New MJRC Study Explores How Italian Newspapers Frame Feminicide

The Media and Journalism Research Center has published Framing Feminicide in Italian Newspapers: Media Narratives and Young Adults’ Interpretations, the latest study in its Media Content Analysis Series.

Written by Marta Vanni, the study examines how three of Italy’s main newspapers (La Repubblica, La Stampa and Corriere della Sera) reported three cases of feminicide between 2023 and 2025: the killings of Giulia Cecchettin, Sara Campanella and Ilaria Sula. It pairs a qualitative analysis of seven articles with two focus groups of readers aged 18 to 30, asking not only how the coverage was constructed, but how a younger audience decodes it.

The study sets that coverage against Italy’s legal and social backdrop. A specific offence of femminicidio entered the Italian Penal Code in 2025, yet the underlying problem remains systemic: EIGE data show that women made up 91% of victims of intimate partner homicide and 91% of police-recorded victims of sexual violence in 2022.

Within the material examined, the study finds coverage that tends to present feminicide as an isolated emotional rupture rather than the endpoint of a documented pattern of violence. Stalking, harassment and coercive control are minimised or omitted; psychological explanation of the perpetrator can crowd out the victim’s own story; and emotionally charged headline language invites curiosity rather than structural understanding. Framed this way, the study argues, gender-based violence is depoliticised, detached from the cultural and institutional conditions that sustain it.

The focus groups suggest a cost to this. Participants described reading about feminicide on social media rather than in newspapers, citing dissatisfaction with the language and narratives of the press and a perception that newspapers are politicised. Several said they turned to podcasts and subject specialists for context they felt the coverage did not supply while also reporting that press narratives shaped how they understood the issue.

The study closes with six recommendations for newsrooms: name the pattern of violence rather than only the act; re-centre the victim; avoid linguistic avoidance such as “crime of passion” or “raptus”; situate individual cases within data on prevalence; resist sensationalised headlines; and build working relationships with gender-based violence researchers and support organisations.

Framing Feminicide in Italian Newspapers was is free to read in full on the MJRC site. The study was published as part of the MJRC Media Content Analysis Series.