Medijski tretman nasilja nad ženama u Srbiji
Media Treatment of Violence Against Women in Serbia

Summary/Abstract: One of the basic functions of the media is to timely and truthfully inform citizens about things that have happened outside their perceptual reach. Other, higher social functions are upgraded to this basic function, by means of which the media can directly or indirectly influence social flows and phenomena by the presence, manner, value, and ethical qualifications inserted in the information distributed by the media. Violence against women has been a negative phenomenon of human civilization almost since its beginnings, that is, since the end of matriarchy. The main reason for that is the perception of men as in every sense a superior being over a woman, and the stereotypes, habits, and customs resulting from such a perception. Despite the obvious progress of civilization, in a large part of the world, the identical pattern of male-female relations that was established several thousand years ago is still dominant today. However, modern societies with higher level of human development try to correct many inherited social injustices, of which the unequal position of women from which the disproportionate amount of violence against them arises is one of the most important. In these social corrections, the media, as the wielders of enormous social power, have a crucial role. The aim of this paper is to research how the media report on violence against women with special emphasis on the media in Serbia. The basic hypothesis of this paper is that the media do not use all their functions, or do not use them in the most appropriate way and that because of certain media dysfunction, the problem of violence against women often has a sensationalist and tabloid portrayal in the media, which leads to the creation of new difficulties instead of contributing to problem-solving.

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