This portfolio examines how the women who have been subject to family violence are been portrayed in various media platforms. The media can interfere in creating a public opinion about social problems and the solutions to such problems. Therefore, the media can influence the society’s views and answers to family violence (Bullock & Cubert, 2002). This portfolio will further discuss about how the news articles and headlines of newspapers create an impact on the readers and how the media influence people in forming their opinion.
Background:-Family violence against women performed by male partners has been described as a critical issue prevailing in the society today. It is considered as a reason for physical and psychological abuse towards women and children (Rees & Pease, 2007). In Australian society, critics define “domestic violence” as an act that abuses partner physically, mentally or emotionally (Hegarty, Hindmarsh & Gilles, 2000). Therefore, domestic violence exists in every society in spite of culture, religion or socioeconomic status and domestic violence happens in relation with social or cultural factors.
The media critics argue that the news is conceived in such a way that it disseminates partial “reality” by hiding certain things. In that case, it is very essential to analyse how the media reports incidents related to domestic violence. Various studies have proved that media can manipulate the audience by misreporting the context of the situation (Rollè, Abbà, Fazzino, Marino, & Brustia, 2014). For instance, some news reports claim that some women undergo violence because of their “bad behaviour” and good girls always stay out of issues. This portfolio is an attempt to analyse how the media portray women who have undergone domestic violence and will analyse the text used in it (Bullock & Cubert, 2002).
Methods and Data
Discourse analysis is defined as the process, which explains how the language used for communication interprets social and cultural congruence (Gee, 2004). This portfolio will analyse the texts by utilizing the critical discourse analysis. For the analysis, I have selected news articles from different newspapers including data from one of the leading newspapers in U. K; The Sun. Majority of the newspapers selected were having good readership and circulation and are internationally recognised. The database I choose for collecting the data sample was EBSCO and gathered news articles by using keywords like “Domestic Violence AND Representation of women in media”, “Domestic Violence AND Victim Blaming”.
