Visualizing femicide in the print media: A comparison of Italy and the UK

The 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action developed at the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women acknowledged the media as a vital arena for the advancement of women’s equality. Now, thirty years after the Beijing Declaration, it is clear that structural inequalities within journalism and the media continue to shape representations of women and thus the advancement of gender equality. From this starting point, this article examines how images are used in print media reporting on femicide within intimate relationships. It asks how newspapers have visualized incidents of femicide, how this shapes narratives and understandings of domestic violence, and what this means for women’s equality. Drawing on two examples from the media in the United Kingdom and Italy, this article situates the cases within national regulatory frameworks and compares the visual representation of femicide in the printed press in the two countries as a means of understanding core principles of cultural and political narratives (visual and written) in the reporting on femicide in both countries.