Article | Open Access
Mediation of Gendered Life and Death Within Intersecting Regimes of Patriarchy, Authoritarianism, and Necropolitics
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Abstract: This article examines how Turkish news media mediate fatal violence against women, trans women, and those self-identified as travesti within intersecting regimes of patriarchy, authoritarianism, and necropolitics. Extending feminist and queer media scholarship, it argues that the Turkish case reveals a shift from spectacularized representation to epistemic erasure, in which silence itself becomes a necropolitical tool. Drawing on feminist visual framing and critical discourse analysis of nine femicide and transphobic hate crime cases (2021–2024), the study traces how Islamist, pro-government, and alternative outlets reproduce or resist these regimes. Queer-feminist journalism, by contrast, enacts a counter-hegemonic praxis of radical care and remembrance that re-inscribes life and grievability. The article contributes to existing research by conceptualizing “mediated grievability” and revealing how visibility, denial, and mourning shape media governance of life and death. Ultimately, it underscores the urgent need for trans and travesti inclusive feminist media practices that politicize loss and affirm marginalized lives.
Keywords: femicide; gender; hate crime; mediation; necropolitics; news media; queer feminist media; Turkey
Published:
© Melike İşleyen, Barış Çoban. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.