Killing women, making headlines : Exploring the representation of femicide in Chilean online news media

Abstract: Femicide is the lethal form of gender-based violence (GBV) and is a reflection of our unequal societies and power relations between women and men. This present study is investigating how femicide is represented in the online news media with the argument that it has the ability to shape and form the perceptions and understanding of femicide in the public debate, hence either contributing or counteracting its existence. This was carried out by conducting a Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (FCDA) of online news articles that report on femicide. The material consisted of the two most read online news in 2019. The main findings show that the news media reproduce harmful and stereotyped discourses of femicide by repeatedly constructing victim-blaming representations that diminish the acts of the perpetrator, which obstructs for more complex descriptions of femicide.