Resumo

CONDE, Ana Rita  e  MACHADO, Carla. Marital violence: Representations and meanings in the media discourse. Psicologia [online]. 2010, vol.24, n.1, pp.17-47. ISSN 0874-2049.

This study aimed to analyse media discourses about marital violence produced by the Portuguese non-journalistic press, from 1965 to 2006. It begins with an analysis of traditional explanations regarding the relationship between crime and the media, but the authors offer a constructionist approach to this relationship, considering the media both as construed by and constitutive of cultural discourses. After a revision of international studies on media representations of marital violence, this empirical study analyses the texts on marital violence published by six types of Portuguese magazines during the last 40 years. Results show a reduced attention to the theme, its association to emotionality and passion and the attribution of violence to internal causes. Also noticeable is the search for new angles to approach this topic (e.g., female marital violence), that minimize and obfuscate the most common form of violence, men abuse of their wives. Gender biases in the explanations for violence were persistent, male violence being mainly characteized as emotional and female violence being described as instrumental and vicious. Implications of these forms of representation on the public and personal experience of violence are discussed.

Palavras-chave : domestic violence; media; Portugal; longitudinal study.

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