Conference Program

This paper analyses how the press represents male violence against women when it occurs within the school environment. It focuses on news coverage of cases in which violence against women and girls is perpetrated by a schoolmate, a teacher, or a member of school staff, thus addressing the intersection between gender-based violence, education, and public discourse. In line with the main interest in the role of media and socialisation agencies in reproducing or challenging sexist stereotypes, the paper investigates whether the school context activates specific interpretative frames in the journalistic narration of violence.

Drawing on data collected by the STEP Observatories, the study first measures the visibility and weight of school-related cases within the broader national and local press coverage of violence against women in Italy in 2024–2025. It then develops an in-depth textual analysis of the articles in order to examine whether gender-based violence in educational settings is narrated through recurrent discursive patterns, whether it triggers distinctive narrative schemes, and whether the stereotypes and prejudices widely documented in the literature on media representations of gender-based violence (Capecchi & Gius 2023; Saccà 2024; Yusri et al. 2025) persist, are reformulated, or are partially transformed when violence takes place in the socially and symbolically specific space of school.

By focusing on the school as a key site of socialisation, the paper aims to contribute to the broader debate on how journalism participates in the public construction of gender violence and in the normalisation, exposure, or deconstruction of sexist stereotypes. More broadly, it reflects on the democratic implications of media representations of violence in educational contexts, showing how the press may either reinforce or challenge unequal gendered meanings within a crucial institution of civic formation.