Domestic Violence in the News, 2019–2026: Attention, Geography and Tone of Global Coverage, and How It Compares with Research
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: We measure how domestic violence was covered in a global news index from January 2019 to July 2026, using 86,045 de-duplicated articles about domestic, intimate-partner, family and dowry-related violence, and set that coverage beside 23,163 research papers published on the topic between 2015 and 2025. All results are coverage measures. They describe attention, not the prevalence of abuse. Six results stand out: Falling share. Domestic violence took 7.32 of every 10,000 news articles in 2019 and 4.6 in 2025, a 37.2% fall in share, although raw counts rose as the index grew. The month of the lockdowns. The largest monthly share between 2019 and 2025 came in April 2020, a month of COVID-19 lockdowns in many countries, at 11.87 articles per 10,000. British coverage more than doubled as a share of British news from 2019 to 2020 (4.3 to 9.79 per 10,000). Weak seasonality. Coverage is spread fairly evenly across the year. No month holds more than 9.12% of a typical year's articles, against 8.33% for an even spread. Geography. Australia's share of located coverage is 4.21 times its share of all news, the highest of any country with at least 100 located articles. The United States holds 57.32% of located articles (lift 1.18). India is under-represented (0.61). Within India, Kerala (1.64), Uttar Pradesh (1.53) and Madhya Pradesh (1.47) lead; within the United States, Maine (2.77), West Virginia (2.57) and Alabama (2.53). Tone and urgency. 79.2% of articles are negative in tone (all news: 33.6%), and 83.9% are rated critical priority (all news: 42.6%). Research. Papers on the topic rose from 2.79 to 3.58 per 10,000 papers between 2015 and 2025, a 1.28-fold increase in share. Patenting is negligible: 5 patent families in ten years. If you or someone you know is struggling, contact local emergency services or a crisis line.
Author: Kumar, Narendra
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222876422
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