Media framing of Intimate Partner Femicide in Mainstream Print Media in Kenya

Abstract

Violence against women is found in every socio-economic group, ideology, class, race, and ethnic grouping. Domestic violence victims are abused based on their sex and/or gender. The violence committed against them, meanwhile is not random in its pathology, rather it is tool of structural domination and subjugation. The news media in Kenya continues to be a dominant force when it comes to shaping societal perceptions and attitudes. Currently, there is significant research on how the media in Kenya influences issues such as politics and democracy, sexual violence and reproductive health. However, there is little research into femicide, which is defined (in this study as the killing of female intimate partners. The objective of this study was to analysis and establish the ways in which mainstream print media in Kenya frames the reporting of intimate partner femicide through language, context and the selected sources of information, the ways in which the media uses victim-blaming and other linguistic tropes in its reporting, and the implications of these frames and language on societal perception of femicide. The study sampled 78 articles covering thirty-six cases of intimate femicide between 1st January 2018 and 31st July 2019. An exploratory analysis was conducted based on an established coding matrix, which was utilised to examine the characteristics of the crimes, the selected articles and the media frames that were employed in the reporting of the articles. The results of the study indicate that Kenyan print media is still largely androcentric in its reporting, with a significant burden placed on the victims to prevent the violence that is meted out on them. While Kenyan print media seems to have some understanding as to the structural and institutional nature of intimate partner femicide and domestic violence in general, the reaction to it is less about systemic interventions and more about women accepting the weight of the problem and adjusting their lives around it. The mainstream print media also seems to have more sympathy for the perpetrators (men), who are granted ample opportunity to explain their actions in a quasi-redemption arc that even though it may not excuse their guilt, does the work of justifying or downplaying it. Finally, with the democratisation of news reporting through social media and other digital platforms, there is a symbiotic relationship between mainstream print media and social media content creators in shaping perception and influencing news narratives which should be explored in further academic media and feminist studies.