‘Sensational spikes’ and ‘isolated incidents’: examining the misrepresentation of domestic abuse by the media using the case studies of football and Covid-19’

This chapter examines how the media (mis)represents domestic violence and abuse (DVA) and perpetuates misunderstandings using two case studies that originally looked at the context of media reports in terms of football and Covid-19. Using Kitzinger's template model, it argues that the media has used a fixed method of reporting DVA that prioritises certain types of abuse, involving a particular kind of victim and /or perpetrator. Although advances have been made here, encouraged by the proliferation of reporting guidelines in the main these have focused on improved reporting on victim/survivors and perpetrators. It is argued here that by framing cases as singular “incidents” or as a set of “spikes” the media continues to perpetuate a misrepresentation of the phenomenon of DVA as one-off episodes of physical violence. In doing so a more nuanced understanding of DVA as coercive control and as a course of conduct is disregarded. The chapter concludes with recommendations to prioritise the social context of DVA and the need to understand the dynamics of domestic violence as a pattern of abusive behaviours and gender inequalities, rather than viewing it as a reaction to a specific event.