by these same journalists. The results show that these journalists conducted a thorough investigation, legitimizing female speech by bringing to light the complaints of women victims of sexual harassment. The commitment these journalists have to confronting aggressors and uncovering facts that are concealed by powerful figures, such as Donald Trump, is also evident. RESUMEN – El objetivo principal de este artículo es identificar los elementos combativos que caracterizan las prácticas profesionales de las periodistas estadounidenses Jodi Kantor y Megan Twohey, enfocándose en los trabajos de investigación sobre violencia sexual contra mujeres publicados en New York Times. Para el caso de estudio, se realizó un análisis cualitativo del libro She said: la investigación periodística que destapó los abusos de Harvey Weinstein e impulsó el movimiento #MeToo y de reportajes de autoría de ambas periodistas, por los cuales recibieron el premio Pulitzer de 2018. Los resultados indican que las periodistas realizaron una investigación exhaustiva, caracterizada por legitimar las hablas femeninas al visibilizar las denuncias de mujeres víctimas de acoso sexual. También es evidente el compromiso de las periodistas al confrontar a los agresores y revelar los hechos que estaban silenciados por figuras poderosas, como Donald Trump. Palavras-chave: Jornalismo combativo. Jornalismo investigativo. Assédio sexual. #MeToo. New York Times.
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This paper aims to contribute to the research on femicide and news frames by proposing a three-level methodology, distinguishing between thematic and episodic frames, conducting an in-depth examination of issue-specific frames, and adding the notion of substantiveness to analyse the results. We created a dataset of 2528 news articles from Mexican mainstream media, coded through qualitative content analysis. The proposal can be applied in many cultural contexts and opens up opportunities for comparative studies of femicide. Our results reveal that thematic pieces are focused on non-intimate partner violence (IPV) femicides. Episodic pieces are more diverse but with a tendency to individualize the problem and attribute responsibility to the victims.
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Chapter 3 explores how the #NiUnaMenos movement influenced the reporting of violence against women (VAW), most notably regarding femicide in Argentina. The #NiUnaMenos movement started in 2015 with a desperate tweet from a female journalist in Argentina: “Aren’t we going to raise our voices? They are killing us” [Ojeda, [@Marcelitaojeda]. Actrices, políticas, artistas, empresarias, referentes sociales … Mujeres, todas, bah… no vamos a levantar la voz? NOS ESTAN MATANDO [Tweet]. Twitter (2015, May 11)]. What followed was a hashtag that quickly grew into a feminist movement that impelled women’s rights to the top of Argentina’s political agenda and then spread throughout other Latin American countries when millions of women took a stand against gender-based violence. This movement that preceded #MeToo initiated a process of awareness at many levels, of which one is media coverage. This chapter analyzes how five Argentinean news outlets—Clarín, Infobae, La Nación, Página/12, and Perfil—covered VAW between January 1, 2015, and January 31, 2019. Drawing on feminist theory, the study in the chapter analyzed 419 news stories and argued that, in most cases, the news media coverage of femicides in Argentina reproduced gender stereotypes and used victim-blaming language. Chapter 3 found that the media did not contextualize VAW crimes such as femicide as a broader social issue, which places women in a fragile position with their violent partners.Keywords#NiUnaMenosFemicidesViolence against womenNews framingArgentinaArgentinian mediaFeminismGlobal South
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The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled on four cases of women’s defensive violence in the context of intimate partner violence. The Canadian news media plays a role in explaining the legal and social importance of these decisions. Its coverage can contribute to stronger social awareness of the problem and legal tools available or to the perpetuation of myths about intimate partner violence and the role of the courts. Examining local and national newspaper coverage of the four cases reveals a consistency in the amount of legal discussion and a decline in the quality of Canadian print news attention to these decisions. Implications for social awareness are discussed.
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In March 2022, a Texas grand jury chose not to indict NFL quarterback Deshaun Watson with sexual misconduct, facilitating his trade from the Houston Texans to the Cleveland Browns. This study used publicly accessible Reddit posts ( n = 273) to explore sport fan conversations about Watson from the day a grand jury announced it would not indict him to the day the Cleveland Browns issued an official statement about the trade. I analyzed post text, top-level comments, and replies to the top-level comment on each post using reflexive thematic analysis. Results suggest that while most conversations about Watson avoided discussion of sexual violence, fans also supported or resisted rape culture. Few fans shared an intention to no longer support a team that traded for Watson, highlighting the cognitive dissonance fans may face when navigating opinions about sexual violence and the importance of fandom to their identity. The presence of conversations supporting rape culture and limited space for civil discussions of athlete-perpetrated violence may impact some fans’ attitudes toward sexual violence while making online fan communities an unsafe space for others. These findings have implications for understanding sport fan cultures vis-à-vis sexual violence and situational prevention targeting sport fans.
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The news media play an important role in influencing public perceptions and raising awareness of an issue. This research analyzes media framing of child/forced marriage through an examination of six US national newspapers over a ten-year period. It probes how narratives are constructed based on issue perception, blame attribution, and protagonist perceptions. It finds that print media has afforded increasing coverage to minimum marriage age legislation in the US. Mediated by advocacy organizations and survivors, the discourse surrounding child marriage has used a thematic frame as a legal issue with the onus on the state to amend laws facilitating child marriage. Forced marriage of adults has been framed as thematic too, but regarded as a cultural imperative. This culturalization of violence prevents forced marriage from being recognized as gender violence. Thus, while the thematic framing is laudable, the type of thematic framing matters, especially concerning blame attribution and the perceptions of protagonists, to fully comprehend this form of gender violence.
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Online activism can be expressed through many forms. While advocates claim that it is a fully-fledged form of activism, opponents state that it is no more than vain ‘slacktivism’. Against this background, this work analyses the ‘#ChallengeAccepted’ movement, which went ‘viral’ in July 2020 to raise awareness about femi(ni)cides in Turkey, in the aftermath of the murder of the female student Pinar Gültekin. Focusing on the use of the hashtag via Twitter, the work embraces the perspective of online activism as a “continuum of participation”, composed of several levels. The results show how hashtag activism has worked as a means of knowledge dissemination and action, and that also slacktivism has contributed to the cause, thanks to the “oxygen of amplification” effect, which made users inform and get informed, refocus the campaign towards its original purpose when it digressed, and distribute its message.
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Colombia is marked by high levels of gender-based violence. In 2020, 630 women were murdered because of their gender. The number of these feminicides increased under the coronavirus lockdown that began in March 2020. Although the news media play a crucial role in shaping the public’s notion of feminicides, empirical studies on the media’s portrayal of feminicides in Colombia are scarce. The present study involved a quantitative content analysis of articles published in four Colombian newspapers to determine how they reported on feminicides from August 2019 to July 2020 (sample size: 139 articles, comprising 1798 paragraphs). The period under investigation allowed for a comparison of news coverage before and during the lockdown. By means of hierarchical cluster analysis, we identified four frames: “gender-based inequalities and discrimination against women”, “perpetrators in front of the court”, “prehistory and course of events of the feminicide”, and “reactions of neighbors, eyewitnesses, and villagers to the feminicide”. Our findings suggest that the four newspapers under investigation paint rather similar pictures of feminicides. We also found that the date an article was published in relation to the COVID-19 quarantine had little influence on the frequency at which the clusters appeared.
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Objective: This study explores college women’s beliefs and experiences about exercise informed by different framing strategies, and how they may influence exercise engagement. Participants: Four focus groups were conducted with 19 undergraduate women at a large public Midwestern university. Methods: Four differently framed group exercise advertisements were used to prompt focus group discussions on beliefs and intentions to exercise. Transcribed data were analyzed with a thematic content approach. Results: Undergraduate female participants described more positive beliefs that influence intention with a well-being-framed advertisement. More negative beliefs were described when the advertisement focused on enhancing appearance. Participants of color believed that seeing more representation of diversity in advertisements would make engaging in exercise easier. Conclusion: Positive beliefs linked to a “well-being” frame and diverse imagery of women in exercise advertisements may improve intention to exercise, increasing physical activity among women.
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This chapter explores how the representation of familicide cases in which there was no known preceding history of violence or abuse by perpetrators had commonly framed them as a mystery. The relatively intelligibility of such crimes, it is argued, operates to render them mysterious family tragedies in a way that perpetuates an “internal myopia” (Websdale & Alvarez In Popular culture, crime, and justice pp. 123–142, 1998) in news reporting, constructing the murders as isolated anomalies despite quite apparent patterns in the murder of women and children by men. In particular, this chapter considers the deployment of “forensic reporting” (ibid), homing in on crime scene minutia in a way that is devoid of attention to the broader social meaning, context, or patterns of the violence. Where familicide was assumed unknowable, forensic details reminiscent of those presented in crime dramas came to stand in as—yet move news reporting further away from—understanding.
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When three young children—Trey, Aaliyah, and Laianah—and their mother, Hannah Clarke, were killed in 2020 by Rowan Baxter, the children’s father and Hannah’s former partner, discussions about criminalising coercive control in Australia had already been bubbling. While most of the abuse had not involved physical violence, it ended in the most horrific act of violence, underscoring the need to take coercive control seriously as a matter of women’s and children’s safety. Unlike other cases of familicide-suicide, this case became a flashpoint for broader public and media engagement on the scourge of domestic violence. This chapter focuses on reporting in which familicide was represented through a domestic violence lens. It considers what it is that made the Baxter case more intelligible than other familicide cases as gendered domestic and family violence, how victims and perpetrators of domestic and family violence were constructed, and through what lens domestic and family violence (when it was recognised) was viewed in reporting on familicide.
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This chapter examines the mental illness/distress frame in news reporting on familicide – the way familicide was framed as the outcome of perpetrator mental illness or emotional distress. It contextualises the mental illness/distress frame within evolving discourses of mental illness in Australia and the broader rise of ‘psychocentrism’ (Rimke, 2016) in Western contexts, as well as the role of feminist discourses of domestic and family violence that reject the premise that mental illness causes violence against women. It charts how the mental illness/distress frame manifested in reporting on familicide, including the complex ways it was fortified by victims’ families and, at times, by disability support advocates. Exploring how the mental illness/distress frame was rationalised through tropes of the ‘nice, normal’ family, the chapter highlights that while this news frame is problematic, it does not go unchallenged, with feminist-informed counter-narratives playing a significant role in the news.
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This chapter introduces key overarching themes around the complexities of news framing on familicide. It discusses the complex ways news framings reflect not just journalistic practices, but processes of interpellation—the ways journalistic practices are positioned within a wider discursive environment that shapes the framing possibilities available to journalists, editors, and various other social actors on which they rely (Little in Journalism 22:1450–1466, 2021). It examines the significant role played by news sources in framing and shows how issues around the use of news sources are particularly fraught in reporting on familicide, with some of the most disquieting news frames constructed through a reliance on news sources with significant experiential or expert authority. This chapter also points to the increasingly influential role being played by ‘talk-back’ news pieces—editorial content that directly challenges dominant news framings from within the news media, and often through a feminist lens. This contributes to a dynamic news space, working to constitute news on familicide as a process of contested meaning-making.
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In recent decades, given the crucial role played by the news media in fighting to eradicate violence against women, several organisations and legislative initiatives have begun self-regulating. This study analyses news coverage of gender-based murders in the Basque media over the course of three years, beginning with approval of rules for self-regulation. The results show that the media actively contribute to raising visibility of violence against women as a social problem, although reduced compliance with some of the recommendations indicates difficulty in practically applying them and disparate criteria from one journalist to another.
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The relationship between a victim and an offender is critical to understanding the context and dynamics of homicide. It is recognized that the causes and correlates of homicides within intimate relationships differ from the causes and correlates of homicides by strangers. Systematic research has seldom examined, however, differences in the nature of intimate violence, particularly lethal violence, among intimate relationships that vary in the degree of intimacy and level of commitment. Such an examination is important, not only for understanding the phenomenon of intimate femicide, but also for explaining variations in the reactions to such acts. Using relationship state and relationship status to differentiate among various degrees of intimacy and commitment, we show that the characteristics of the people involved in intimate femicides as well as the circumstances surrounding the killing do differ by relationship type.
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Stressing relation-building and participatory communication approaches, the Rhode Island Coalition against Domestic Violence worked with journalists to develop a best practices handbook on news coverage of domestic violence murders. This study compares print coverage of domestic violence murders prehandbook (1996-1999) and posthandbook (2000-2002). Significant changes include increased labeling of the murder of intimates as domestic violence and doubled usage of advocates as sources. As a result, domestic violence murders, previously framed as unpredictable private tragedies, are more commonly framed posthandbook as social problems warranting public intervention. The authors conclude that relation-building approaches can affect news cultures and public discourse when conducted in conjunction with comprehensive participatory communications strategies.
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Current rates of intimate partner homicide of females are approximately 4 to 5 times the rate for male victims, although the rates for both have decreased during the past 25 years. The major risk factor for intimate partner homicide, no matter if a female or male partner is killed, is prior domestic violence. This review presents and critiques the evidence supporting the other major risk factors for intimate partner homicide in general, and for intimate partner homicide of women (femicide) in particular, namely guns, estrangement, stepchild in the home, forced sex, threats to kill, and nonfatal strangulation (choking). The demographic risk factors are also examined and the related phenomena of pregnancy-related homicide, attempted femicide, and intimate partner homicide-suicide.
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This paper reviews and critiques the origin and development of a new specialty in sociology, the sociology of social problems. While social problems long has been a topic of sociological attention, it is only since the work of Blumer and, most especially, Spector & Kitsuse in the early 1970s, that a theoretically integrated and empirically viable tradition of writing and research has developed. The central proposition of this tradition is that social problems are the definitional activities of people around conditions and conduct they find troublesome, including others' definitional activities. In short, social problems are socially constructed, both in terms of the particular acts and interactions problem participants pursue, and in terms of the process of such activities through time. The founding theoretical statements are reviewed and the research is discussed in terms of the following categories: containing trouble and avoiding problems; the creation, ownership, and processing of problems; public regulatory bureaucracies and legal institutions; medicalizing problems and troubles; and social problems and the media. The paper closes with an overview of problems and insights of the perspective. There is a bibliography of 105 items.
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This paper examines the role of the police as news sources in Canada. Analysis focuses on the ways in which the police patrol the regions of their organization to which journalists can have access, and on the forms of enclosure they effect over knowledge about their activities. The analysis builds upon theoretical foundations laid by Goffman and Giddens regarding privacy and revelation, illustrating that their social psychological formulations can be extended to the organizational and sociological levels. A typology is developed to distinguish police practices in back region enclosure (secrecy), back region disclosure (confidence), front region enclosure (censorship), and front region disclosure (publicity). Journalists' efforts to overcome the spatial, social and cultural barriers erected by the police are delineated. Consideration is given to the ways in which journalists police the police: how news texts 'play back' into the police organization and affect relations and practices there, including renewed efforts to patrol the facts. The process is shown to be equivocal and problematic, respecting the fact that information is the most difficult thing to guard because it can be taken without leaving its place.
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The present study is a content analysis of crime news to determine how femicide victims are portrayed by a Florida metropolitan newspaper. The analysis consisted of 292 domestic homicide-related articles published by one newspaper from 1995 to 2000. The data were analyzed to determine effects on newsworthiness, context revealed, and patterns of victim blame. A dichotomy concerning victim blame emerged from the analysis, suggesting victims are blamed directly and indirectly for their own femicides. Direct tactics include using negative language to describe the victim, highlighting her choices not to report past incidences, and portraying her actions with other men as contributing to her murder. Indirect tactics include using sympathetic language to describe the perpetrator; emphasizing the perpetrator's mental, physical, emotional, and financial problems; highlighting the victim's mental or physical problems; and describing domestic violence in terms that assign equal blame to both partners.
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This exploratory study of the coverage of serious crime by the New York Post is based on routine crime stories (n = 126) taken from newspapers published in 1951 and 1968. There was an increase in stories about lethal violence. In both years reporters frequently described offenders in terms of age, gender, racial membership, and employment status, and used these descriptions to situate individuals within the social world. Often, the mode of explanation used implied that male youths, nonwhites, and under- or unemployed persons were members of illegitimate social categories. These descriptions, however, included no information that would place violence and serious offenders in the structural or historical context of the postwar period. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for an understanding of the ideological con tent of crime news.
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The news media are a vital part of the process by which individuals' private troubles with crime—as victims or offenders—are transformed into public issues. The social construction of crime problems may be understood as reflecting the types of relationships that link news agencies to their sources, and the organizational constraints that structure the news-gathering process. The ways in which the news media collect, sort, and contextualize crime reports help to shape public consciousness regarding which conditions need to be seen as urgent problems, what kinds of problems they represent, and, by implication, how they should be resolved. While much attention has been focused on the ways in which media attention to crime influences the fear of crime, it is likely that the most significant effects of media reporting are broadly ideological rather than narrowly attitudinal. By restricting the terms of discussion, the news media facilitate the marginalization of competing views regarding crime and its solution.
Article
This study explores how newspapers portray domestic violence fatalities, how accurately they reflect the victim' experiences and the broader social problem of domestic violence, and the implications of the patterns of portrayal. Using quantitative content analysis and frame analysis, the authors examined 1998 coverage of domestic violence homicides by all newspapers in Washington State. Overall, the analyses indicate that coverage gave a distorted view of domestic violence and victims' experiences, often supporting common misconceptions about domestic violence. The coverage generally presented domestic violence in terms of isolated incidents, rather than portraying it as a larger social problem. A handful of articles did not fit this mold. These portrayed domestic violence as a social problem with the potential to affect every reader, indicating that domestic violence fatalities can be more accurately portrayed within the boundaries of current journalistic norms and practices and pointing to ways journalists can improve coverage.
Article
The news media help shape society’s perception of social problems as well as public opinion of victims and offenders. Currently, there is extensive research devoted to the media’s portrayal of violence against women but very little examination of femicide (for purposes of this research, defined as the murder of female intimate partners). Using newspaper coverage of femicide cases across the state of North Carolina over a 6-year period (995 articles representing 299 cases), the current study examines the news media’s use of direct and indirect victim-blaming language, the sources cited in femicide reporting, and whether femicide cases are contextualized as an individual problem or within the broader social issue of intimate partner violence (IPV). Consistent with previous research, findings indicate that public sources (i.e., law enforcement) were the most commonly cited sources of information in news coverage of femicide compared to private sources (i.e., friends and family); however, domestic violence experts are cited more often than in prior studies. In addition, direct and indirect victim-blaming language is not as pervasive as previous research has suggested. Finally, the percentage of articles that contextualized the femicide as IPV is lower than that found in prior studies of femicide. Implications of these findings and future research are discussed.
Article
Links between the emergence of social problems and the welfare state are examined, with particular attention to the place of the "troubled persons" professions, mass media and educational institutions, the place of the language of conflict and consensus in social problems activities, contested and uncontested definitions of problem conditions, how meanings and problems are transformed, and how mobilization activities contribute to these transformations. The paper ends with a plea to move the study of social problems closer to the study of how social movements and institutions affect and are affected by the interpretations, the language, and the symbols that constitute seeing a situation as a social problem in historical and institutional context.
Article
Wife beating has become the object of media attention and government policy, not because of an increase in its frequency, or because the public has become more concerned, but because a social movement developed in the 1970s to help battered women. The growth of the battered women movement illustrates both successful resource mobilization and the creation of a social problem. Pre-existing organizational ties, structural and ideological flexibility, and, in particular, the benefits sponsors gain by supporting movement activities account for the movement's rapid growth and impact. At the same time, increasing co-optation is affecting both how wife beating is defined and managed, and the course of the movement itself.
Article
An analysis of the content, language, and ideology of the 1982 New York Daily News Crimefighters Campaign was performed. It is concluded that the Campaign—molded as it was with apocalyptic language suggesting a society terminally ill with crime—presented the issue of crimefighting in a way that excluded any purposive, social policies from the range of acceptable remedies for crime. Instead, the Campaign depicted a world in which unpredictability and randomness dictated violent individual measures to protect one's self and property. While announced to “stem the awful tide of crime,” the Campaign actually implied the contradictory message that crime is beyond any remedy.
Article
The terms wife abuse and battered woman were coined in the 1970s. Although such naming is meaningful, these social constructions are restrictive so that only a narrow range of behaviors and people fit these labels. With the help of interviews with Hindu Asian Indian immigrants, this article highlights the importance of including the experiences of diverse groups of women in any analysis of domestic violence. Thirty people, 5 abused Asian Indian women who had sought help from support groups, 11 members of South Asian support groups, and 14 married, nonabused women living in a city on the east coast of the United States were interviewed for this study. The study challenges the popular perception of abused women, specifically South Asian battered women, as passive victims.
Article
This article describes political discourse on domestic violence that obscures men's violence while placing the burden of responsibility on women. This perspective, which the author calls patriarchal resistance, challenges a feminist construction of the problem. Using a qualitative analysis of men's and political magazines, the author describes two main discursive strategies used in the resistance discourse: degendering the problem and gendering the blame. These strategies play a central role in resisting any attempts to situate social problems within a partiarchal framework. It is argued that this is a political countermovement to the feminist constructions of domestic violence as opposed to a serious concern about women's violence and male victims. Three major implications this resistance discourse has are the normalization of intimate violence, the diversion of attention from men's responsibility and cultural and structural factors that foster violence, and the distortion of women's violence.
Article
This paper reviews and critiques the origin and development of a new specialty in sociology, the sociology of social problems. While social problems long has been a topic of sociological attention, it is only since the work of Blumer and, most especially, Spector & Kitsuse in the early 1970s, that a theoretically integrated and empirically viable tradition of writing and research has developed. The central proposition of this tradition is that social problems are the definitional activities of people around conditions and conduct they find troublesome, including others' definitional activities. In short, social problems are socially constructed, both in terms of the particular acts and interactions problem participants pursue, and in terms of the process of such activities through time. The founding theoretical statements are reviewed and the research is discussed in terms of the following categories: containing trouble and avoiding problems; the creation, ownership, and processing of problems; public reg...
Article
Explores the issues and problems that have emerged in news reporting of rape. Evaluates the adequacy of journalism texts and other materials in relationship to the teaching of these issues. Proposes an approach to improving journalism training on rape-related issues. Discusses appropriate material for an introductory reporting course and describes a teaching method. (SR)
Article
Each chapter in this book concerns a particular social problem: child abuse, missing children, AIDS [acquired immune deficiency syndrome], and so on. We usually answer the question "What are social problems?" by pointing to such examples. Typification is an integral part of social problems construction. Claimsmakers inevitably characterize problems in particular ways: They emphasize some aspects and not others; they promote specific orientations; and they focus on particular causes and advocate particular solutions. While all claims involve typification, and while constructionist research often describes typification, typification is not usually the focus of the analysis. That is the task of this book. The individual chapters explore the nature of typification. Each presents a case study of contemporary claims-making, focusing on how a particular social problem was constructed and typified. The chapters are grouped around four themes: claims, claims-makers, cycles, and social policies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
explores the themes of naming, defining, and redefining sexual violence, using data from an in-depth study of how women experience and cope with sexual violence after examination of current definition of sexual violence, the feminist perspective underlying the methodology and analysis is presented after detailed discussion of the factors affecting how women defined their experiences of sexual violence, implications for research design, intervention, and feminist research and practice are summarized (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
This textual analysis of the newspaper coverage of the murder of a battered woman by her husband shows how myths and stereotypes combine to blame the victim for her own death. It also demonstrates the interconnection of gender, race, and class in the representation of violence against women.
Article
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