Conference Program

This paper examines Italian newspapers’ representation of gang rape cases, investigating whether and to what extent the press interprets gender-based violence (GBV) through the lens of a democratic concern. While press coverage of GBV has profoundly evolved in recent years, it still largely relies on frames that center on individual responsibility - despite male concealment. Therefore, newspaper articles rarely conceptualise GBV as a social, cultural, and political concern, whose consequences for democracy are far from negligible.

GBV represents a profound yet often underestimated wound to democracy. Described as historically one of the most persistent violations of human rights, GBV undermines the very principles of political equality upon which democratic systems are founded. The systematic exposure to gender-related violence that minoritised subjectivities experience both shapes their participation to the public sphere, and the public sphere itself - which becomes even more evident through an intersectional perspective. In this sense, GBV is not just a “women’s issue”, but rather a democratic one.

The media plays a crucial role as an arena of socialisation where cultural norms about gender, violence and power can be produced and reproduced. The press has a responsibility to educate citizens about the correct ways to interpret GBV, free form biases and secondary victimization: journalistic narratives can thus operate as a diffuse form of democratic learning. When the press fails to recognize GBV’S structural nature, it contributes to both hermeneutical injustice, preventing victims and the public from conceptualising it as a political issue, and testimonial injustice, by silencing the structural dimension of the survivors' experiences.

Within the spectrum of forms of GBV, gang rape represents a significative case, given that the victim is both outnumbered and subject to sexual and sometimes digital violence (NCSII). Moreover, studying gang rape highlights the performative dimension of violence - evident in the homosocial dynamics through which masculinity is collectively enacted - while intersecting with pressing contemporary political claims, like sexual consent and women’s freedom in public space.

The study adopts a qualitative research design, combining human content analysis and semi-structured interviews. The content analysis examines a corpus of over 200 Italian newspaper articles covering gang rape cases, focusing on frames of GBV as a social, political and democratic concern. The interviews with Italian journalists explore their interpretative frameworks, investigating whether and to what extent they conceptualise GBV as a structural concern.

Preliminary findings suggest that press coverage predominantly frames gang rape as an isolated incident, rarely articulating its broader implications for democracy. While some journalists recognise the influence of feminist movements, GBV is seldom explicitly framed as a question of political equality. This research contributes to debates within feminist political theory, media studies, and democratic education by underlining the gap between structural understanding of GBV and its limited democratic framing in the press. The study argues that strengthening democracy requires reconceptualising GBV as a core democratic issue, fostering communicative environments capable of nurturing gender-sensitive citizenship.