Unit:
Speciality Social Theory and Social ResearchLibrary of the Faculties of Political Science and Public Administration, Communication and Mass Media Studies, Turkish and Modern Asian Studies, Sociology
Author:
Kapsampeli Styliani
Supervisors info:
Κύρκος Δοξιάδης, καθηγητής, Τμήμα Πολιτικής Επιστήμης και Δημόσιας Διοίκησης, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών.
Αλεξάνδρα Χαλκιά, καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Κοινωνιολογίας, Πάντειο Πανεπιστήμιο Κοινωνικών και Πολιτικών Επιστημών.
Μάρω Παντελίδου-Μαλούτα, καθηγήτρια, Τμήμα Πολιτικής Επιστήμης και Δημόσιας Διοίκησης, Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών.
Original Title:
Έμφυλες εξοντώσεις στο όνομα της αγάπης, της ατυχίας και της τρέλας. Η γυναικοκτονία ως σύγχρονη ελληνική τραγωδία μέσα από την ανάλυση δημοσιογραφικού λόγου.
Translated title:
Gendered annihilations in the name of love, misfortune and madness. Femicide as contemporary greek tragedy through media discourse analysis.
Summary:
This research emerges amidst a domestic, european and global political-social climate, in which the phenomenon called “femicide”, the murder of a woman because she is a woman, is put at the intersection of theoretical, political, activist and institutional concern. In the greek public sphere, the rape and murder of 21-year-old student Eleni Topaloudi on the island of Rhodes on November 2018, unfolds the debate on femicide. The analysis therefore begins with this femicide as its symbolic and literal starting point, and ends with Suzanne Eaton’s femicide on Crete in July 2019. The thesis is primarily interested in defining and mapping the phenomenon, pointing out the need for visibility around it and focusing on what media discourse does while producing and reporting news on femicide. To that end, the research implements critical discourse analysis (CDA) on news reports on eight cases of femicide that occurred during this period of time and were aired on greek television. Its focal point is on discourse practices that are materialized and solidified in social life and gender relations and it sets to explore the contemporary gendered subjectivities which surface from the greek news. The study takes as its point of departure that at the same time the media are reproduced and fed by social reality itself and that these dynamics bear highly positive, productive results in terms of power. This research suggests that femicide is constructed by the media as contemporary greek “tragedy”, with the protagonists of the “drama” being “the unlucky”, exceptional woman-victim and “the beast”, “the mad” or “the blinded by love” man-perpetrator. To meet its end, the media employ strategies such as normalizing, dramatizing and naturalizing the gender violence that Angela P. Harris described as “toxic” or “hegemonic masculinity” in a heteropatriarchal cultural setting, as is the greek one. All of the above call upon the contemplation of social theory and research at the junction of gender, discourse and power (along with other composing factors of subjectivities, such as sexuality, ethnicity, age and class) in the relatively uncharted terrain of femicide.
Main subject category:
Social, Political and Economic sciences
Keywords:
Femicide, critical discourse analysis, media, news reports, tragedy, contemporary Greece
Number of references:
406
