Coverage Begins at the Corpse: Episodic Framing and the Newsworthiness Threshold of Violence Against Women in the Pakistani English-Language Press

Abstract

Since 2016, Pakistani law has recognized economic and psychological abuse as forms of violence. But media coverage has a lot to do with public recognition of abuse. The law’s more capacious definition may be idle where the news frame allows only visible injury. To learn what kinds of violence against women are considered newsworthy by the English-language newspaper of record in Pakistan, and how they are framed if they are. Method Quantitative content analysis of 88 articles published in Dawn between 23 July 2025 and 24 August 2026, selected from the newspaper’s “gender violence” and “violence against women” tag archives. Articles were coded for type of violence, episodic/thematic framing, primary source, attributional language, remedy frame, and inclusion of non-physical abuse in the report. No article (0.0%) was mainly about psychological abuse, economic abuse and coercive control. This type of conduct was reported in 22.7% of articles, always as a small detail when considering a physical injury. Framing was episodic for 76.1% of articles. Police documentation or court proceedings were the primary account for 61.4%. The survivor’s own voice was present for 3.4%. Thematic framing was almost entirely confined to opinion, policy and advocacy items (15 of 16) rather than news reports (6 of 72) (χ2 = 47.97, df = 1, p < .001; OR = 165.0). Coverage of violence against women in Pakistan functions under a threshold of visibility which is set at the body. Non-physical abuse is not only under-reported; it is also structurally unreportable within the conventions of what currently exists as crime journalism, derived as it is from police documentation and therefore unable to accommodate conduct that produces no incident, no scene and no complaint. The newspaper has its own pattern-level analysis, but it is limited to commentary. Implications for reporting conventions, awareness campaigns and release of institutional data are discussed.

Keywords: Coercive control, Economic abuse, Framing theory, Episodic framing, Violence against women, Pakistan, News media, South Asia.