Gender violence: media treatment and analysis of the Nabila Rifo case in La Cuarta and Las Últimas Noticias

On May 14, 2016, Nabila Rifo was found on a public road without her eyeballs and with serious injuries throughout her body that kept her in an induced coma for several days. The attack was one of the iconic news that marked the Chilean society, in general and the press in particular, regarding awareness about femicide and gender-based violence. This article analyzes the coverage and treatment that the digital newspapers La Cuarta and Las Ultimas Noticias gave to that case. The investigation applies a matrix of categories through the mixed content analysis technique to 706 editions of the newspapers, from the day the victim was beaten until the conviction of Mauricio Ortega, Rifos's former partner accused as the author of the facts. The analysis includes the universe of copies of both newspapers from May 14, 2016 to May 2, 2017.The study reveals that the aforementioned media proposed social representations that contributed to a secondary victimization of Nabila Rifo by unnecessarily exposing her and granting scabrous details of the case.