https://orcid.org/0009-0006-9154-1700
Abstract
Men’s violence against women is an international problem and while global and national initiatives have been created to better the criminalization process, the influence of news reporting on violence against women has not been successfully addressed in such policy. The aim of this study is to contribute to understanding how media frames violence against women in the Swedish context, which is both highly protective of crime reporting and where violence against women is a central policy and public discussion issue. A mixed methods approach was used in the analysis of 295 digital news articles that were published by four media outlets (Aftonbladet, Expressen, Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter) within the period January 1st, 2019–December 31st, 2021. The study found that digital news articles first frame the issue of violence against women as episodic, but later transform into a thematic frame when follow-up articles were written on a given case. The study found a construction of victimhood by Swedish news media that allowed for two victim personas to be identified: the ideal victim and the ideal minority victim. In connection with the portrayal of the victim, the study also identified two different portrayals of the perpetrator: the ideal foreign perpetrator and the Swedish perpetrator. Both the description of the victim and perpetrator allowed for insights to be made regarding the role of racialization in news reporting and how this effects the framing of social issues. Finally, the study presented a set of news values that were most frequently found in articles that reveal several news factors of violence against women that contribute to the topic being seen as newsworthy.
INTRODUCTION
Over the past decade, the Swedish Government has increased its efforts to combat the issue and to increase the awareness of violence against women. This ambition is evident by various policies such as the Swedish Government’s communication (Regeringskansliet, Citation2016b) “Power, goals and agency—a feminist policy” and the government’s “National strategy to prevent and combat men’s violence against women” (Regeringskansliet, Citation2016a). Objectives of the national strategy to prevent and combat men’s violence against women are: 1) Increased and effective efforts to prevent violence; 2) improved detection of violence and stronger protection of and support to women and children subjected to violence; 3) more effective law enforcement; and 4) improved knowledge and methodological development (Regeringskansliet, Citation2017). Märta Stenevi, previous Minister for Gender Equality and Housing with responsibility for urban development and the work against segregation, said the following when presenting the policy and proposed budget:
We propose that over the next three years, the allocated work against men’s violence against women, violence in close relationships and honor-related violence and oppression will increase to a permanent level of 1.2 billion per year. Now we put money behind the words. As long as a single woman is killed by her husband, boyfriend, or ex, we have more to do. (Regeringskansliet, Citation2021)
Violence against women has been a concern for Sweden as shown in recent policy making and reform, and studies have shown the relevance of media framing societal issues such as violence against women, yet new policies in government fail to include media in their analysis. Framing is both relevant and supported in multiple disciplines, where Gamson (Citation1989, p. 161) defines a frame as, “a central organizing idea for making sense of relevant events and suggesting what is at issue.” To a further extent, Gitlin (Citation1980, p. 7) media frames are “largely unspoken and unacknowledged, organize the world both for journalists who report it and, in some important degree, for us who rely on their reports.” Thus, the value of media framing is relevant for studies that aim to understand how media is reporting an issue and/or how these media frames are relevant for pertinent issues that affect society.
If looking at the issue of violence against women in a country such as Sweden, we see that the issue has been identified by lawmakers as important and relevant but also an issue that coexists with a media environment that is highly protective regarding publishing regulation. These two entities (high government action and protective media laws) make reporting of violence against women constrictive in what is legally acceptable to publish, potentially skewing the image of relevancy that violence against women has in Swedish society. Publishing policy in Sweden identifies that:
Media policy is to provide the conditions for the free formation of opinion, the free exchange of ideas and real opportunities to scrutinize various phenomena and activities in society. Media policy covers film, the daily press, radio and TV, and the protection of children and young people from harmful effects of the media. (Regeringskansliet, Citation2014, para 1)
Carefully consider the consequences of a name publication that could harm people [and that] if no name is given, avoid publishing a picture or information about occupation, title, age, nationality, gender or anything else that makes identification possible. (Journalist Förbundet, Citation2021, para 6, my translation)
As a result of these publishing policies and media regulation, news articles reporting violence against women are not only limited in the details they can provide, but also in connecting a case of violence against women with the phenomena that is present globally and in Sweden. Policy making in Sweden has been active in the efforts surrounding the criminalization of violence against women but limits these efforts to the field of criminal justice. There are not many studies that have been performed in media environments that are highly protective in regard to publishing regulation but also highly protective when it comes to the government’s policy and action concerning violence against women.
Aim, Research Questions and Disposition
Hence, the aim of this study is to contribute to understanding how media frames violence against women in the Swedish context, which is both highly protective of crime reporting and where violence against women is a central policy and public discussion issue. To understand how media frames the issue of violence against women in Sweden, I will be using a mixed methods approach that analyzes digital news articles published by four Swedish news outlets (Aftonbladet, Expressen, Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter) between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2021. This study aims to understand how news reporting contributes to the construction of victimhood and newsworthiness. Qualitative analysis is the main point of analysis, providing insight into the effects of framing in news reporting of violence against women as well as the construction of victimhood and the role of the perpetrator. Quantitative analysis contributes to the construction of violence against women as newsworthy in news reporting that include quantitative measurement of the following: word count, categorization of the article, inclusion of an image, and frequency of reporting of a single case of violence against women. In order to achieve the aim of this study, I pose the following research questions:
RQ1: How do digital news articles frame the issue of violence against women in news reporting?
RQ2: How does media portray the victim and the offender, respectively?
RQ3: How are violence against women cases constructed as newsworthy?
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Framing Theory
Framing originates in the field of sociology, and derives from the construct of people’s interpretation of reality and furthermore, how people’s everyday life depends fundamentally on interaction and the definition of situations (Berger & Luckmann, Citation1967). Berger and Luckman identify the role of the individual member of society, “who simultaneously externalizes his own being into the social world and internalizes it as a personal objective reality. In other words, to be in society is to participate in its dialectic,” (Berger & Luckmann, Citation1967, p. 269). Gitlin would move the concept of framing into the field of mass communication in 1980 when he scrutinized major news coverage in the early days of the antiwar movement, pointing out that the consumers of mass media relied on journalists’ accounts of events allowing for select aspects or happenings to be and emphasized (Gitlin, Citation1980).
By expanding the concept of a frame, framing became useful for communication studies and most relevant for this study, in the field of journalism and journalistic messages. Concepts of framing identified that the media had a large competence to generate and modify the social frameworks of interpretation, through their ability to intervene in the creation of a shared social discourse of the publics that were exposed to their efforts. Media framing refers to the process of organizing news stories to place emphasis on certain issues and attaching meaning to those issues (Littlejohn & Foss, Citation2011; Siefkes-Andrew & Alexopoulos, Citation2019). To a greater extent, framing explains how news media influences us to think in a certain way on different issues and how the journalist (or powers that influence the journalist) chooses to highlight certain aspects of a problem or a particular issue more than others (Engström, Citation2008; Lassfolk & Magnusson, Citation2020).
News Value Theory and Newsworthiness
During the initial stages of the reporting and social construction process, the media determine what is newsworthy and make judgments about the public appeal and public interest of a story based on several factors including a series of news structures and values (e.g., predictability, proximity, violence) that journalists rely on to determine what will attract the most attention and generate interest from the audience. (Jewkes, Citation2015, p. 46)
Walter Lippman (Citation1922) is widely credited as the first person to suggest a range of attributes, or news factors, that lend value to events and tried to explain why media personnel select some events and news and reject others. It wasn’t until 1965 that news value theory would be given a theoretical framework by Galtung and Ruge who conceptualized and proposed the theory that if a news story meets certain standards and conditions, it will be published in the media and may see prominent placement (Galtung & Ruge, Citation1965; Ittefaq, Citation2018).
Given the knowledge of what news values drive higher engagement via news consumers, journalists and media publications can discern certain inherent factors of a news item, thus determining its newsworthiness and likelihood of being included in a digital or print publication. News factors are considered to influence the allocation of cognitive resources or focal attention. Accordingly, news values are assumed to stem from deviance and social significance (Araujo & GLA van der Meer, Citation2018; Eilders, Citation2006; Wendelin et al., Citation2017).
One of the leading interests of this study is the presence of “newsworthiness” within the framing of news reporting when reporting a case of violence against women in Sweden. News, according to Jackie Harrison is that which “is judged to be newsworthy by journalists, who exercise their news sense within the constraints of the news organizations within which they operate.” (Harrison, Citation2006; O’Neill & Harcup, Citation2008; Wahl-Jorgensen & Hanitzsch, Citation2008). As shared in the Oxford University Press, Dictionary of Media & Communication, “newsworthiness” is defined as: The reportability of an event by journalists; the extent to which some event, occurrence, statement, or observation has the potential to become news.” (Chandler & Munday, Citation2016; Harcup, Citation2014).
Journalism informs its audiences that something worthy of note has happened. Newsworthy events are of short duration and take place in a specific place; they are, what is more, something out of the ordinary, an aberration from normal everyday routines (Ekström, Citation2002; Molek-Kozakowska, Citation2013). The implementation of newsworthiness in journalism reveals a subjective viewpoint, leaving the reader and researchers with a heavily biased sample of reporting that fails to identify and relay the urgency of a systemic societal issue. News outlets try to make their information appear relevant, urgent or unusual. For this purpose, they customize news through selectivity or enhancement, generalization or simplification, emotionalism or sensationalism (Molek-Kozakowska, Citation2013).
The Construction of Victimhood
In 1986, Nils Christie published a now seminal article on his theoretical framework for the ideal victim (Christie, Citation1986; Lewis et al., Citation2021). Based on his research and personal experiences, he posited that the ideal victim possesses six characteristics: he or she 1) is weak, 2) blameless, 3) carrying out a noble task, 4) was harmed by malign forces or actors, 5) but these forces cannot be specifically identified, and 6) the victim can effectively claim victim status (Christie, Citation1986; Lewis et al., Citation2021, p. 4324).
The construction of the “ideal” victim in the media has been evident in cases around the world, and most notably in criminal cases that garnered international attention. A study published by van Wijk (Citation2013) used Christie’s ideal victim framework to explore to what extent the victim and offender attributes developed by Christie might be applicable and sufficient to understand the position of victims in the context of international crimes in comparison with “conventional crimes.” Van Wijk (Citation2013) found that Christie’s assertions seemed largely appropriate in the context of international crimes and also that a continuum of non-ideal to very ideal victims seemed to exist. Differences in the ideal victim of an international crime compared to victims of conventional crimes was that victims of international crimes needed to ‘sell’ their case to the international media and these victims were far less likely to benefit from their victim status (van Wijk, Citation2013, p. 174). Given the portrayal and extension of victimhood to include the ideal victim, research has come to also include the construction of the ideal perpetrator. As Schwobel-Patel shares:
The ideal offender, therefore, is the antithesis of the ideal victim; the offender is strong, male and puts himself at risk; he is independent and politicized and rather than carrying the empathy-inducing characteristics of the grotesque, the ideal offender is simply ‘ugly’. The depiction of evil. (Schwöbel-Patel, Citation2018, p. 718)
The negotiation or removal of one’s humanity traces into the portrayal of one’s personhood, as was researched by Meese et al. who identified some of the more prominent ways that digital media can extend one’s personhood following death (Meese et al., Citation2015). Anthropological research supports the concept of one’s personhood remaining once an individual has passed on, revealing that, “for many cultures, the social, symbolic and mnemonic significance of the dead body does not end with the extinguishing of vital signs” (Williams, Citation2004, p. 265). Relevance of personhood in this study is found in the descriptions of victims that were murdered or died because of lethal violence against women. Following their death, news reporting attempts to describe and relate the victim to Swedish society but is still required to remain in conjuncture of publishing policies.
PREVIOUS LITERATURE
Research in recent years has become interested in the reporting of violence against women as an area of journalism that seeks to “provide a glimpse of reality.” This “reality” is largely focused on reporting seemingly isolated events, rather than reporting violence against women as a systemic issue (Simons & Morgan, Citation2018). In regards to the global influence of news media, it is important that research efforts bring awareness to the biases of media that influence a lack of social responsibility and agency when it comes to systemic issues such as violence against women (Carll, Citation2003). The literature on media framing of violence against women can be divided into three subcategories: media framing of the issue of violence against women as episodic versus thematic, media framing of violence against women as a newsworthy subject in news reporting and the constructing of victimhood in relation to media framing of violence against women.
Episodic and Thematic Framing
One way that media messages give meaning to issues and connect them with the larger political environment is through framing. A frame “suggests how the issue should be thought about and understood” (Nelson & Kinder, Citation1996, p. 1057). ‘Episodic’ or event- oriented frames, versus ‘thematic’ or those frames attempting to provide context or a systemic-link between events are two common frames that news reporting of sexual assault and cases that involve violence against women.
As is in the interest of this study, if an article is reporting a case of violence against women and the case is not stated to be related to a larger systemic issue, episodic framing is present and provides a perception of the incident as a “isolated” or “case-by-case” occurrence. In comparison, if the issue of violence against women is framed as to identify the issue as one that is societal, framing is then considered thematic. Reports that use a “thematic” frame emphasize the systemic and structural elements of the problem of violence against women (Morgan & Politoff, Citation2012). This could include elements such as statistics about prevalence, warning signs, criminal justice processes, government responses or public health perspectives that focus on prevention or the health and social consequences of violence against women (Carlyle et al., Citation2008; Easteal et al., Citation2021).
Research that focuses on identifying how society views the issue of violence against women has come to include how media frames the issue of violence against women, largely, who is responsible for an act of violence against a woman. Research efforts across multiple continents, countries and cultures have identified both a framing of the issue of violence against women as a responsibility entirely burdened by the individual or the placement of responsibility on not only the individual but largely on society to find a solution to a larger problem.
Episodic framing that depicts violence against women as a series of disconnected, random events is problematic because audiences are more likely to attribute individual blame rather than societal responsibility for the violence (Devries et al., Citation2013; Sutherland et al., Citation2019). The efforts of Carlyle et al provide a nationally representative content analysis of newspaper coverage of intimate partner violence (IPV) in the US over a 2-year period and compared this coverage to epidemiological data in order to examine the implications of the discrepancies between coverage and social reality. Their findings show that newspaper framing of IPV tends to be heavily skewed toward episodic framing, which focuses on the individual and tends to ignore the larger social context within which IPV occurs (Carlyle et al., Citation2008). Additionally, the same conclusion of episodic framing was made by Maxwell et al, who shared that “episodic framing dominated coverage is consistent with previous research examining domestic violence, which suggests that coverage focuses on the individual and tends to ignore social factors that help perpetuate violence” (Carlyle et al., Citation2008, p. 181; Maxwell et al., Citation2000).
Connecting “Othering” and Victimhood
Not only has research on violence against women in media provided insight into the issue of violence against women being identified as episodic and responsibility placed on the individual, but the concept of “othering” has been brought to the surface as an additional journalistic practice or common theme among articles. Kozol (Citation1995, pp. 648–649) argues that, “by denying the normalcy of the act, media representations of IPV may allow the public to distance themselves from the issue” while simultaneously reproducing “popular assumptions about public and private spheres as well as ideals of race and gender that are embedded in national discourses.”
Journalists have the power to discretely or non-discreetly identify and ostracize the issue of violence against women, through “ascribing it to persons or groups labeled as deviant or different from the majority population, have often invoked national, cultural, or racializing categorizations” (Karlsson et al., Citation2021, p. 1502). Karlsson et al.’s study showed stronger tendencies toward using a more structural discourse when news articles represented intimate partner violence (against women) perpetrators as non-Swedish, confirming the presence of tendencies in Swedish public discourse toward othering of intimate partner violence against women through associating it with structural patterns located in non-Swedish rather than Swedish contexts (Karlsson et al., Citation2021).
Another element of stimulus that “othering” provides is seen in a “role reversal,” such as when an act of violence happens to an individual that is of a certain social class or lifestyle that the majority of society does not identify as vulnerable or “likely” to fall victim. The victim’s background does not meet the societal image of “who is most vulnerable” to men’s violence, most commonly suggesting a certain social class, economic status, ethnic background or even religious affiliation. In the study, Reporting rape: Language, neoliberalism, and the media, conducted by Ila Nagar, news reports, editorials, and other stories were examined that directly related to the rape of a 23-year-old woman in New Delhi, India, on 16 December 2012 whom would later die as a result of the injuries sustained from the attack (Nagar, Citation2016). Nagar found that coverage of the case was much more frequent than other rape cases due to the victim not being an “an everyday rape victim” (Nagar, Citation2016). The victim was a ‘student’, was with a man when the attack happened, and the incident happened in one of the more “upmarket” areas of New Delhi (Nagar, Citation2016). The author concludes that “the incident shook the middle class, the class that has representation in the media and is represented by the media, in language use and otherwise.” (Nagar, Citation2016, p. 270). Findings identified that the linguistic choices of news media when reporting this case perpetuated existing stigmas against rape and rape survivors and a larger, systemic issue that the greater- than-typical volume of reporting implied: “that rape of a middle-class person is worse than rape, and death caused by rape is the ultimate sacrifice a victim makes” (Nagar, Citation2016).
Racialization in Sweden
One of the most recent and highly regarded studies performed in Sweden that sought to identify the racialization process in Sweden was done by Alinia (Citation2020) who found that issues of gender equality and women’s rights in relation to migrant minorities have become an arena for the production of exclusionary discourses and practices. The study provides that a strongly dominant discourse constructs notions of so-called honor culture to work as a discursive frame for the construction of otherness and ultimately distance the minority population even further from the responsibility of Swedish society (Alinia, Citation2020). Alinia’s work focuses on the racialization of Muslim communities in Sweden, and the same can be seen internationally, where “people who originate from Muslim-majority societies, especially the Middle East, are driven by ‘honor culture’ and therefore violence against women is a natural part of their behavior” (Alinia, Citation2020, p. 333; Ålund & Alinia, 2011; Strid et al., Citation2021).
While existing Swedish, Nordic and international research on honor-based violence and oppression problematize processes of immigration, minoritization, racialization and discourses of/in the receiving countries (Carbin, Citation2010; De los Reyes, Citation2003; Hellgren & Hobson, Citation2008; Korteweg, Citation2017) questions of how these factors, in turn, influence honor norms, violence and oppression are often neglected (Baianstovu, Citation2017; Baianstovu et al., Citation2019). Literature that includes Sweden has found that there are two “explanations” for honor- based violence: a patriarchal problem (Dustin & Phillips, Citation2008; Meetoo & Mirza, Citation2007; Strid et al., Citation2021, p. 1) or a cultural problem (Schlytter et al., Citation2009).
Sweden’s intersectionality of race and gender focuses on the cultural backgrounds of gender-based violence and as Alinia (Citation2020) makes clear, Swedish policies and social practices ostracize minority women and men, thus making a defining population of “us” (Swedish people) and “them” (minority groups). This distinct “otherness” blames acts of gender-based violence such as honor violence on the cultural beliefs of minority groups and goes even further to blame minority groups as “the imported problem” (Alinia, Citation2019).
This cultural and racialized blame for gender-based violence affects both the victim and the perpetrator, which researchers have come to identify the “ideal minority victim” and the foreign perpetrator. Nafstad (Citation2019) studied the minority victim in relation to Christie’s ideal victim persona and sought to identify the “ideal minority victim” in respects to victims from Roma communities in Sweden and found that a minority victim must be understood culturally as one of ‘us’—being ‘culture-free’ (Merry, Citation2003)– in order to fit into the framework of an ideal minority. Nafstad (Citation2019, p. 10) confirms the arguments of Merry (Citation2003) how agents of the Global North tend to view culture as something that belongs to the ‘other’, something static, harmful, ancient, as something primitive in contrast to “us” the bearers of a culture-free civilization.
When victims or offenders belong to certain non-dominant cultures, culture is provided as the explanation for victimhood, while culture is totally absent as a way of understanding victims and offenders when seen as representatives for ‘us’ (Lindgren & Lundström, Citation2010). The ideal minority victim as concluded does not fit into the narrative that Swedish police and court recognize in the framework of Swedish majority culture that values being representative of the truth (Nafstad, Citation2019). The (minority) victims who do not fit into this framework are not offered a victim status and are not seen as representing the ‘real’ truth due to their cultural association, and these findings contribute to the distinction of the influence of one’s nationality when determining victimhood status and the portrayal of a victim as an ideal victim exemplify the influence of “othering” in Swedish news reporting.
Nafstad’s ideal minority victim connects with the aim of this study to understand how Swedish media can portray the background of victims given Swedish publishing laws that explicitly state that individuals should not be identified by ethnicity.
Media Framing of Violence against Women as a Newsworthy Subject in News Reporting
Literature provides a basis for understanding the methods of media framing of social issues and also contribute to show that newsworthiness has been proven relevant to framing, but studies that focus on violence against women often fail to identify and assess it. Consequently, a gap in research is present that limits the understanding of newsworthy to not include violence against women on its own outside of the overarching subjects of domestic violence or murder.
More concretely, newsworthiness remains largely understudied by the literature that specifically focuses on the framing of violence against women outside of the focus of language. Research on domestic violence and homicide have revealed important results pertaining to framing but they are often quantitative and not focused solely on violence against women. Thus, there is a gap in literature and a limitation in previous research to identify qualitative evidence of newsworthiness in the reporting of violence against women and more so, how these elements of newsworthiness contribute to the framing of violence against women as a social issue.
Previous research has therefore directed sustained attention to the factors that shape selection bias generally and selection bias in news about homicide in particular (Chermak, Citation1995; Clayman & Reisner, Citation1998; Gilliam et al., Citation1996; Weiss & Chermak, Citation2012). In the context of news about murder, studies such as Lundman (Citation2003) provide that two dimensions of newsworthiness are commonly associated with such reporting of homicide: relative frequency and race and gender typification. To date, few studies have been conducted that investigate the newsworthiness of race and gender in homicide reporting, but alongside Lundman’s Citation2003 study, research still been able to find correlations between newsworthiness and cultural typification (Gilliam & Iyengar, Citation2000; Gruenewald et al., Citation2009; Pritchard & Hughes, Citation1997).
A study that focused on the subject of homicide in relation to newsworthiness but failed to address violence against women directly was conducted in the field of criminology by Gekoski et al. who explored the criteria that determine the newsworthiness of homicide by going directly to the source of decision making in UK news media (Gekoski et al., Citation2012). Researchers asked UK tabloid journalists and those working in editorial positions asked about their decision making regarding the newsworthiness of homicide and their analysis found that despite the importance of unpredictable factors, journalists clearly believed that certain types of murder-involving ‘ideal’ victims (children, women, celebrities), unusual features, extreme brutality and serial killers-were almost always of interest to the public, while certain other types-involving ‘undeserving’ victims (the underclass, previous criminals, homeless) in commonplace circumstances- were almost always not (Gekoski et al., Citation2012). These findings supported previous works that determined the ‘worthiness’ or ‘innocence’ of the victim that would become the dichotomy of the “ideal” versus the “undeserving” victim (Christie, Citation1986; Greer, Citation2007; Soothill et al., Citation2002). These studies contribute to the greater construction of which individuals are perceivable by the media as the “ideal victim” and which victims were not “worthy” of victimhood. The ideal victim will be a recurring theme throughout the remainder of this paper as it pertains to the Swedish media context and the conceptualization of the ideal victim will be discussed furthermore in the following theoretical presentation.
METHODOLOGY
Design
Analysis was first taken using a quantitative approach and then qualitative content analysis was conducted, complimented by a combination of deductive and inductive coding in successive steps. This study integrated a mixed method approach that consisted of a largely qualitative analysis of the content of digital news articles and was complemented by a small quantitative study that allowed for the conceptualization of newsworthiness to be assessed. Beginning first with a deductive “top-down” method of assigning organizational categories into codes, articles were quantitatively assessed for the following: word count: number of words in article; inclusion of image; placement of article: the category or subcategory within said online publication such as Entertainment, Culture, etc.; location of crime: in or outside of Sweden; date: between January 1st, 2019 and December 31st, 2021; publication: Aftonbladet, Expressen, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet.
Data Collection
News media outlets in Sweden were researched and the two most read “daily” news sources—Aftonbladet and Expressen—and two most read “evening” newspapers—Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter—were determined to be a comprehensive sample for this study. Kantar Sifo’s 2021 or VESTO Consumer Report (Konsument) provided that these four newspapers were determined to have the highest scope of engagement and readers via their digital news channels (Kantar Sifo, Citation2021). Print articles were not included for analysis, instead focusing on digital news articles. Both “free” articles and articles that were published under a paywall were included in this study’s analysis.
Articles were collected via the search engine Retriever Research, using the search terms (men’s violence against women [mäns våld mot kvinnor] or abuse [misshandel] or murder [mord] or death [död] or rape [våldtäkt] or violation of freedom [fridskränkning] or hate [hot] or violence [våld]) near relation [nära relation] or partner [partner] or relationship [parrelation] or relationship [förhållande] or cohabiting partner [sambo] or family [familj] or boyfriend [pojkvän] or husband [make] or girlfriend [flickvän] or wife [fru] or wife [hustru] or woman [kvinna] or men [män].
Criteria for articles to be included in this study’s data set were as follows: a) date published: articles were first published between January 1st, 2019, and December 31st, 2021; b) article type: Articles that referred to an individual case of violence against women or an article that was based on a specific incident of violence against women; c) gender of victim: Only articles that provided the gender of the victim as a (cisgender or transgender) woman or girl; d) gender of the perpetrator: The gender of the alleged perpetrator needed to be specified as a man or male individual; e) published by one of four Swedish media outlets: Aftonbladet, Expressen, Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter (The incident of violence does not need to have occurred in Sweden, but the publication must be derived from one of the stated four media outlets). The original language of print was Swedish and for the context of this study has been translated into English by the author.
To be considered for analysis, an article needed to report at least one case of violence against women. Debate articles were not included due to the content serving to report political affiliation or criticism of a political party’s engagement with the issue of violence against women rather than the reporting of a case of violence against women where article’s main objective was to report a case of violence against women. Additionally, articles that were not identified as debate articles but instead solely published under the media outlets’ Politics section were not included due to the article not reporting a specific case of violence against women or if the article only discussed current policy or legislation regarding violence against women. If a case of violence against women was published by more than one of the four designated outlets, or the case was discussed in multiple articles by the same publisher, all publications were included for analysis. Types of articles that were not included for analysis past the initial search referred to violence against women as a form of political debates, political party reform or indirect reference to violence against women where a specific case was not the focus or main subject matter. The following section will provide detail into the coding process and clarification for the different themes and categories identified during the analysis process.
Coding
Once initial organizational categories and codes were established, articles were then assessed qualitatively and with inductive analysis to establish any themes, reoccurring patterns, or stark differences between articles. The first round of coding provided descriptive codes with the following examples: celebrity: the victim or the perpetrator is associated with a professional sports team, is a celebrity or person of elite-status; Swede or non-Swede: the perpetrator is of Swedish decent or they come from another country; type of crime: the case detailed within the article details domestic abuse, violence within an intimate partner relationship, case of homicide/murder, rape, etc.; reference to a larger social issue or isolated event: somewhere within the article, the issue of violence against women is voiced as a societal issue, the author of the article details that the case discussed is associated with other crimes of violence against women rather than an isolated incident or the case is isolated to the individuals involved.
A second round of structural coding provided greater insight into how the victim and the perpetrator were described, if they previously knew one another or had a relationship, how the crime was described and what details were included, and how references were made to imply a non-swedish nationality of either the perpetrator or victim. Through the second round of coding regarding the description of the victim, the characterization of the “ideal” victim was identified and assessed in later efforts of analysis.
Additionally, each article was assessed in the second round of coding to determine how the case in detail was connected to a structural/societal problem; thematic or if the case was described and referred to as an individual instance of crime; episodic. Methodology for assessing articles as an episodic or thematic frame is as follows:
‘Episodic’ frame
If an article reports a single incident of violence against women with a focus on the person, place, and time, with no evidence of explaining the cause or context of the incident (Iyengar, Citation1991). Articles that were found to be episodic lacked the connection of the case of violence against women being reported to another case of violence against women or a larger problem of violence against women, no inclusion of statistics or figures that referenced a larger population or group within Swedish or international society, and the lack of reference to support organizations accessible through local or national assistance.
‘Thematic’ frame
If an article details primarily with trends over time or themes relating to the public and society, such as the inclusion of information about victimization rates, government action and responses to violence against women or public response to violence against women, then it may be categorized as having a ‘thematic’ frame (Iyengar, Citation1991).
Victimization rates within articles included figures/numbers that referenced societal statistics, links to the contact information for violence against women or intimate partner violence against women organizations, articles that were reporting public protests as a result of a case of violence against women in Sweden or abroad or reference to an additional case of violence against women. Framing of articles and cases that were reported on more than once were also assessed as potentially combining an episodic frame and a thematic frame once descriptive characteristics of the individuals involved, and the responsibility of the crime had been clearly stated to not be the victim’s fault but rather the perpetrators.
Coding efforts included identification of the foreign “other” when articles provided that the background of the aggressor or victim was of non-Swedish descent. For this study a sociological definition of “othering” was incorporated, rather than a psychological definition of Othering, which refers to “otherness” as the process of attaching moral codes of inferiority to difference (Pickering, Citation2001; Schwalbe et al., Citation2000) the critical discursive tool of discrimination and exclusion used against individuals on the basis of their belonging to marginalized groups (Boréus, Citation2006; Riggins, Citation1997; Krumer-Nevo & Sidi, Citation2012, p. 300).
Two themes emerged in the coding that provided “othering” in the description of the victim and “othering” of the perpetrator and his motives for the crime of violence against women. Victims that were not of Swedish origin were also identified in articles, both for crimes committed in Sweden as well as those committed in other countries. Coding to indicate newsworthiness was based on Harcup and O’Neil’s list of Contemporary News Values, to indicate news values that were prominent in the 295 digital news articles. News values provided by Harcup and O’Neill (Citation2017) that were the most relevant to this analysis included: Bad news: Stories with particularly negative overtones such as death, injury, defeat and loss (of a job, for example); Conflict: Stories concerning conflict such as controversies, arguments, splits, strikes, fights, insurrections, and warfare; Follow-up: Stories about subjects already in the news; The power elite: Stories concerning powerful individuals, organizations, institutions, or corporations; Celebrity: Stories concerning people who are already famous. Harcup and O’Neil’s list allowed for a departure point of deductive coding to identify newsworthiness and was complimented by quantitative methods of analysis that assessed the following factors: word count, categorization of article by news source, frequency of case reported, and if the article included an image of the perpetrator or victim or both individuals.
ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
The following has been broken into three sections that correspond with the research questions that were posed at the beginning of this paper. Each section will provide examples of statements found in digital news articles published by one of the four designated Swedish news outlets and insights will be offered that share what details and information media is able to share and frame while existing in a highly protective publishing environment.
The Framing of Violence against women in News Reporting
The following section will provide the results of analysis pertaining to the overall framing of violence against women in the 295 digital news articles provided in this study’s data set and answers RQ1: How do digital news articles frame the issue of violence against women in news reporting?
When determining if articles were framed in an episodic or thematic frame, or a combination of both, analysis asked: “Was the news coverage largely ‘episodic’, allowing readers to deflect blame away from themselves and society at large, or ‘thematic’ that encouraged introspection to place one’s own responsibility within the issue?” (Iyengar, Citation1991; A. H. Shah, Citation2019, p. 55).
Digital news articles that were reporting a case of violence against women provided an episodic frame for a majority of articles, especially in articles that were the first to report a case that did not include identifying characteristics of either the perpetrator or victim. Analysis provided that of the 295 articles, 93 articles (31.5%) referred the case of violence against women being reported to a larger social problem. Of those 93 articles, 47 directly referred to violence against women as an issue in Sweden while 31 referred to violence against women as a social issue in a country other than Sweden.
Cases of violence against women that received a follow-up article saw the issue of responsibility being displaced from the individual toward other outlets of society, thus transitioning the episodic framing of the initial article that reported the case into a follow-up article that further developed the case into a thematic frame. Articles that were found to be thematic consisted of follow-ups and as well as a small amount of articles that were detailing a case of violence against women that sparked public outrage and included: victimization rates in Sweden or the country of origin of the crime being reported, government or public responses to violence against women (public protests), and the identification of the victim as one of “many, several, x number of cases” or a larger population that account for the 1 in 3 women globally who have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their life (WHO, Citation2021).
Episodic articles detailed the initial reporting of a case of violence against women and could be quite sparse in detail. Such as the article, Woman raped in Enköping where the crime was described as, “A man in his 20’s is said to have raped a woman around 35-year-old in Enköping on Wednesday night” (Aftonbladet, Citation2021a, para. 1). The article would not go on to provide any detail regarding the victim’s identity, speculation or details regarding the motive of the perpetrator or if the case of violence against women was in connection with any other case of violence against women, making the article epistemic in its framing of the issue. Articles such as this would only go on to include if police were denying further comment regarding the case and/or if the woman had sustained any physical injuries as a result of the assault.
A shift in the framing of the issue of violence against women was first seen through follow-up articles that departed from an initial reporting objective and were able to provide more details and context into the crime and individuals involved. Articles that allowed for the growth of a thematic frame to form through a follow-up article included the case of the 15- year old girl who was kidnapped and raped by a man believed to be in his 20’s, first reported in the article, Suspected abduction of a 15-year old girl (Aftonbladet, Citation2019b). Several follow- up articles would then be published within the same day that would identify the circumstances surrounding the incident, report commentary by the victim’s family members and ultimately identify the perpetrator as a “man in his 20’s who had previously been convicted of drug smuggling” and previously convicted of juvenile crimes (Granlund, Citation2019, para. 10). Responsibility of the crime was removed from the individual victim and instead framed as the result of a man who was previously known to police for unlawful behavior. Two follow-up articles that were analyzed included reference to the state of offense that the perpetrator faced as a result of his crimes, escalating the previous crime of kidnapping to, “probable cause on suspicion of unlawful deprivation of liberty and rape of a child” (Bardell & Aftonbladet, Citation2019, para. 4).
Thematic frames were found in articles that included victimization rates in Sweden or the country of origin of the crime being reported, government or public responses to violence against women (public protests), and the identification of the victim as one of “many, several, x number of cases or women.” For example, articles found to be thematic included statements made by the victim of a case of violence against women, where she identifies herself as one of many women who have been the victim of violence against women and the stigmatization of being a victim. Moving on, thematic articles connected the case of an individual victim and that of other vulnerable women due to their immigration status, such as in the case of Betty, who came to Sweden to be with a partner who would later abuse her (Ferhatovic, Citation2020). The same article identifies that violence against women is not only a problem in a specific region of the world, but the issue of violence against women is prevalent in different ways all over the globe:
Mechanisms behind the violence are the same all over the world, but in different cultures there are different explanations. In South America it may be said that it is about passion. In the Middle East, people talk about honor. In Sweden, it is a mental illness or substance abuse problem. It is basically about men who want power over a woman. (Ferhatovic, Citation2020, para. 18)
Analysis found that multiple cases were linked to at least one other case of violence against women, particularly in the way that the individual victims were connected to one another in digital news articles. For example, five articles connected the case of one woman’s murder with a larger number of murdered women in Sweden in the same year, “The 36-year- old woman in Fisksätra became the eleventh woman who in 2020 was murdered by a man she has or has had a relationship with” (Hjertén, Citation2021b, para. 11).
By referring to the total number of murdered women who were recently harmed by the same lethal result of violence against women, the issue of violence against women is magnified beyond the individual case that is being reported, thus identifying the issue of violence against women as thematic.
Continuing with the thematic frame of identifying one case of violence with another or a larger issue, the corpus of articles also included digital news reporting that contained a span of three weeks (during 2021) when five women were murdered by a man in Sweden. These articles would quickly connect each of the five cases with one another and create a thematic frame of urgency and spark agency. One example of how articles would report the three-week span of harm is as follows:
In less than three weeks, five women have been murdered and five men have been arrested on suspicion of murder. This is what we know about the suspected murders that once again focused on men’s violence against women in Sweden. (Palm, Citation2021, para. 1)
Another theme found was that of increased awareness or calls to action, seen in several articles that identified a case of violence against women as having increased a specific country’s awareness of the issue of violence against women and as a result of the case of violence against women, government action is questioned and/or critiqued. More than 10 articles referred to an individual case of violence against women that sparked public protests (in the country of origin) regarding the social actions against violence against women. Articles would include statements of public outrage in countries such as the UK, France, Spain and India.
Solidarity with the victim and the call for justice amassed large amounts of individuals that held public protests and demonstrations against their local governments in multiple countries. One example of these articles of outrage and demonstration provided: “Major protests have erupted (since the act) around the country demanding human justice for the woman, who was a veterinarian, and others raped in India” (Hansson, Citation2019, para. 2).
To explicate clearly what I have shown in the forgoing quotes, the majority of articles in the data set included an episodic frame, but the frame could shift toward a thematic frame if the case of violence was given a follow-up article. These follow-up articles included statements that connected cases of violence against women with other women or acts of harm, they included calls for agency by the society at large as well as the local governments and they would provide statements that removed blame from the victim and instead placed the blame with the perpetrator or the societal mechanisms that failed to protect the victim, thus placing blame and responsibility on society.
Media’s Portrayal of the Victim and the Perpetrator
The Ideal Victim
Given a highly protective environment, this study found that articles were still able to provide an ideal victim persona for four individual victims, and these victims not only had similar news values and cases, but they were also frequently written about and with similar attitudes of agency and sympathy. The news values that this study identifies as the ideal victim persona are as follows: the victim was identified through their familial role (such as a being a mother, sister, daughter), if the victim was young, and if the victim endured a level of violence that I will refer to as brutal/gruesome. Within the 295 articles analyzed, four victims’ cases of violence were reported four or more times. The descriptions of these victims and the “interest” regarding their cases can be seen as contributing to their victim status and ultimately, them being ideal victims respectively.
In the case of Gabby Petito as an ideal victim, she was labeled throughout 15 articles as a daughter, an aspiring influencer, as well as being young and in love with her fiancé. Gabby and her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, were on a road trip across the US and had been away from their home state, Florida for several months and the pair would be reported for domestic abuse following multiple altercations following reports from the public. Gabby would later be reported missing by her family in Florida following the return of Brian Laundrie without their daughter. News reports would then detail the search efforts that unfolded to find her, which would result in the recovery of her remains in a national park in Grand Tenton, Wyoming. Reports detailed the state of her body as having been the subject of physical harm, suffocation and additional gruesome acts of violence that resulted in her death and burial in an attempt to hide her body. Gabby’s status as a victim would result as her being described as young, relatable as a daughter and friend, innocent due to the status of abuse being known to others yet she remained in the relationship, and truly vulnerable as news reporting would detail how she was found and in what condition her remains were in after a having endured a lethal level of harm.
Sarah Everard was the victim of a crime that can only be described as meeting the myths and stereotypes of crimes against women by men. She, a 33-year-old woman, was walking home during the late evening, had been on the phone with her boyfriend and was misled by a policeman to believe that she was being detained. She would then be reported missing and found days later in a forest not far from where she was last seen, and the policeman who had lured her was found guilty of raping and murdering Sarah. The case sparked national and international attention, with reports detailing that there was absolutely nothing she could have done differently, and that the problem of violence against women is not to be placed on women, but rather that the problem lies in men who harm women. Sarah’s victimhood was constructed through her innocence and the worry that ensued as those close to her were unable to find her. Sarah’s vulnerability was then described as her case was elevated from a missing person to kidnapped, raped and murdered when her body was discovered in a near forest. The highest level of victimhood would be achieved in Sarah’s case when a policeman would be found guilty and arrested for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Sarah Everard, seeing as though a person of authority had abused their power to manipulate and harm a young woman.
Anastasija Jesjtjenko, 24, who was murdered by her boyfriend, a well-known historian, and her body was dumped into a lake in St. Petersburg (Aftonbladet, Citation2020b; Bjers/TT, Citation2020; Dagens Nyheter, Citation2020; Expressen, Citation2020; Möller Berg, Citation2019). Anastasija can be identified as an ideal victim through her gruesome murder, her youth and her exceptional academic career that was documented in multiple news articles that covered her death and trial of her perpetrator. Her case was consistently detailed as a gruesome death that was the result of her boyfriend being angry, drunk, and a routinely violent man toward a number of women. She was identified as a gifted and accomplished student as well as having been a former student of the man identified as both her boyfriend and murderer. Anastasia’s victimhood was constructed through not only her age, but also her academic accomplishments. She was “successful” and “driven” as articles would describe, and she achieved “innocence” as her 63-year-old, Napolean-historian boyfriend would be described as an alcoholic who had been known to abuse other women previously.
The final ideal victim that this study identified was Elin, who was frequently referenced as a young woman who suffered a gruesome death at the hands of a man she knew and described himself as a “loner.” Elin was frequently referred to in relation to the small town she was from and grew up in, her young age, and how the people around her were in shock and sorrow after not only searching for her in the area but also after having learned that she had been found and the cause of her death was a hammer and a fist of a 27-year-old man she was friends with. Elin’s murderer was identified in follow-up articles as an “outcast” and a person who “struggled” with his own anger and rage (Hjertén, Citation2021). She was identified as a sister, a young woman, and the victim of a brutal crime. She achieved ideal victim status, and her status of victimhood and vulnerability would commonly be referred to when articles would detail the extent of her injuries, the search for her by family and friends and finally a memorial held in her remembrance. Her life was described as having “never gotten to be 19,” signaling that her life was abruptly ended (Hjertén, Citation2021, para. 1). Elin’s victim status was constructed as a young woman who was beloved by her family and friends and whose life was ended too shortly by a man whom she had befriended who was psychologically unstable and brutally murdered her as a result of a game.
The four women that were identified as ideal victims in this study were all young, individual family members who were loved and missed, and they all unfortunately suffered lethal violence at the hands of men. The women’s vulnerability was highlighted in relation to the force of their perpetrator, which constructed their innocence and “true” victimhood.
The Ideal Minority Victim
To understand how a minority victim is interpreted, we also need to understand the perception of minorities as the ‘other’ (Nafstad, Citation2019). According to Fanon (Citation1986), the minority will continue to be regarded as the ‘other’ until the minority person appropriates and mimics the majority culture. This study found two victims that can be identified as ideal minority victims due to the descriptions that reports used to describe their death and the cause behind her murder as a result of her cultural beliefs. This study’s most visible ideal minority victim, Hala, was murdered by her husband, both individuals having immigrated to Sweden from Syria (Hjertén, Citation2021b, Citation2021e, Citation2021g; Hjertén & Adin Fares, Citation2021).
News reporting would identify the murder of Hala as a result of honor violence, who was murdered in Fisksätra by her husband. Hala’s case would be written about over the course of five articles, beginning with an initial article detailing the murder and arrest of her husband and would conclude with the incarceration and sentencing of her husband months later in Swedish courts. News reporting would not only identify her as a victim of violence against women over a long span of time, but also identify her as a victim due to her being a devoted mother, sister, and daughter who was isolated and vulnerable in her own home. Her role as a mother coincides with the ideal victim, but that is where the similarities end.
News reporting would identify her vulnerability in response to her never having been allowed to learn Swedish by her husband upon having moved to Sweden from Syria, 13 years ago. Reports would provide that honor violence is common amongst certain ethnic groups and that these types of violence and actions encourage isolating women due to the beliefs of their patriarchal culture. Articles would include statements by neighbors who saw Hala as “a devoted mother to her three children,” but someone that never spoke to anyone outside of her home, yet have a” kind” and “gentle” demeanor” (Hjertén, Citation2021b, para. 3).
Reports would continuously harp on the fact that over the course of 13 years, Hala would constantly be monitored when in her own home by her husband, who would murder her while their children were at school. Hala’s status of victimhood would be confirmed as articles would graphicly describe how she was shot to death in her home and how her children and neighbors would go on to be the ones to find her. Hala’s victim status was constructed in relation with honor violence being a cultural phenomenon, addressing her case of murder as one of many other victims that have been killed as a result. Her husband would be described as “weapon-crazy” and a “firearm-enthusiast” while the story of their non- Swedish background was continuously brought up and a regular theme of articles (Hjertén, Citation2021g, para. 13). Hala would be portrayed as vulnerable and weak, not only in the eyes of Swedish society but also as a victim of her culture. A culture that harms women and a culture that is inherently not Swedish.
The second ideal minority victim that was identified was Athraa, whose case and death would be connected quickly in reporting to Hala’s murder, both the result of honor-violence and men that come from a non-Swedish background and a culture of abusing women. Athraa’s murder was first described in regard to the brutality that she endured and the short amount of time that she had actually lived in Sweden. News articles that wrote about Athraa would include that after five years in Sweden she now “understood that women have rights here and that she now wanted a divorce”(Hjertén, Citation2021d, para. 21).
The same articles that would report Athraa’s death would go on to discuss how people and those working in social services can go about asking minority women if they are victims of honor violence:
Many authorities, and perhaps even private individuals, are also slowed down by the fear of being branded racists… That you think you appear to be critical of immigrants if you ask a woman from another country why she does not yet know the language or why she does not work (Hjertén, Citation2021e, para. 10).
The Ideal Foreign Perpetrator
The ideal offender is already described by Christie (Citation1986) as the ‘other’:
He is a dangerous man coming from far away. He is a human being close to not being one… The ideal offender is a distant being. The more foreign, the better. The less humane, also the better. (p. 28)
In the cases of violence against women that were found to be a result of honor violence, such as in the cases of Athraa, Hala and Amira, the actions of the perpetrators were also framed in a way so as to identify that the acts of violence against women were a result of the men’s cultural backgrounds. These three perpetrators were identified as non-Swedish, all three being identified as having come from Syria in either direct or subtle use of description. In the case of Hala, where her husband was identified as non-Swedish by stating, “He came to Sweden when he was 12-years-old” (Hjertén & Adin Fares, Citation2021, para. 11). In another article that detailed the survival of Amira, who survived years of honor-related abuse and physical assault from her husband, her husband was identified as having come from a region of Syria where the cultural beliefs were much more tolerant of honor violence and physical abuse of women in the local society: “He was from Syria, but part of the country, says Amira, who is more governed by honor-mindedness than the part she herself comes from” (Hjertén, Citation2021h, para. 10).
In addition to the reasoning of men’s violence being a result of cultural beliefs, the Ideal Foreign Perpetrator is also identified and framed as an abuser of narcotics and alcohol. Most notably found in the cases of Oleg Sokolov having murdered his girlfriend and the article, Drug smuggler who kidnapped and raped a 15-year-old girl (Granlund, Citation2019). These two cases were discussed and published over 20 times collectively, and in more than half of those articles, the perpetrators were identified as non-Swedish and having been either drunk, abusing or selling drugs. In the case of Oleg Sokolov, he was described as “manipulative, jealous and an alcoholic,” and articles reported that at the time of his arrest, he was “heavily intoxicated” (Bjers/TT, Citation2020; Möller Berg, Citation2019). In the case of the non-Swedish, drug- dealing rapist, the article framed the perpetrator as the suspect who “was sentenced to youth service a few years ago for smuggling almost 2,000 tablets of Tramadol to Arlanda after a visit to relatives in Iran” His non-Swedish nationality was also identified in the following: “According to an investigation from the Swedish Prison and Probation Service, the man came to Sweden as a teenager and went to high school in Gävle” (Granlund, Citation2019, para. 18).
Both cases above are only two examples of how Swedish digital newspapers are able to define and construct the ideal foreign perpetrator as a non-Swedish individual who abuses alcohol and narcotics. This portrayal and regular inclusion of the ideal foreign perpetrator is extremely problematic to the framing of violence against women and the harmful reporting that incorporates the ideal foreign perpetrator will be discussed further in the following discussion passage.
The Swedish Perpetrator
The minority of perpetrators were blatantly identified as being Swedish. Of the 180 articles that wrote about a case of violence against women committed in Sweden, 18 identified a non-Swedish perpetrator whereas only 15 articles identified a Swedish perpetrator. In comparison with the Ideal Foreign Perpetrator, the Swedish Perpetrator was identified and framed for his relation to the victim and for his psychiatric state in the time leading up to the assault or murder as well as his mental state at the time of the crime. The Swedish Perpetrator was framed as a man whose actions were a result of a “mental break” or even stretch the description of the perpetrator as an “outsider/outcast” of society due to their psychological state.
The Swedish perpetrator was also routinely described in relation to how he had been psychologically evaluated after his crime and incarceration. In several articles, evaluation of the perpetrator’s psychological state was explicitly detailed, such as in the case of Sandra Krantz who was murdered by her neighbor and alleged ex-partner:
A large forensic psychiatric examination performed on him shows that he suffers from a serious mental disorder and he was therefore sentenced to closed forensic psychiatric care for the murder of Sandra, the attempted murder of another man and the assault of a third. (Hjertén, Citation2021f, para. 12)
As stated previously, only 15 articles explicitly or discreetly stated the nationality of a perpetrator as Swedish, and in eight of those articles, the perpetrator’s actions were framed as a result of his mental instability. Thus, digital newspaper reporting frames the issue of men’s violence against women as a problem that is the result of Swedish men’s psychological state. The frame of mental instability as an “excuse” for violence against women mitigates the responsibility for the perpetrator’s actions and instead allows for the perpetrator to be seen as ‘vulnerable’ or ‘weak’.
In conjunction with the use of the perpetrator’s psychological state, articles that reported a case of violence against women that included a Swedish perpetrator frequently referred to the reasoning behind the man’s actions as a consequence of something the victim had said, leading to the crime being one of passion or emotion. Such as when articles included that “she wanted to leave him” or the victim having stated that she wanted a divorce. In the case of May, who was murdered by a man she had rejected, she had removed herself physically from the situation, but yet, he followed her home one evening and murdered her following the rejection (Lundberg Andersson, Citation2020). If his mental state is not the reasoning behind his crime, the Swedish perpetrator is then framed as someone who committed his crime of violence because of passion, rather than a cold criminal. The Swedish perpetrator is not exonerated from his crimes and is still framed in a ‘guilty’ light, but his personhood is kept intact due to the motive for his actions being that of passion and emotion.
To conclude, analysis showed that digital news articles published between January 1st, 2019, and December 31st, 2021 identified two types of ideal victims (the ideal victim and the ideal minority victim) and two types of perpetrators (the ideal foreign perpetrator and the Swedish perpetrator). Both types of victims achieved victimhood status, yet they differed in their innocence. The ideal victim was identified as a victim of her perpetrator’s actions, but the ideal minority victim was a victim of cultural beliefs, such as honor violence. The Swedish perpetrator differed from the ideal foreign perpetrator in that the Swedish perpetrator was framed as someone who caused harm to a woman as a result of their mental instability or their passion whereas the ideal foreign perpetrator was framed as an individual who harmed a woman as a result of their cultural beliefs and/or the influence of alcohol and narcotics throughout their lifetime. These two frames speak volumes regarding how not only violence against women is frame in Sweden but also in the international sphere, where the explanation of violence is heavily framed regarding the perpetrator’s nationality and/or foreigner status, and ultimately, how they are identified as “other” in relation to the majority race in a given location.
The Newsworthiness of Violence against Women
Quantitative indicators of newsworthiness were collected and analyzed, and research found the following:
166 articles were categorized by their media source under Crime & Justice.
38 articles were categorized by their media source under Social Conditions.
25 articles were categorized by their media source under Entertainment.
22 articles were categorized by their media source under News.
The average article length analyzed was 538 words, with the minimum word count being 27 words and the maximum length being 3926 words. In total, 153,489 words were analyzed throughout the 295 articles included in this study’s data set.
109 articles included an image of the victim or perpetrator or both individuals.
Murder or rape
Cases of murder and rape were the two most publicized acts of violence against women reported in digital news articles analyzed. 153 articles reported a case of violence against women that resulted in the death or murder of the victim. 167 articles reported a case of a woman being raped or sexually assaulted by a man.
Articles that reported a murder or lethal case of violence against women that resulted in the victim’s death reported where the woman was found, and in some cases, the state of her body upon being found. Articles that were reporting the rape of a woman were found to include if any arrest had been made, if the woman was raped indoors or outdoors, if the perpetrator was a man she had known previously, and if the victim sustained any physical injuries due to the assault.
Articles would also include if the victim self-reported the crime to police as well as how quickly she reported following the assault. Of the 84 articles that reported a case of rape, 13 articles would provide that the victim had reported the assault herself and in the majority of these articles, the victim was reported to have immediately contacted police following her assault. The inclusion of self-reporting allows for the victim to be seen as not weak and having “done everything right” given the grim situation she was faced with. She achieves victim status, but is still allowed to be identified as strong (Christie, Citation1986; Gekoski et al., Citation2012; Greer, Citation2007; Soothill et al., Citation2002).
Murder and rape cases were the most frequently reported in digital news articles and can be identified with previous research that has also found correlations between homicide and sexual assault being found to be newsworthy topics of news reporting (Chermak, Citation1995; Clayman & Reisner, Citation1998; Gekoski et al., Citation2012; Gilliam et al., Citation1996; Weiss & Chermak, Citation2012).
Intimate partner violence against women
Of the 295 articles, 45% of articles analyzed reported a case of violence against women where the victim was assaulted or harmed by a man whom she was in a relationship with or whom she had been in a relationship with previously (intimate partner violence against women). 140 articles reported a case of violence against women that was between an intimate partner relationship. Examples of cases include a married couple, a divorced couple, an ex-boyfriend, or current partner.
Articles that reported a case of intimate partner violence against women included instances of murder and rape, but also included accounts of psychological and emotional abuse that had occurred over a period of time. Intimate partner violence against women can be seen as an indicator of newsworthiness due to its frequency of reporting. News reporting of intimate partner violence allows for the destigmatization that occurs when news reporting only focuses on the stereotypical cases of murder and rape that happened between a pair of two strangers simply for the scare factor or news angle.
Celebrity/elite status
Used to describe the victim or perpetrator or both, celebrity and elite status incorporated individuals who were “well-known,” an elite member of society (such as a politician) and professional athletes. Of the 295 cases analyzed, 54 articles reported on a case of violence against women that involved a celebrity, an elite person, or a professional athlete. One specific case of violence against women that involved two professional hockey players was followed and reported in 10 articles; ranging from the initial reports of accusation to the handling of the player’s (perpetrator) contract and playtime and eventually concluded in articles that shared that he had been cleared of all accusations.
Seven articles reported a case of violence against women involving a celebrity such as an actress or musician, and these articles included follow-up reports regarding the legal status of a case and/or if the celebrity had any previous history of violence against women. Four articles reported the arrest and trial of, “a well-known Swedish artist” that was charged with having assaulted his girlfriend, but none of the four articles would publish the artist’s name. The artist’s musical accolades were included in three of the four articles.
Celebrity and elite status individuals were identified as newsworthy through the frequency of how often they were reported and received follow-up articles. Articles that reported charges of violence against women on a professional athlete or retired professional athlete would detail the man’s athletic accolades as well as if he was currently playing or coaching, and how his absence or arrest would affect the team.
Gruesome descriptions of violence
Gruesome descriptions of violence include graphic descriptions such as the number of times a woman was stabbed, shot, etc, graphic descriptions of the state of the victim’s body at the time of discovery, and if an article included and/or described at length if the victim’s body had been dismembered.
47 articles included descriptions of violence that explicitly detailed the extent of violence. For example, one article described a case of murder as, “drawn-out and brutal. The husband stabbed his wife 41 times” (Lindberg & Thornéus, Citation2021), providing both a description of the violence as “brutal” and emphasizing the extent of harm the victim endured by also including the number of times that she was stabbed. In total, seven articles included the number of times that the victim was stabbed, beaten or shot by the perpetrator. Reference to suffocation of the victim or if she had been burned/burned alive was a prominent detail of eight articles, such as in the two articles that detailed a case of violence against women in India where a woman was kidnapped and raped, murdered by measures of suffocation and then burned to discard evidence of the crime.
Overall, gruesome descriptions of violence allowed for a “shock” factor to the reporting of these cases of violence against women. These articles’ graphic descriptions of violence allowed for a portrayal of the crime as well as for a larger sense of victimhood for the victims of these crimes and managed to frame the perpetrator in relation to the grave acts that he committed.
Reference to a child
Analysis found that 44 articles included reference to a child in their reporting of a case of violence against women. Of those 44 articles, 19 articles reported a child having witnessed a crime of violence against women while 25 articles reported a case of violence against women where the victim was under the age of 18. The role of the child witness was incorporated by using direct statements made by a victim’s child, or by reporting stating that children were present at the time of the crime. Such as in the article titled, Tanya, 43, was shot dead by her husband in front of her children, where the article would identify that the victim was shot by her partner while sitting in between her two young children (Hjertén, Citation2020, para. 19). Articles that reported a child witness also referenced new policy within the criminal justice system because of a child having been exposed to such a crime. As of July 1, 2021, a new provision was introduced in the Swedish Penal Code on the new crime of child peace (barnfridsbrott) (Polismyndigheten, Citation2021). It is now a criminal offense to expose children to witnessing certain criminal acts in a close relationship, such as violent and sexual crimes. The new legal action elevates the crimes of violence against women but can also be interpreted as violence against women is only taken to a greater extent if a child was present rather than the experience of the mother or woman facing the abuse.
DISCUSSION
This section discusses the results of this study as well as what these results mean in relation to government action and publishing regulation that contributes to the framing of violence against women in Sweden. To start off, I will present how cultural influences contribute to the construction of the victim and perpetrator and how the identification of culture as a reason for violence leads to “othering” of minority groups and further racialization of Sweden’s response to violence against women. I will then discuss how racialization contributes to the proposed government policy and what connections or discrepancies were found in news reporting of violence against women regarding publishing laws.
This study found a correlation between how the media presents and frames the issue of men’s violence and minority cultures, thus perpetuating blame upon individuals who come from non-Swedish backgrounds. Specifically, men’s violence against women was connected to non-Swedish cultures and individuals with backgrounds that are largely identified within minority groups in Sweden. These findings concur with other previous studies that have identified the racialization of crime and minority groups in Sweden (Alinia, Citation2019, Citation2020; Ålund & Alinia, Citation2011; Baianstovu, Citation2017; Schlytter et al., Citation2009; Strid et al., Citation2021). The racialization of the perpetrator attributed a man’s violence with his foreign culture, framing the issue of violence against women as an “imported problem” and one that further identifies the ideal foreign perpetrator as one of “them” rather than one of “us” in Swedish society. Swedish media and the Swedish government in this scenario are the racial dominants who determine the racial criteria and categories that have the power to formulate flexible ones that can be applied to anyone they deem threatening (the foreign perpetrator) (Gans, Citation2017, p. 351) and thus increasing a disassociation and superiority complex that champions the end of violence against women, but fails to look beyond the labels of honor violence or cultural oppression.
Unfortunately, these findings only enforce previous studies that have identified that the construction of otherness and racial exclusion are strongly, and significantly, gendered (Alinia, Citation2020). Furthermore, as Alinia (Citation2020) and Essed (Citation1991) provide, the construction of other-ness at the intersection of racism and sexism, has become normalized, and in the case of violence against women, this is seen in the paradox of the Swedish savior championing for the rights of the minority woman. And again, the foreign perpetrator is dehumanized in order to validate the victimhood of a minority woman who has suffered at the hands of her oppressor: her culture. The victimhood of a minority woman is never removed from her cultural affiliation, as this study confirmed Nafstad’s (Citation2019) construction of the ideal minority victim. The ideal minority victim achieved victimhood through Swedish news reporting blaming her death or abuse to her culture and the foreign patriarchy that “encourages” men to abuse and isolate women and girls.
The non-Swedish perpetrator is blamed for his culture, whereas the Swedish perpetrator’s actions and harm are a result of his mental instability. The ideal foreign perpetrator is racialized to an extent that the “problem” of violence against women is distanced and identified as a result of ethnic practices that are placed far from Swedish culture and values. The ideal foreign perpetrator is not only guilty for the crime he committed, but he is also guilty of emigrating to Sweden and not leaving behind his race or ethnicity that is fundamentally abusive. While this study does not seek to justify the actions of a man who abuses or murders a woman, this study does beg the question: to what extent can racialization of minority men effect areas of Swedish society outside of the issue of violence against women? And furthermore, how are women supposed to live in a country that cannot remove their religious or cultural beliefs with that of abuse and honor violence? Yes, there are minority women who are victims of honor violence, but does that mean that all women who wear traditional clothing or practice a specific religious faith should be asked, “do you need help getting out?” This leads to a social manhunt to either blame and label all minority men as abusers and to hunt down every minority woman and identify her as a victim.
The racialization of the victim and perpetrator directly correspond with the actions proposed in the Swedish Government’s “National strategy to prevent and combat men’s violence against women” (Regeringskansliet, Citation2016a). The proposed actions highlight the need for greater support and protection of women and children subjected to honor violence in the fields of social work and healthcare, but the proposed actions are limited to “strengthen expertise and knowledge in the field of honor-related violence and oppression” and imply a gendered view of honor violence that leads to the racialization of minority women as the eternal victim and minority men as the stereotypical perpetrator (Regeringskansliet, Citation2016a, p. 2). What is not proposed is greater efforts to destigmatize and eliminate racialization of minority groups through efforts of the press and media. Take the publishing regulations that are deemed “highly protective” and only protect the image of the domestic (Swedish) victim and perpetrator.
Although Swedish Publishing Ethics (2021) state that journalists should not “emphasize the ethnic origin, gender, nationality, profession, political affiliation, religious beliefs or sexual orientation of the persons concerned if it is irrelevant in the context and is disrespectful,” this was done to all victims and perpetrators with a non-Swedish background. The descriptions and ‘subtle’ details that shared a person’s non-Swedish background resulted in most of those individuals meeting the descriptions of the ideal minority victim or the ideal foreign perpetrator where the individual is continuously blamed in the eyes of news reporting for their ethnic background. If the proposed policy does seek to gain greater knowledge and to combat honor violence, this study proposes that one of the first actions to take is to regulate news reporting on crime that includes individuals from minority populations as well as regulate the media’s stigmatization of minority cultures as being “non-Swedish” and perpetuating the “we” and “them” framing of violence against women in Sweden. The final part of this study will summarize the findings discussed in this sections as well as conclude the paper with final remarks, the limitations of this study and proposed future research.
CONCLUDING REMARKS, LIMITATIONS, AND FUTURE RESEARCH
The aim of this study was to contribute to understanding how media frames violence against women in the Swedish context, which is deemed to be both highly protective of crime reporting and where violence against women is a central policy and public discussion issue. This study found that most of the 295 digital news articles (68.5%) analyzed were episodic in their framing of the issue of violence against women. Analysis of follow-up articles showed that episodic frames transitioned into a thematic frame of the issue by incorporating victimization rates or statements by victims and organizations that identified the victim as “one of many” who have been the subject of men’s violence. These follow-up articles allowed for the responsibility of violence against women to be displaced and removed from the individual (victim) toward other outlets of society, thus transitioning away from the episodic framing of the initial article and concurs with the findings of A.H. Shah (Citation2019) who acknowledged that episodic and thematic frames can transition over the course of time. Thematically framed articles also included a small number of articles that were detailing a case of violence against women that sparked public outrage and addressed the issue of violence against women as one that is globally present.
In the timeframe of this study, six articles addressed the series of five murders which led analysis to consider that the five murders could potentially be seen as a “trigger” event that increased the thematic framing of articles that reported cases of violence against women as an outcome. Findings support the statements and literature provided by Drache and Velagic (Citation2013), Shah (Citation2019) and Brosius and Eps (Citation1995) who specified that certain events act as a triggering event, and potentially lead to a long-term effect in news reporting. This study was limited to the given timeframe of published works and suggests that this concept be researched further.
In regard to the portrayal of the victim and the perpetrator, this study found two prominent victim descriptions: the ideal victim and the ideal minority victim. The ideal victims identified in this study support Christie and van Wijk’s conceptualization of the ideal victim, and they also provided results that resonate with Schwobel-Patel and Scholtz’s connection of the ideal victim and the ideal perpetrator. The ideal minority victim found in this study also supports The Ideal Minority Victim as proposed by Nafstad (Citation2019) and further encourages and supports that the ideal minority victim was gendered and racialized as a victim of her culture. A culture that suppresses every woman’s right and freedom and further encourages a “we” and “them” dichotomy between Swedish culture and minority races in Sweden. This study found that news reporting shared two types of narratives in regard to the portrayal of the perpetrator: the ideal foreign perpetrator and the Swedish perpetrator. Acts of violence against women committed by perpetrators that were identified as non-Swedish were connected to the perpetrator’s cultural beliefs and their abuse of drugs and alcohol whereas the Swedish perpetrator’s actions were described and connected by journalists to his psychological state or connected his motive as a crime of passion. The ideal foreign perpetrator’s personhood was destroyed to further validate the victimhood of the minority victim and domestic victim, whereas the worst measure of dehumanization the Swedish Perpetrator faced was being called an “outcast.”
Finally, this study found specific news values characteristically associated with violence against women that contributed to a specific case being newsworthy. A larger number of articles included a case of violence that resulted in a murder or rape. Within those articles and several others where victims survived a murder attempt or sexual assault, gruesome descriptions of violence were incorporated when possible. These findings support previous literature that established homicide as a newsworthy topic and what news value it presents outside of the topic of violence against women (Chermak, Citation1995; Clayman & Reisner, Citation1998; Gilliam et al., Citation1996; Weiss & Chermak, Citation2012). Additionally, details of articles that can be seen as news values that increased an article’s newsworthiness included if a celebrity or elite individual was the victim or perpetrator, if the case included children, and if the number of times a case was reported four or more times.
Methodology of this study included sourcing data from a three-year period from four different news sources and attention throughout every step of research was scrupulous so as to uphold the validity and legitimacy of delivered findings. Nevertheless, the study has its limitations. The search engine, Retriever Research, is somewhat unreliable in its presentation of search results, which results in the understanding that some articles could have been missed. This researcher made the active decision to not include debate articles or articles that referred to political agendas and instead maintained search criteria of a news report detailing at least one case of violence against women within the three-year time period of assessment but suggests that future studies incorporate these types of media reporting so as to provide a broader scope of understanding of media’s framing. Another weakness of this study is that the corpus of articles included articles that were domestic and international. This can be seen as a weakness if critiqued for placing results as a Swedish perspective while still including cases that included international crimes.
In closing, this study found that despite Sweden’s highly protective publishing regulations, digital news articles were still able to provide a highly descriptive and racialized portrayal of the victim and perpetrator. This study encourages government policy and action to broaden the spectrum of regulating efforts that limit the Swedish media and press when reporting on cases that include an individual from a racial minority and/or speculate that the case of violence is a result of honor-violence or honor-culture.
This author proposes that the findings provided within this study are used in future research as a departure point for understanding the systemic racialization of minority groups in societies such as Sweden. Proposed areas of research include but are not limited to media studies, such as to what extent women’s rights are inherently gendered and racialized by the racially dominant population and how this affects a media agenda. Additionally, this study proposes future research be done to identify the discourse of minority women who are included in human rights policy but remain under the ideology of honor culture or honor violence and to see if these policies identify gender and sexuality in connection with the racialized “other” and the dominant “we” population.
Ethical Considerations
The presented study adheres to international ethical criteria related to the sourcing of news articles and corresponding analyses as well as to research ethics laws that are regulated by the Swedish government. In accordance with The Swedish Research Council’s (2017) ethical guidelines as it pertains to the production of ethical research, this study has maintained responsibility, fairness and truth in all steps of the research process. Data collected was reviewed concisely and reported while providing organized records of analysis and the handling of materials that were publicly published via public online news sources.
Data and personal information sourced for this study included information that was previously published via public media sources where victims were already anonymized, or they (the victim or their family) had personally given consent to their personal information being published by news media outlets. Analysis and publication of results strove and succeeded in providing a final publication that is fair in judgment and upholds the necessary moral values of the researcher. The conducted research has been performed with rigor and diligence so as to provide both an ethical and valuable contribution to the field of research and is in accordance with Uppsala University ethical criteria and standard. All sources were correctly acknowledged, cited, and provided within the final publication of this study.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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