Abstract
This chapter explores contemporary discourses on intimate partner abuse, applying critical discourse analysis to two UK news media reports on the murder of Hannah Clarke in Queensland, Australia in 2020. The analysis highlights contrasting framings of the murder, drawing on academic and practitioner accounts of coercive and controlling behaviour as a feminist challenge to historically dominant narratives. Themes of centring, agency and sympathy emerge from the analysis and illustrate the way in which the reader’s social reality is constructed through the language and images in the news articles. The historically dominant discourse excuses Baxter’s violences and subordinates Clarke in the story of her own murder. By contrast, the counter ‘coercive control’ discourse centres the victim experience of violence and places responsibility on the perpetrator. These contrasting accounts represent the contemporary discursive struggle as social change takes place.
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Tatton, S. (2023). Whose Take Is the Take? The Contemporary Framing of Intimate Partner Abuse in News Reports on the Murder of Hannah Clarke. In: Pandey, M. (eds) International Perspectives on Gender-Based Violence. Advances in Preventing and Treating Violence and Aggression . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42867-8_11
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