Abstract
Popular culture and gendered domestic violence and abuse are both vast topics, and it would be unrealistic to expect a single book to cover every possible aspect of their interrelationships, especially considering the diversity both within and between countries around the globe. Popular culture can be understood as the set of practices, beliefs, and objects that express the most broadly shared meanings of a social system. This includes different types of media, entertainment and leisure, fashion and trends, and linguistic conventions, among other things. This book largely restricts itself to considering types of media: specifically, film, television, newspapers, digital and social media, and TED lectures. Within the very wide scope of gendered domestic violence and abuse, the book considers intimate partner abuse, child abuse, grooming and sexual exploitation, elder abuse and neglect, and abuse in LGBT relationships.
The collection of chapters that form this book is focused in terms of geography, concentrating on Europe, the United States, and Australia. By and large, the book also concentrates on delineating the problems posed by media coverage of gendered domestic violence and abuse. The questions of what would be effective in achieving more responsive and effective treatment of victims/survivors and perpetrators and that would represent a preventive or intervention action in the media space is less well covered. There are some important messages, however, for social work research and practice, and this review will focus on two of the chapters within the book to illustrate the text's contributions.
Victoria Marshall and Chris Goddard explore the Australian media and child abuse. The chapter is broad in scope including discussion of abuse through the media as well as the value of the media in exposing abuse and advocating for changes in policy and practice. As they illustrate, while media treatment of child abuse can be highly problematic, media coverage has also led to significant systemic reform and advocated for children in cases where other systems have failed them. The chapter explores how media reporting on child abuse in Australia reflects a fragmented understanding of child abuse and a more integrated approach would be helpful for policy and practice. Providing a detailed analysis of the daily newspaper print media in Australia, they note that the increasing concentration of ownership and trends toward the homogenization of reporting in nonmetropolitan areas are compromising the media's ability to be responsive to the specific issues pertinent to different communities. In the case of child abuse, these trends serve to undercut the advocacy function noted above.
Darja Zavirsek explores the #jaztudi (#Metoo) campaign in Slovenia, something that she initiated with three other “women public intellectuals”. The chapter carefully identifies the context-specific nature of responding to sexual violence/abuse. This process of contextualization involves considering Slovenia's historical moves into post-communism, coupled with a return to traditional views of family. Social work's role was then seen as protection of the family, rather than of the rights of individuals within the family to live free of violence. In this context, #jaztudi took different forms from #Metoo in other countries. Women wanted to talk, but many wanted to remain anonymous and did not want to name their perpetrators. Thus, a website was used to empower women to give voice to their experience, many of them commenting that they had been unable to talk about abuse prior to their involvement with the website.
The website quickly amassed over 200 testimonies and public readings, and other events followed. The website testimonies showed that the experiences of many of the women went way beyond sexual harassment and illustrated the full continuum of sexual, psychological, and physical violence.
The chapter also discusses the reaction in the Slovenian media to #jaztudi, examining reactions in dailies, weeklies, and online media with reasonably wide readerships. There were three different types of responses: supportive, partially supportive—but with an emphasis on international #metoo rather than local #jaztudi; and finally unsupportive or reactions that ignored #jaztudi. Among the third group, sexual violence was conceived as a problem created by migrant men and not integral to the family.
The impact of #jaztudi is also explored, including awareness raising, new online resources, and media-supported discussions about sexual violence, including sexual violence by Catholic priests, and women's painful and demeaning treatment within different health institutions.
Overall, the book's interesting collection of chapters illustrates the many ways that the media compounds gendered domestic violence and abuse, as well as the ways it can be helpful in empowering victims/survivors, holding authorities to account, and changing perceptions and practice. It would have been good to see contributions that discussed the Global South, and also to gain access to coverage of such innovative approaches as Jane Gilmore's “FixedIt” project (see https://janegilmore.com/fixedit-headlines/), which at once illustrates the harmful effects of media headlines and provides an appropriate alternative.
