The voices of journalism and the LGBTQI movement in response to violence in same-sex couples: Towards the construction of a social problem?

In recent years the Spanish media have highlighted numerous homicides of gay men committed by their partners or ex-partners. These homicides are classified by the term intragender violence, or violence committed in the context of a relationship between people of the same sex. Reports of these crimes have led to public debate on how society and its institutions should respond to these homicides, which several commentators have likened to partner violence against women (PVAW), the victims of which receive legal protection from government institutions. In this article we analyse the discourse that is used to refer to this issue by the two main agents involved in the construction of collective problems – social organizations and the media. By examining analytical journalistic documents (reports and opinion articles), we analyse the approaches of the LGBTQI associations cited in those documents and media discourse to identify and reconstruct the arguments used and establish similarities and differences between the stakeholders in the organizational and media spheres. Our results show that while associations and journalistic stakeholders agree that violence in same-sex couples should be considered a social problem, they disagree as to whether or not such violence should be categorized as male-based violence, similar to PVAW.