MEDIA COVERAGE OF "GRASSROOTS" VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN A comparative analysis for Romania and Canada

The article presents the results of a comparative project about the re-construction of acts of violence against women and children in Canadian and Romanian newspapers. The data showed both the similarities and the differences between Eastern European and Western American images of women. The data stressed that although violence against women and children is a world-wide social phenomena, its media "coverage" was strongly dependent on the peculiarities of the society in which it has occurred, and has a national character. A common trend of the journalistic texts was recorded at a trans-national level: to (implicitly) disseminate stereotypes related to the women's first degree and socially-accepted positions of helpless victims of violent acts.