Since the onset of the coronavirus disease in 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, perhaps more so than ever before, online news and social media have become crucial trajectories of information. As people tried to make sense of their rapidly changing realities from inside homes and behind screens, emerging studies show that, in some countries, media coverage of COVID-19-related deaths has also been accompanied by increased news coverage of the ‘shadow pandemic’ of domestic and gender-based violence, which has disproportionately had a negative impact on women and girls. Emerging studies even suggest that this news coverage is related to increased rates of reporting by some victims/survivors.

At the same time, this public attention also brings to light a key tension around gender-based violence and visibility, particularly in relation to news media coverage: given the media’s recognized influence over how we interpret and respond to events, what matters is not only if violence is reported, but how it is reported.