ABSTRACT
Extensive international and US research has how examined violence against women – mainly rape and domestic/intimate partner violence – is reported in the news media and framed by sex/gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Key inquiries include how victim-survivors and perpetrators are represented. What cases are emphasized and who is invisible? Victim-survivor testimony and studies show how media sources perpetuate rape myths, ignoring questions of gendered, racialized, and sexualized power and the wider context or prevalence of violence against women. Analyzing media representations can also reveal the extent to which feminist challenges to patriarchal violence have succeeded. This chapter explores news, entertainment, and social media representations of different forms of violence, and draws conclusions about how human rights approaches can prompt deeper change in media narratives.
