Isolated Incidents. Media reporting on violence against women in the German press

Abstract

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.