TY - JOUR
T1 - Shaping the ‘inexplicable’
T2 - A social constructionist analysis of news reporting of familicide-suicide
AU - Galvin, Audrey
AU - Quinn, Fergal
AU - Cleary, Yvonne
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
PY - 2023/7
Y1 - 2023/7
N2 - Media framing helps to shape our understanding of the meaning of news events, often problematically. This study examines how this process interacts with the phenomenon of familicide-suicide, where a person kills one or more family members before taking their own life. A social constructionist analysis of the print media coverage of three high-profile cases in Ireland highlights framing and discursive patterns, contributing to an explanatory framework that is misleading and lacking in an evidence base. As well as a tendency towards broad and poorly supported claims-making, several primary causal frames are prevalent: mental health; financial debt; fall from grace; and ‘out of the blue’, whilst a domestic violence frame is notable in its absence. Coverage is found to be episodic in character, linked to dramatisation and more simplistic explanatory frames, rather than evidence-based analysis of potential causal factors for these incidents. Findings raise important questions for journalistic practice, regarding processes of selection and salience of sources contributing to overall coverage that is partial and biased, rather than an ‘objective’ representation of the social world.
AB - Media framing helps to shape our understanding of the meaning of news events, often problematically. This study examines how this process interacts with the phenomenon of familicide-suicide, where a person kills one or more family members before taking their own life. A social constructionist analysis of the print media coverage of three high-profile cases in Ireland highlights framing and discursive patterns, contributing to an explanatory framework that is misleading and lacking in an evidence base. As well as a tendency towards broad and poorly supported claims-making, several primary causal frames are prevalent: mental health; financial debt; fall from grace; and ‘out of the blue’, whilst a domestic violence frame is notable in its absence. Coverage is found to be episodic in character, linked to dramatisation and more simplistic explanatory frames, rather than evidence-based analysis of potential causal factors for these incidents. Findings raise important questions for journalistic practice, regarding processes of selection and salience of sources contributing to overall coverage that is partial and biased, rather than an ‘objective’ representation of the social world.
KW - familicide-suicide
KW - framing
KW - Ireland
KW - print media
KW - social constructionism
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85122130939&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/14648849211063265
DO - 10.1177/14648849211063265
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85122130939
SN - 1464-8849
VL - 24
SP - 1499
EP - 1517
JO - Journalism
JF - Journalism
IS - 7
ER -