An analysis on how the media describe intimate partner violence from a social constructionist perspective

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study was to get a better understanding on how Swedish media describes intimate partner violence from a social constructionist perspective. This was done by analysing the way this violence is projected in three Swedish newspapers namely Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter & Expressen. Our study focused on heterosexual relationships and investigated how some sample of Swedish newspapers described the image of “men and women as perpetrators; gender construction”, “the presentation of the violence” and “the way society treats intimate partner violence victims (male/female)”. The theoretical approach in this analysis was based on social constructionism with a special focus on gender. In order to address the research objectives, a content analysis was performed and some comment and analysis on themes were given. The research findings revealed that both men and women could be perpetrators and victims of intimate partner violence with a main focus on woman as victims from media.