Canadian News Coverage of Officer-Involved Domestic Violence: A Comparative Content Analysis

• In Event: Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Victimization in the Media

Abstract

An increasing amount of international academic and media attention has been focused upon officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV)—where a police officer is the perpetrator of domestic violence—with U.S. prevalence rates ranging from 20 to 40%. This heightened prevalence has been attributed to various factors including, but not limited to, the traditional police subculture; the nature of police work; occupational and organizational stressors; job burnout; authoritarian personality; and alcohol abuse. While the majority of research in the area has been derived from the United States, research relating to OIDV in Canada has been non-existent. Data for this content analysis were drawn from online Canadian newspapers published between 2003 and 2013. More than 250 cases are used to compare how the media portray police officers and civilians who perpetrate domestic violence in Canada, while simultaneously producing preliminary empirical data on OIDV in Canada. Drawing from a social constructionist perspective, media portrayals of OIDV will be assessed to determine what factors are used to explain this phenomenon and if they differ from those used to explain civilian domestic violence.

Author

• Danielle Sutton, University of Guelph