Men’s Violence against Women as Portrayed in the Swedish Media: The Construction of Victimhood and the Role of the Perpetrator

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.