Canadian News Media Construction of Intimate Partner Femicide

• In Event: Media and social construction of crime I

Abstract

News media have an important role to play in preventing intimate femicide, defined as the killing of a woman by her current or former intimate partner. Media representations are a key space for understanding and shaping attitudes surrounding violence against women, an elusive area of primary prevention work, but critical to social change. Internationally, researchers and advocates are increasingly vocal about the invisibility, downplaying, and/or misrepresentation of femicide in the media and among society, and news media are increasingly recognized as not only information sources, but as active participants in social change. As such, this work approaches media (including social media, digital platforms, and journalists) as powerful institutions and actors that must be included in critical and feminist criminological work on violence.
This paper analyzes Canadian news media response to intimate partner femicide with a view to increasing media capacity to operate as an agent of primary prevention. Situated in critical criminological, constructionist, and intersectional feminist approaches to analyzing media, we share research findings from our ongoing study of news representations of cases of intimate partner femicide in Canada. In analyzing approximately 1500 news articles to date, our focus is on how intimate partner femicide is described and what causal factors are identified. We consider the potential implications of these news constructions, as well as the pivotal role that journalist collaboration, education, and training plays in increasing the capacity of news media to operate as a site of primary prevention.

Authors

• Jordan Fairbairn, Kings University College at Western University

• Myrna Dawson, University of Guelph

• Ciara Boyd, University of Guelph