Violence against women in Serbian newspapers : The analysis of the print media reports on violence against women in Serbia [Kurir, Blic, Vecernje Novosti, Politika, Danas]

The problem of violence against women in Serbia is connected with the position that women hold inside of the discourse of family and society in general. Also, the general atmosphere in media implies the lack of media freedom, specific structural organization, and ownership relations in media companies. From this starting point, this paper investigates how different newspapers in Serbia are reporting about violence against women. This study outlines the most common topics and social actors that are represented inside of the articles. The analysis is divided in two parts. A content analysis of the five different newspapers in Serbia (Kurir, Blic, Vecernje Novosti, Politika and Danas) and critical discourse analysis of the most relevant articles inside of those. Part of the study is devoted to identify how these articles are most commonly framed among the chosen newspapers. Another part of the study looks at the comparison of the newspapers, with special emphasis on the social actors and the way they are represented among the articles. Results showed that newspapers report on violence against women differently when it comes to the category of frame. Most commonly used frame among overall sample is human interest frame which implies reports connected to the individual cases of violence against women that often generate feelings of outrage, empathy, caring, sympathy, or compassion. The background of the cases is almost in all of the articles used to portray the human-interest perspective. The reports are somewhat similar when it comes to the way how social actors are represented in the articles. For example, in the analyzed articles it is most often that the victims are presented as passive agents. The discourse of guilt around the social actors is often shared between the perpetrator and the victim. According to the latest statistics, eight women were killed during the first 58 days of 2018. Thus, practical implication of this study is to potentially point out more and less effective ways for Serbian news media to approach this serious social issue in the future