Genderless violence and invisible whiteness : A study of how white supremacist extremism is represented in Western media

Sammanfattning: This paper examines what kind of knowledge is (re)produced in Western media coverage of the terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand on 15 March 2019. A central point of departure is that the media plays a significant part in the construction of knowledge. By applying a “What’s the Problem Represented to be” approach to news coverage from New Zealand, Australia, the UK, France and Sweden, four dominant representations of the problem are identified: lone wolfs and maniacs, insufficient legislative system, separating ideology and violence, and racism in Western societies. The study identifies the knowledge regimes at work in the representations and discusses what is being silenced, who is likely to benefit, and who is likely to be harmed by these representations. Drawing on a feminist postcolonial framework, the focus lies on the reproduction of gendered, racialised and colonial knowledge regimes. The study finds that three out of the four dominant problem representations reproduce an Islamophobic knowledge regime and that all four problem representations reproduce a white male supremacy knowledge regime. The study concludes that the dominant problem representations reproduce whiteness and masculinity as the norm and normalise violence by silencing the relationship between masculinity and violence in all four representations and the relationship between whiteness and violence in three of them. It suggests that to make whiteness and masculinity visible, it is imperative to give more attention to when white male violence is considered normal and when it is considered extreme.