Media Conduct Through the Eyes of Homicide Victims’ Families -Mediatization of victimhood

What is it about?

This paper examines perceptions among families from Switzerland, Italy and Israel, regarding the media’s role in their process of coping with the murder of their close relatives. The experience of these families in its media context is particularly interesting to study, as it involves a particularly charged interaction, where the public sphere and the private one intersect. The findings reveal a duality of attitudes regarding the media.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

The way individuals subject to media exposure perceive their treatment at the hands of the media, as well as the ways they cope with this intrusion into their lives, has been largely overlooked. The media logic predominant in the experience of victims’ families in all three countries has, then, a very similar impact, clearly leading to a mediatization of victimhood.