The relationship between gender and media: An analysis on news coverage of violence against women and femicide

The violence against women and femicide are among the most serious social problems both in Turkey and worldwide. As an outcome of the social gender mainstreaming, the paternalistic system has descent effect on violence against women. The male dominated system ruling over the political, financial and social areas of the community creates unequal power relations and consequently women are subordinated and subjected to male violence. The news of violence against women are daily exposed in written and visual media and this type of violence is made visible in the society. Therefore, the tone and the appeals of the media, the way these news are handled and how they are shared with society have importance. In this study, it has been analysed how the Turkish written media depicted the murder of Özgecan Aslan on February 11th 2015 in Mersin; and the expression differences on Özgecan Aslan's murder and concurrent cases of violence against women in the media are discussed. The article includes the news published between February 14th 2015 and March 15th 2015 on the newspapers Cumhuriyet, Akit and Hürriyet, all of which has different publishing policies. The texts have been analysed by using the method of critical discourse analysis by Teun Van Dijk. Due to the findings, the newspapers shaped the news on murder of Özgecan Aslan and violence against women as to their ideologies along with the statements of the political circles which they are in closer relationship. When the titles, photos and words they preferred have been analysed, it is evident that incidents have been interpreted in a different way on all three newspapers. It has been concluded that the incidents have been detached from its social context and used as a means of political material, the news included masculine expressions and were sensationalized for rating.