Media Discourses on Femicide in Intimacy in Portugal

Femicide and violence against women continue to be a complex and controversial problem, even though this issue has been redefined at all social levels, particularly in terms of its illegitimacy, illegality and criminality. The main aim of this study is to analyze and characterize the news of femicide in the Portuguese written press, discussing the possible implications of media narratives in the formation/maintenance of stereotypes associated with the crime. The specific objectives are a) to analyze the profile of the victims and aggressors; b) to understand the dynamics of the crime of femicide in intimacy; c) to analyze the social reactions to femicide in intimacy (e.g. victims, family members, neighbors, authorities). The corpus of analysis used was a total of 200 journalistic pieces published daily in the Correio da Manhã newspaper between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2014. The instrument used to collect the data was a recording grid.