News Coverage of Violence against Women: Engendering Blame

Representation of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in Swedish News Media: A Discourse Analysis

“…Contrasting with previous research observing that IPVAW is often described as one-time events of "snapping" (Fairbairn & Dawson, 2013;Meyers, 1996), included articles commonly referred to or even emphasized the perpetrators' history of violence. However, descriptions of events as quarrels or fights, or implications that a quarrel caused the IPVAW, were also common.…”

“…References to the personality and temper of abusers have also been noted to pathologize and excuse IPVAW (Isaacs & Mthembu, 2018;Nationellt Centrum för Kvinnofrid & Uppsala University, 2014). Such tendencies toward pathologizing or excusing IPVAW allow readers to maintain a distance from IPVAW and understand it as an individual rather than a societal problem (Meyers, 1996), thus not requiring societal change.…”

“…Despite the importance of discursive representation in news reporting for the creation of public consensus about a phenomenon (Meyers, 1996;van Dijk, 1988van Dijk, , 1993a, apart from a study looking at three Swedish newspapers during 2012 (Nationellt Centrum för Kvinnofrid [NCK] & Uppsala University, 2014), limited academic attention has been paid to aggregated representation of IPVAW in Swedish news media. Nevertheless, international research on the representation of IPVAW in news reports has pointed to problematic practices including tendencies toward describing individual aggressors with an emphasis on their positive characteristics, as violent actions have tended toward being excused or justified, or as deviant and different from the majority population (Fairbairn & Dawson, 2013;Leung, 2019;Lloyd & Ramon, 2017;Meyers, 1996;Pepin, 2016;Richards et al, 2014;Venäläinen, 2016). Patterns of victim-blaming, through which the cause of IPVAW is sought in the individual victim's behavior or characteristics, and of the construction of mutual responsibility for IPVAW, have also been observed (Fairbairn & Dawson, 2013;Hernández, 2018;Leung, 2019;Lloyd & Ramon, 2017;Meyers, 1996;Pepin, 2016;Venäläinen, 2016).…”

“…Individualistic discursive tendencies in media reporting on IPVAW are further expressed in the rare inclusion of IPVAW experts or of reference to resources such as helplines or local shelters (Fairbairn & Dawson, 2013;Hernández, 2018;Leung, 2019;Richards et al, 2014). Acts of IPVAW have often been depicted as cases of "snapping" or as "crimes of passion," with violence represented as sudden or unavoidable, even when it was premeditated or continuous (Fairbairn & Dawson, 2013;Lloyd & Ramon, 2017;Meyers, 1996;Richards et al, 2014). Such tendencies toward individualization of IPVAW, and of representing the violence as sudden, coexists with research pointing to IPVAW existing across sociodemographic groups (Lundgren et al, 2002;Nybergh et al, 2013) and often taking the form of a continuum of violence (Kelly, 1988).…”

“…The entire articles were not coded but only the parts that were relevant to the research question. Discursive explanatory models were identified through a focus on attributed responsibility for the IPVAW and on "overcompleteness," that is, inclusion of details not necessary for recounting the event, which could thus be considered explanatory (Meyers, 1996;van Dijk, 1993a).…”