Wicked problems, gender violence, and media ethics: Reflections on improving journalistic coverage of violence against women and girls

Introduction

Violence against women and girls has now been recognized as one of the most serious challenges to health, safety, and inclusion for women and girls worldwide (Devries et al., 2013). The United Nations (1993) defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life” (para. 3). According to UN Women (2024), almost 1 in 3 women worldwide have been subjected to violence in their lifetime (physical violence, intimate partner violence, and/or sexual violence). Moreover, scholars are increasingly exploring the connections between gender violence and reproductive violence (Hernández, 2023; Hernández and De Los Santos Upton, 2018; Hernández and Munz, 2024c), particularly in mediated contexts. News coverage of violence against women frequently engages in problematic reporting practices, such as not elevating the voices or perspectives of survivors, not including information for how women can seek help, and disproportionately focusing on “expert voices” from law enforcement (Sutherland et al., 2019). Thus, rooted in Sustainable Development Goals 5) Gender Equality and 16) Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, this article explores how contemporary news outlets have covered recent instances of violence against women and girls, identifies strengths and limitations of such coverage, and proposes ethics- and praxis-based recommendations for journalists on how to more ethically frame news coverage of violence against women and girls. Building upon our earlier scholarship, which has developed a moral media ethics pedagogy related to teaching about representations of violence in the mass media (Hernández and Munz, 2024b), we build upon our concept of space-making to develop praxis-based journalistic recommendations rooted in intersectionality and witnessing for news coverage of violence against women and girls. We then explore how a space-making praxis can be applied in journalism contexts through a case study analysis of news coverage of the Gabby Petito case. With this study, our hope is that such recommendations can contribute meaningfully to ongoing conversations about the role of journalism ethics in contexts surrounding news coverage of violence against women and girls; improve such representations; and contribute to empowering survivors, consumers, and journalists in witnessing and action-based contexts.

Global wicked problems & sustainable development goals (SDGs): Considering violence against women

Although scholars are currently debating consensus on definitions of the term wicked problem and its theoretical and research utility (see Lönngren and van Poeck, 2021), generally, the origins of the term wicked problem wicked (social science) problems from problems in the natural sciences. The term was originally developed in the 1970s to describe problems that defied the capacities of governments to address and govern correctly, such as poverty and urban decay (Peters and Tarpey, 2019). Often, wicked problems are defined as fundamentally unique, those that are not easily defined, those without a linear timeline or solution, those lacking an enumerable or exhaustively describable set of potential solutions, and those that are considered to be a symptom of another problem (Rittel and Webber, 1973). In other words, wicked problems are systemic, ambiguous, complex, and conflictual (Eden and Wagstaff, 2021). Most recently, the term wicked problems and its present evolution super wicked problems describe highly vexing contemporary problems such as climate change (see Endres and DuPont, 2016; Levin et al., 2012 Peters and Tarpey, 2019). Largely utilized in sustainability literatures, scholars have debated the term wicked problem, asserting that the term is analytically imprecise (Alford and Head, 2017; Peters and Tarpey, 2019) while critiquing its problematic distinction between social science and natural science problems (Turnbull and Hoppe 2019). As Lönngren and van Poeck’s (2021) mapping review illustrates, in addition to critiques of the term’s precision, scholars have similarly critiqued its rhetorical deployments to support certain agendas (Turnbull and Hoppe, 2019) and its potential to discourage stakeholders and practitioners from addressing wicked problems at all (Noordegraaf et al., 2019; Termeer et al., 2019).

Despite its critiques, the wicked problem framing continues to be widely utilized in larger scholarly conversations about gender violence, particularly in contexts related to domestic violence, occupational gender violence, and violence against sexual minority communities. Kimball et al. (2023) for example, developed the term policy cascade, which describes the process of constructing policies to address the consequences of other policies. In the context of gender violence—domestic violence more specifically—Kimball et al. (2023) traced state and federal policies meant to address gender violence and found that a policy cascade decentered survivors of violence. They later concluded that framing domestic violence as a wicked problem could shift policy and application conversations about gender violence to recenter the needs of survivors in meaningful ways.

As one example of its application in gender violence contexts, Vrankovich et al. (2025) explored current sexual violence prevention initiatives within the Australian mining sector. In their analysis of workplace-based sexual violence in male-dominated industries, they found that participants defined this type of gender violence as a systemic issue with urgently needed solutions such as stronger reporting mechanisms and bolstered support for victims and survivors. Vrankovich et al. (2025) ultimately defined workplace-based sexual violence as a wicked problem that requires “systemic and cultural shifts, multifaced solutions and behavioural changes” (p. 13). Lastly, Blosnich (2011), for example, argued that violence against queer communities is a wicked problem, noting that violence disproportionately impacts gay and bisexual men and lesbian and bisexual women when compared to cisgender, straight men and women. Blosnich (2011) defined such violence as a wicked problem, asserting that public health professionals and health equity researchers must address such inequities. According to Blosnich (2011), when scholars and practitioners mobilize to address gender violence, it requires “a deeper reckoning about the insidious architecture of violence against sexual minorities in the United States,” an architecture that constructs minoritized communities as Other, that entitles perpetrators and structures, and that facilitates data and service systems that are inadequately designed to hold perpetrators accountable (p. 190). Scholars also argue that resources should be invested in violence prevention and community-based strategies to address the wicked problem that is gender violence (Blosnich, 2011). Thus, given the broader framing of gender violence as a wicked problem, in the next section, we consider how news framing of gender violence further contributes to the construction of gender violence as a wicked problem. We trace the historical and contemporary trends associated with news framing of gender violence and its larger cultural impacts, identify its ethical tensions, and then articulate how space-making could offer one set of solutions to larger discursive coverage of violence against women and girls.

News coverage of violence against women: Historical and contemporary trends

In this section, we explore the causes, impacts, and ramifications of news coverage of gender violence as a wicked problem. As Lloyd and Ramon (2017) and Hernández (2025) explain, news coverage of violence is significant because it can project certain perspectives about violence into mainstream culture while minimizing or obscuring others, which has significant implications for public policy related to gender violence, as well as larger perspectives on gender violence as a public health problem. Decades of scholarship in communication, media studies, and gender studies fields have highlighted the negative framing strategies utilized to discuss gender violence, as well as the negative impacts of such coverage. In her foundational work on news coverage of violence against women, for example, Meyers (1996) asserted news representations of violence against women are significant because the news both shapes how we view and interact with the world and affects how we live our lives. Further, Meyers (1996) explained the significance of the news accordingly: “The news warns women about what actions and locations are unsafe, influencing decisions about where to go, what to wear, how to act, how late to stay out. It tells all of us how society views male acts of violence directed at women, delimiting what may be acceptable or unacceptable behavior for both women and men” (p. 3). Building upon scholars such as Tuchman (1978) and Tuchman, Daniels, and Benet (1978), among others, Meyers (1996) stressed the underrepresentation of women in the news coupled with patriarchal influences, gender roles, journalistic factors, and societal norms constructed practices that led to the construction of women and victims as “deviants worthy of condemnation,” not the men and individuals who are perpetrators in such cases (p. 4). Almost thirty years later, more contemporary scholarship highlights that considerations of blame, culpability, and journalistic structures are present and continue to disenfranchise women survivors of violence in news coverage contexts.

For example, in their analysis of U.K.-based newspaper coverage of domestic violence, Lloyd and Ramon (2017) found that while one newspaper “adopted a respectful position towards women,” the other newspaper included in their sample adopted both visual and textual techniques that blamed victims, sexualized violence, and invoked discourses of “deserving” or “undeserving” victims. The trend of blaming victims for the violence perpetrated against them is frequently associated with parallel discourses of shame that further disenfranchise and disempower victims (Montiel, 2014; Yusuf, 2022). Similarly, in their analysis of Australian news coverage of a high-profile sexual assault case, Dunne Breen et al. (2017) found that quoting strategies, lexical features, and story structuring elements simultaneously minimized the victim's experience while emphasizing the negative impacts of the trial on the accused perpetrator. Ultimately, Dunne Breen et al. (2017) concluded that routine journalism practices (the use of the inverted pyramid method, quoting and source techniques, and story structure elements) objectified the victim, diminished her experiences, and framed the violent act both graphically and salaciously.

Through case examples, we can better understand the negative impact of routine journalism practices on the coverage of violence against women and girls (see Morgan and Simons, 2018; Phillips et al., 2015). In a content analysis of almost 700 Indonesian news articles’ coverage of violence against women and girls, Yusuf (2022) found that more than half of the articles failed to reveal the social roots of gender violence or provide informational support for survivors, victims, and witnesses. The other half, however, did challenge common myths, misinformation, and stereotypes about violence against women and girls, highlighting a positive possibility that can shift the construction and dissemination of messages about violence. Similarly, Sutherland, Easteal, Holland, and Vaughan (2019) found that news coverage of violence against women infrequently situated violence within broader social contexts, rarely included information for women on how and where to seek help, and rarely elevated the voices of survivors, advocates, and other experts, instead disproportionately emphasizing perspectives from law enforcement and criminal justice spokespersons. Sutherland et al. (2019) ultimately concluded that while readers may be ready to engage with news about violence against women, there is a dearth of coverage that promotes public understanding of violence in concert with discussions about the prevalence of gender violence and its systemic enablers. In other words, by utilizing episodic framing mechanisms to depict violence against women as isolated events, journalists further distance such acts of violence from the structures that perpetrate violence.

Taken together, years of scholarship that interrogate media portrayals of violence against women illustrate long-term, repeated trends of mutuality and responsibility for violence (Easteal et al., 2015), sensationalized coverage of violence (Dunne Breen et al., 2017), disproportionate emphasis on police enforcement as preferred or more valued sources of information over community advocates, educators, and survivors (Sutherland et al., 2019), diminished perspectives and experiences of survivors and victims (Dunne Breen et al., 2017), and lack of attention to addressing the social and systemic roots of gender violence (Simons and Morgan, 2018; Yusuf, 2022). We contend with Easteal et al. (2015), Hernández (2023), and others when they assert that such journalistic trends and techniques contradict feminist and public health discourses that position gender violence as an international public health concern that is systematic, structural, and stems from interconnected systems of patriarchy, male dominance, and misogyny. Further, through the lens of wicked problems, contemporary trends illustrative of new framing of gender violence can impede public health and professional goals of protecting women from violence, improving access to justice, and telling more humane stories about victims and survivors (Easteal et al., 2015; Hernández, 2023). Ultimately, combating violence against women and girls requires challenging how gender roles and power relations are articulated in society, including in news discourses, as well (Yusuf, 2022).

Transforming news coverage of gender violence to enable social change

As scholars have noted, journalists must take responsibility to challenge journalistic norms that frame violence against women and girls as isolated incidents (Hernández, 2025), be more sensitive to the needs of victims and survivors (Yusuf, 2022), spotlight more voices in coverage, and actively deconstruct stereotypes and myths about the causes, impacts, and responsibilities of violence (Owusu-Addo et al., 2018). In this section, we discuss the utility of guidelines meant to positively impact news coverage of violence against women and explore how ethical approaches to space-making can be utilized as solutions to the wicked problem of news coverage of violence against women with the larger goal of fostering sustainable and equitable futures and positioning communication as an enabler of social change.

First, one strategy that can be utilized as a solution to problematic trends associated with news coverage of violence against women and girls is gender-sensitive reporting principles, which reveal the negative societal attitudes associated with news coverage of violence (Yusuf, 2022). As Ramšak (2015) describes, gender-sensitive reporting principles aim to support journalists in framing gender violence in more gender-sensitive and gender-responsive ways with the broader goal of contributing to a more just society. Ramšak’s (2015) checklist (see Table 1) for avoiding gender insensitive reporting includes several considerations related to sourcing, double standards, loaded language, and context.

Table 1. Checklist for detecting and avoiding gender-insensitive reporting (Ramšak, 2015).

Building upon Ramšak’s (2015) checklist and other journalism guidelines, Yusuf (2022) developed a list of “do principles” and “don’t principles” that could be utilized when covering violence against women. As Yusuf (2022) explains (See Table 2), related to wicked problems, 2.a: providing relevant background information encourages journalists to frame violence against women and girls as a societal problem, not an individual event, which ensures that violence is not depicted as “an inexplicable tragedy that cannot be solved” (p. 165). This connects with previous scholarship that advocates for the use of thematic framing to raise attention to the structural sources of risk, illness, violence and death (Bhalla et al., 2019; Gounder and Ameer, 2018; Vardeman-Winter, 2017; Zoller and Casteel, 2022). Instead of utilizing episodic framing in news coverage of gender violence that positions acts of violence as individual acts, thematic framing links violence to larger social and structural contexts that both raises awareness in viewers and works to promote social response (Sela-Shayovitz, 2018). Relatedly, connection frames could also be utilized to depict violence against women, which link abstract concepts to concrete events, thus situating violence against women and girls within larger conversations about human rights, violence as an international public health epidemic, and audience/community responsibility.

Table 2. Yusuf’s (2022) list of Do and Don't principles when covering gender violence.

Further, 2.b: balancing the representation of men and women as sources of information encourages journalists to diversify the inclusion of voices and perspectives utilized in news articles. We expand this principle to not just include a diversity of gendered voices and perspectives, but also a diversity of lived experiences. In addition to balancing voices of men and women, journalists must also include various perspectives in addition to law enforcement, such as community advocates, activists, and educators to balance how certain voices are prioritized and framed as experts over others. The third principle, 2.c: mentioning the social roots of gender violence and society's responsibility, emphasizes the construction of gender violence not just as a “woman's issue,” but rather a larger societal issue that impacts all men and women so that audiences are mobilized to educate themselves and act:

In connection to this, the media can undertake to mention that VAWG reflects dominant power and interests that have re-entrenched gender inequality and inequity and the public can take part in solving such inequities. Covering stories with relevant policies, legislative issues, programs designed to promote non-VAWG and transform unequal gender norms with men's awareness (Yusuf, 2022, p. 167).

Lastly, principle 2.d: the inclusion of local contact information for support organizations and services is significant because it communicates to victims and general audiences that there is support available and connects those who might need assistance. Ultimately, Ramšak’s (2015) and Yusuf’s (2022) guidelines provide a useful starting point for incorporating gender-sensitive principles into news reporting of gender violence. Their recommendations are similar to those provided by UN Women (2022) in its brief entitled 10 Essentials for Gender and Age-Sensitive Media Reporting of Violence Against Girls. The brief's three key principles include the following: Further, the brief's practice implementation recommendations include the following: (1) textual framing and source practices (avoid making references that would lead to victim-blaming), (2) visual framing (avoid using visuals that might sensationalize the violence or sexualize the victim/survivor), (3) situate cases of gender violence within the broader context of violence against girls in that particular state or region, (4) include relevant resources and information for survivors and those who support them, (5) utilize an intersectional lens that elaborates on power structures impacting violence and other important identity-associated dynamics of the case, (6) support and maintain training for journalists covering gender violence that moves past simply raising awareness about gender violence to instead focus on overcoming barriers to action, (7) provide resources to support and connect with feminist editors and journalists who can support journalist training, and (8) dedicate fixed spaces for human-rights-related news, stories and messaging that do not compete with other breaking news stories or interest stories.

• “Uphold children's rights, gender equality and human rights principles when reporting on gender-based violence against girls, including by situating it as a violation of girls’ rights in the context of discriminatory norms and unequal power relations grounded in both gender and age dynamics.”
• “Adhere to established guidelines and standards around ‘do-no-harm’ survivor-centred representation, including by protecting the victim's/survivor's privacy and providing relevant information and resources for other victims/survivors and those who may wish to support them.”
• “Avoid perpetuating gender and or age-blind reporting by ensuring that violence against girls is not conflated with violence against women, nor narrowed to violence against children.”

Taken together, Ramšak’s (2015), Yusuf’s (2022), and UN Women’s (2022) recommendations for transforming news coverage of violence against women and girls critique significant limitations of current paradigmatic and practitioner approaches, such as the need for more trauma-informed journalism and gender-based reporting support and training, the conflicts between traditional news organization values of newsworthiness and timeliness, and the need for more frameworks that move past awareness-raising to social change. Such perspectives highlight both the significance and limitations of bearing witness, an approach that scholars have long explored in relation to trauma, crisis, and violence reporting (see Hernández and De Los Santos Upton, 2018; Pinazo et al., 2025; Rentschler, 2022; Tait, 2011). As Hernández (2023; 2025) illustrates, concerns about objectivity and other journalistic norms and values continue to surface in gender violence contexts. While space-making is not explicitly part of the trauma-informed journalism literature, in what follows we present an argument for its importance in analyzing gender violence. For example, considering journalistic norms and coverage of violence, certain questions rise to the fore: which facts are more or less important, which facts should take precedence in the framing of the case, how can a journalist best balance multiple voices, and what are the best ways to memorialize and remember victims in such coverage?

Solutions for wicked problems: Space-making as journalism ethics praxis

Given the structural limitations of and ethical concerns related to news coverage of violence against girls and women, in this section, we propose space-making as one solution to the wicked problem that is violence against girls and women. We first review ethical considerations associated with objectivity, grievability, and witnessing as informing our space-making approach before transitioning to an application of space-making through the Gabby Petito case. The Gabby Petito case, we argue, is a representative case because it illustrates the communication systems in highly visible public tragedies (e.g., journalists, social media, family members, national parks communication, armchair investigators, YouTubers, etc). As a representative case, the murder of Gabby Petito by her fiancé demonstrates how media attention and public discourse elevated the story of a young, white woman living in a van and traveling through national parks. Her story received a high level of hyperfocused media attention and saturated public discourse. As a representative case through the theoretical praxis of space-making, the Gabby Petito case allows us to interrogate missing white woman syndrome and how the disappearance of queer, transgender, Brown, Black, and Indigenous women at the same time received little media attention and remained marginalized.

As an approach, space-making, we argue, encourages people to “see the world differently and to challenge status quo conceptions or deeply held beliefs, values, and ways of thinking” (Hernández and Munz, 2024c, p. 92). Originally, we conceptualized the praxis-based approach of space-making in pedagogical settings; however, with its focus on interrogating the layered experiences of human beings, it is well-suited to examine how the Gabby Petito case is not representative of all cases of missing/murdered women. Further, the praxis of space-making as a communicative approach calls on us to interrogate how communication produces collective public understandings that require us to challenge the “givenness of ontologies and epistemologies” (Hernández and Munz, 2024c, p. 92). Through such an interrogative process, human beings seek to process, cope, and even sit at the intersections of ongoing lived experiences—rather than simply seeking solutions—thereby linking up policies, laws, and socio-cultural environmental contexts.

Related to objectivity and other news values, building upon Butler’s (2016) work on grievability, Hernández (2025) has discussed the role of grievability in news coverage of violence against women, questioning concerns associated with which victims and survivors are considered grievable over others. She further contends that ethical considerations associated with the right to life and the right to humane coverage have significant implications for the strategies journalists utilize to communicate about gender violence and for the ways in which legislators, policymakers, and news consumers make sense of gender violence as a public health concern. Relatedly, the strategy of witnessing has been presented as one solution to the wicked problem of news coverage of gender violence. Scholars such as Tait (2011), Bovee (1991), Peters (2001), and others have explored witnessing's contributions in media ethics contexts. Witnessing involves three points of interaction in a communicative encounter: (1) the agent who bears witness, (2) the utterance, text, or moment itself, and (3) the audience who witnesses (Peters, 2001). As Hernández (2025) explains, witnessing communicates an evil or atrocity to a larger community and can be passive or active. Further, witnessing involves the moral responsibility of the journalist and the reader, particularly in contexts of trauma and violence. Journalists bear witness to a story and then transmit the story to readers and community members who can then bear witness to the story at hand.

As Peters (2001) explains, witnessing is an “intricately tangled process” that “raises questions of truth and experience, presence and absence, death and pain, seeing and saying, and the trustworthiness of perception—in short, fundamental questions of communication” (p. 707). Moreover, as Tait (2011), Zelizer (1998), and Hernández (2025) assert, bearing witness provides a rationale for journalistic practice because it should incite some sort of public response, an ethos of response-ability that encourages all to share responsibility for the suffering of others. Rentschler’s (2022) work, for example, has documented the ways in which survivors, anti-violence advocates, and feminist reporters have developed networks of media witnessing that address gender violence and provide important support and validation for survivors. Rentschler (2022) asserts such feminist media witnessing networks create crucial spaces of justice for victims and survivors, bolster the credibility of victims and survivors, and facilitate social change by connecting coverage to social movements and larger networks of care.

Ultimately, we advocate here for the use of space-making as a foundational lens that can shift problematic trends associated with news coverage of violence against women and girls. According to Hernández and Munz (2024c), space-making is an intentional turn in creating “conceptualizations, challenging hegemonic or (seemingly) sealed narratives and expanding spaces” for contending with deeply sedimented beliefs, values, or ways of thinking (p. 92). In this way, space-making is a way to embed the embodied stories of gender violence against women and girls with the ontologies and epistemologies of “knowing” and “understanding” structures from society (Hernández and Munz, 2024c, p. 92). Although we originally conceptualized of spacemaking in pedagogical contexts (i.e., a praxis that could guide educators’ conversations with students about challenging conversations), we contend that this praxis can extend to both journalism practice and praxis by illustrating how journalists cannot simply inform audiences of violence against women and girls, but rather assist audiences with the experience of coping with such information, processing the information, and considering action and involvement past reading the story and engaging with the content. Further, as Hernández and Munz (2024c) illustrate, space-making is a process that can create space for discourses and audiences to both challenge the status quo and deeply sedimented beliefs about gender violence, bearing witness, and the role of journalists and audiences alike in this larger process. By bearing witness to violence against women and girls and by directly calling attention to the cultural, legal, and institutional structures that enable such violence, journalists can be important communicative changemakers who can contribute to empowering audiences and contribute to social change.

Further, as we have explained, space-making builds upon intersectionality as a guiding analytic because it calls attention to the structural forces that contribute to violence against women and girls (Hernández and Munz, 2024c). In their analysis of Australian media reporting on violence against women, Rodrigues (2022) asserts an intersectional lens is necessary when reporting about violence against women because of its ability to uncover the complex, systematic prejudices related to race, ethnicity, class, ability, gender, religion, and more. Building upon Crenshaw's (1989, 1991) seminal works on intersectionality, journalism practitioners and scholars are increasingly discussing the significance of intersectional considerations in the reporting process related to sourcing and framing, as well as the significance of having culturally diverse reporters.

Moreover, as Hernández (2025), Rodriguez (2014), and others have asserted, journalists must continue to investigate stories about gendered violence against women. Rodriguez (2014) explains that journalists must continue to tell these stories with truth, respect, and honor. In discussing the work of Kent Patterson, an investigative journalist who has covered many stories of violence against women, Rodriguez (2014) stated:

This made me think about the bigger picture of journalism: the practice of consciously investigating and revisiting these important issues that society must address. The issues may be local, but they have national, or even global implications. The issues are not just a headline for one day, they are not simply print and paper – they convey the stories of humans and their realities. Their lives are constantly evolving and developing over time, and therefore their stories must, as well. Those stories must speculate on our morals as humans and as a community. They deal with life and death, just like we all do. (para. 5)

Rodriguez's comments highlight the significance of the moral imperative of bearing witness at both journalistic and news consumer levels, as well as the importance of covering gender violence in a humane manner. Similarly, in discussing the powerful works of investigative reporter and podcast host Connie Walker, McCue (2023) described how Walker is a tireless advocate for trauma-informed journalism and those impacted by gender violence. Walker stresses that when journalists cover stories about violence, they should remember that women are more than the violence inflicted upon them. In other words, as McCue (2023) notes, journalists have a moral responsibility to be mindful of the strength and resilience that survivors and victims hold. Ultimately, journalism about violence against women should balance coverage of violent acts with larger conversations about resistance, change, and anti-violence efforts that comprise larger storytelling contexts (Hernández, 2025).

Case study: The Gabby Petito case

The larger trends noted here of privacy, humane reporting, bearing witness, and moral imperatives connect importantly to the concept of space-making, a strategy that can be utilized to transform news coverage of violence against women and girls. As we mentioned above, although space-making was originally introduced in critical communication pedagogy contexts, stressing its utility in higher education contexts (Hernández and Munz, 2024b, 2024c), we expand the concept here to consider its utility in journalism praxis contexts. Space-making as a concept is uniquely attuned to shape news framing of gender violence against women and girls because, at its core, it centers conversations that are often deemed sensitive or divisive, particularly those that center conversations about power, privilege, gender, identity, and culture (Hernández and Munz, 2024c). Moreover, building upon critical communication pedagogy commitments, space-making acknowledges how identity is constituted in communication, centers culture and power in larger conversations, centers author reflexivity, and embraces a nuanced understanding of subjectivity and agency that can be utilized to guide readers and audiences through larger conversations about the structural implications of gender violence as one example. Given such commitments, space-making is dedicated to making space for bodies, perspectives, and voices that have traditionally been erased or barred from larger discourses and centers an ethic of social and political transformation that “calls attention to the most vulnerable people without institutionalized power and privilege” (Hernández and Munzc, 2024c, p. 92).

In journalism contexts, a space-making technique or strategy questions why certain structures facilitate gender violence, unpacks how laws and policies have constructed contexts where violence against women and girls remains rampant, and considers how humane reporting and storytelling can connect news reporting to processes of support for victims and survivors, liberation, and social change. It also provides space for both journalists and audiences to challenge the status quo, shift larger societal perspectives of victim blaming and responsibility, and “expand space for theorizing a more just, equal, and safe world” (Hernández and Munz, 2024c, p. 92). Ultimately, by blending gender-sensitive reporting principles, intersectional lenses, and space-making techniques, journalists can engage in more humane reporting of gender violence against women and girls, connect their coverage importantly to feminist witnessing efforts, and link individual cases of gender violence to larger cultural and structural systems that facilitate such violence.

To illustrate how space-making could operate as a news coverage mechanism related to violence against women and girls, we return to the Gabby Petito case as an example. Given that we both work, teach, research, and recreate in Utah, the Gabby Petito case was a salient case study for us and our students in both teaching and research contexts. Gabby Petito's case made national headlines in September 2021 when she was reported missing during a hiking trip in Utah with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie. Local searches resulted in the discovery of both her body, and investigators later determined that Laundrie murdered her. He later took his own life. Several news reports, social media videos, and documentaries have highlighted the police force's errors in her investigation (Strack et al., 2022), the sensationalized nature of the case vis-a-vis its technologic hypervisibility (Thierbach-McLean, 2024), and the ways in which the media's hyperfocus on her case obscured other narratives about gender violence against women and girls, such as the erasure of news narratives about and subsequent justice for missing and murdered indigenous women (MMIW) and women of color more broadly (Furey et al., 2025). For example, Furey and colleagues (2025) conducted a content analysis of coverage of Petito's disappearance versus coverage of women of color who went missing around the same time. Their analysis found that the disappearance of women of color resulted in fewer words per story, fewer stories, and less coverage overall compared to the coverage surrounding Petito's disappearance. This is but one example of larger issues associated with journalistic coverage of violence against women and girls.

We contend that a space-making approach provides journalists and content creators more latitude to consider the structural and systemic causes of violence, with coverage that is socially, culturally, and politically situated. The coverage must also be embedded within meaning-making structures of the environment itself, addressing the unique contours of gender violence culturally and politically within each local, regional, and national context. Space-making also requires a deeper reflexivity for journalists engaging with the subject material related to framing considerations connected to race, class, gender, sexuality, and other important factors. This is not to say that Petito's case should not have been covered, but rather, as scholars have illustrated, the hyperfocus on Petito's unique case washed out other news stories and dominated headlines and coverage at the expense of news coverage of violence against women of color, trans women, and other minoritized communities. In other words, while other journalistic approaches such as trauma-informed journalism (see Massé, 2011) and ethical witnessing (see Hernández, 2025; Pinazo et al., 2025; Rentschler, 2022) highlight the need to emphasize sensitivity, humanity, and empathy, we contend that space-making is a similar, yet different approach because it intentionally initially foregrounds cultural context, structure, and intent as a starting point. It calls intentionally for an openness on behalf of journalists and stakeholders in journalistic structures to explicitly consider the “givenness” of gender violence as isolated acts and for journalists and stakeholders in journalistic structures to reflexively interrogate how their practices recreate discursive violence in their approaches to cover gender violence. Space-making, then, is a broader ontological and epistemological framework that centers journalistic reflexivity and relationality. It centers the creation of communicative spaces as a foundational starting point where journalists and community members can exercise agency, meaning-making, and collective voice. While it does hold a similar ethos to ethical witnessing by honoring how journalism can bear witness to gender violence and injustice, space-making also views journalism as a critical, foundational starting point in creating space for democratic engagement for both journalists and readers/community members. Further, it moves past trauma journalism's goals of not doing more harm to a generative framework that also supports journalists and communities in creating spaces with conditions whereby all stakeholders can exercise voice and agency in the reporting process. Lastly, space-making shifts earlier considerations of how journalists represent violence to ask how journalism and communities together can engage in more ethical storytelling together. Ultimately, it expands journalism's democratic and civic ideals while centering the collaborative meaning-making practices between journalists and communities alike.

Research has consistently asserted that missing white women receive more news coverage than missing women of color, and that such coverage is disproportionate with problematic narratives (Blow, 2021; Furey et al., 2025). Further, space-making is an embodied storytelling ethic and approach that deliberately foregrounds the materiality of the story at hand while addressing systemic and structural factors that cause gender violence and, through a witnessing lens, mobilizes audiences past a passive reading of or engagement with the story. In this case, articles about Petito's disappearance could have linked her story more effectively to other cases of missing women of color, highlighted the structural factors that obscure resources dedicated to finding missing women, and also utilized thematic framing to call attention to the social causes that contribute to such violence and the institutional and audience responsibility to both bear witness and work to enable social change.

Further, space-making incorporates considerations from both Ramšak’s (2015) and Yusuf’s (2022) guidelines by calling attention to the upholding of human rights, specifically for women and children, throughout the reporting process (conducting interviews, news framing, etc.) and centering gender-sensitive reporting principles. While we contend that the enmeshing of Ramšak’s (2015) and Yusuf’s (2022) guidelines is an important precursor to the practice of space-making, we extend both guidelines by moving past gender-sensitive reporting to center intersectional reporting principles that are always attentive to the power structures and institutions that directly facilitate and enable such violence. Ultimately, space-making is a call to revisit journalists’ moral commitments to more intersectional, ethical coverage of violence against women and girls. As we have discussed elsewhere (Hernández and Munz, 2023, 2024a), similar to educators, journalists have the power to shape how audiences see the world, disrupt reality, and call for social change. In other words, they can create spaces where material outcomes can occur. This is not to disparage all journalists (especially since one of the authors is a former journalist and survivor of gender violence); rather, it is a deepened and revitalized call for journalists, practitioners, and scholars alike to utilize our training and abilities in discourse, structures, patterns, and systems (see Endres and DuPont, 2016) to address wicked problems and work to enable social change.

Concluding thoughts

Violence against women and girls is a wicked problem and an international public health epidemic that has impacted one in three women worldwide. As we have demonstrated in this article, news framing of violence against women and girls has been characterized by several trends, such as the blaming of survivors and victims, the overreliance on law enforcement perspectives, the sensationalization of violence, and continued dehumanizing of victims and survivors. Several journalism guidelines and frameworks exist that have the potential to significantly impact news coverage of violence against women and girls for the better. However, as Sutherland et al. (2016) explain in their review of media guidelines for the responsible reporting of violence against women, multiple guidelines exist that are meant to assist reporters in covering gender violence more effectively and are rooted in evidence-based practice; however, there is a clear need for future research to “explore questions around development, acceptability, and uptake and effectiveness, particularly in local contexts, and with all forms of media” (p. 12). Their recommendations urge scholars and practitioners to consider questions related to how affordances enable and constrain journalistic ability to implement such guidelines, as well as the acceptability and feasibility of recommendations within various news organization structures and norms. Another critique raised by Sutherland et al. (2016) questions whether journalists are aware that such guidelines exist to improve reporting, highlighting the persistence of gaps between academic scholarship and practitioner implementation, as well as the gaps between academic and practitioner collaboration.

Ultimately, we have proposed space-making as one praxis-based solution that encourages journalists to utilize their reflexivity, center a journalism practice rooted in an intersectional praxis, and encourage journalism scholars and practitioners to continue collaborations in hopes of transforming news coverage of gender violence to humanize victims and survivors and enact social change. As one solution to the wicked problem of gender violence against women and girls, space-making directly responds to Sustainable Development Goals 5) Gender Equality and 16) Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions by highlighting how the institution of journalism writ large and journalists at a micro level can engage in social change by creating more equitable, intersectional news coverage of gender violence against women and girls. While our approach and communicative training are deeply influenced by US journalistic concepts and case study examples, we contend there are meaningful implications for international contexts, too. We acknowledge the limitations of space-making, given various journalistic contexts, cultures, and structural freedoms, but we still advocate for the ethical process of space-making to center reflexivity, witnessing, and goals to enact social change.

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Footnotes

Edited by: Uttaran Dutta, Arizona State University, United States

Reviewed by: Wiwik Novianti, Universitas Jenderal Soedirman, Indonesia

Vinita Susanti, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia