¿Feminicidio? Media Framing of Ciudad Juárez Feminicidios

Abstract

Although the brutal murders of the women in Ciudad Juárez have captured the attention of the international media and human rights organizations, little research has been conducted on the local media’s reporting about the gender-based murders known as feminicidios. This thesis will investigate whether local media sources recognize feminicidio as a phenomenon in Ciudad Juárez and how feminicidios were portrayed between the years of 2001 and 2005. First, the articles that view the murders of women in Ciudad Juárez as feminicidios were identified, then the articles were categorized by the dominant frame. The difference between the number of articles that recognize and do not recognize feminicidio in this sample reflects the debate present within local media about the incidence of feminicidios in the city. Likewise, the dominant frames in this dataset, the government impunity frame and narrative of crime frame, demonstrate that from inside Ciudad Juárez, feminicidio has been seen as an issue of the government’s incompetence and contextualized as a social problem in the city.