2.1. Texas-Mexico Border Covered by the News

Borders are ripe for news coverage because they are spaces where two or more cultures meet (^{Carter & Kodrich, 2013}; ^{Mercado, 2015}; ^{Ross et al., 2009}; ^{Morgan, 2023}). Most news on the Texas-Mexican border focuses on crime and immigration. For instance, ^{Martínez, Lozano and Rodríguez (2012}) analyzed the content of news about drug trafficking in eight newspapers from the Mexico-Texas border region for two weeks. They found that neither Mexican newspapers nor Texan ones provided useful information regarding the need to protect the presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial. Also, ^{Correa-Cabrera (2012}) examined drug violence news on the Texas-Tamaulipas border; the author identified that mass media were alarmist when reporting on this topic. About immigration, ^{Muñiz (2011}) examined the content of three Mexican newspapers. He identified four news frames that concentrated on political debate, delinquency and expulsion, regularization processes, and the migratory experience. The literature on migratory experiences and VAWG at the border is extensive but has primarily been studied through personal experiences rather than through the lens of newspaper analysis. ^{Ramage et al. (2023})’s study focuses on understanding the experiences of violence faced by women and girls during the immigration process through in-depth interviews. They interviewed Central American women along the Mexico-U.S. border about physical, emotional, and sexual violence. They found that repeated exposure to violence contributed to poor mental health among women. Similar research from ^{Cook Heffron (2019}) explored various types of violence experienced by Central American women during the pre-migration, in-transit, and post-migration phases. The author found that these women endured violence before, during, and after crossing the border. Also, ^{Soria-Escalante et al., (2022}) found that immigrant women suffered sexual violence during migratory transit through Mexico. Morgan (2023) identified connections between the state portrayal of immigrant women and violence in U.S.-Mexico border cities. She highlighted the dangers faced by women in these areas and emphasized the general lack of research on violence against women in these cities.

Research on media coverage of the Texas-Mexico border predominantly focuses on broad themes such as crime, drug trafficking, and immigration. However, most studies lack a gender perspective and do not compare U.S. and Mexican newspapers. This omission highlights a gap in academic research on media coverage in this region. Without a gender lens, studies fail to capture the full complexity of border-related issues, particularly as they pertain to women and girls.

2.2. Violence Against Women and Girls in Texas-Mexico Border in News

Studies on how Mexican newspapers have covered news related to VAWG have been conducted, but they did not approach violence as a holistic topic. Instead, they focused exclusively on specific types of violence, such as femicide or intimate partner violence (^{Aldrete, 2024}; ^{Branch, 2019}; Domínguez-Ruvalcaba & Corona, 2010; ^{Gonzalez, 2021}). Aldrete (2024) examined how Mexican news media portray femicide, focusing on the social representations of both victims and perpetrators. Similarly, Gonzalez (2021) investigated the dynamics of gender-based violence (GBV) in Ciudad Juárez during the COVID-19 pandemic, utilizing official police reports and victim testimonies. The results reveal that pandemic restrictions significantly influenced the prevalence of gender-based violence. Branch (2019)’s thesis compares how newspapers portray femicide in two cities: Detroit, Michigan, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Buenrostro (2022) expanded the analysis beyond Mexico to other Spanish-speaking countries using qualitative content analysis of newspapers reporting on femicides. The findings show that media narratives frequently present femicides as isolated incidents or personal conflicts, failing to address broader structural issues.

Research specifically focusing on how Texas newspapers report on VAWG is limited, despite Texas being one of the states with the highest rates of domestic violence. In 2024, 40.1% of women in Texas experienced this crime (World Population Review, 2024). However, several studies have examined U.S. newspaper coverage, focusing on femicide and domestic violence in the USA but not specifically in Texas (^{Gillespie et al., 2013}; ^{Richards et al., 2014}; Richards et al., 2011). Gillespie et al. (2013) investigated how U.S. newspapers report on femicide, focusing on the framing of incidents of deadly domestic VAW. They found that victims are often portrayed in ways that diminish their humanity or suggest complicity in their victimization. Similarly, Richards et al. (2011) examined how U.S. newspapers report on femicide. They found that coverage frequently includes information about the victim’s behavior, lifestyle, or choices, implying responsibility for the violence they experienced. Finally, Richards et al. (2014) investigated how femicide-suicides are represented in U.S. newspapers, finding that coverage often shifts the narrative focus from the femicide to the perpetrator’s suicide, minimizing the harm caused to the victim.

There is a significant gap in academic research on VAWG along the Texas-Mexico border through the lens of newspaper coverage. Although existing studies often focus on specific topics such as femicide, they predominantly limit their scope to this issue. Comprehensive research that examines VAWG in its entirety, while offering a comparative analysis of media coverage between Mexico and the United States, is notably absent. This lack of holistic and contextualized studies highlights the need for further exploration and research into how media representations influence VAWG in these regions.

2.3. Framing Theory

Framing theory was developed by Erving ^{Goffman (1974}) to interpret how people analyze, organize, and make sense of information and meaning in society. Robert ^{Entman (1993}) and other scholars developed the theory to apply to mass communication, and particularly, news media, to understand how mass media organizations present information to the public. News media framing analysis may be employed to uncover bias through conducting content analysis (Entman, 2010). With an inductive, qualitative approach, framing analysis may be used to uncover patterns and themes in news media coverage by identifying language used in headlines and stories, sources quoted and attributed by journalists, visual images, placement on pages, and other factors in the news gathering and gatekeeping processes. For example, ^{Reese (2010}) analyzed media coverage of the U.S. “The War on Terror” in the early 2000s to determine what kinds of frames journalists used to convey meaning to the public about the war in Iraq and possibly shape U.S. foreign policy. Journalists learn how to cover issues through their education and training and biases they learn may be incorporated into their publications and broadcasts (Entman, 2010). Some of that bias includes reflections of constructed gender roles and extends the ways exclusion and trivialization of women are framed in the media (^{Hardin & Whiteside, 2010}). In this study, we also employ a qualitative, inductive approach to framing to determine the patterns used by journalists along the Texas-Mexico border in covering VAWG. ^{Lee & Wong (2020}) also conducted a qualitative content analysis of VAWG coverage in a Canadian newspaper and found that the crimes were portrayed as a series of isolated incidents. They also noted that the newspaper stories blamed women and girls for their own victimization rather than identifying violence against them as a societal problem that needs addressing. The authors concluded, “In a male-dominated society, these ideas and beliefs have been ingrained in the public’s mind through the manner in which gender roles and rights are discussed and presented. When the media continue to present and frame current issues in a way that perpetuates these beliefs, it hinders the process of change from occurring” (p. 227).

Of particular relevance is the concept of episodic versus thematic framing. While thematic framing provides greater context for a story, episodic framing focuses on singular events detached from the greater context (^{Boukes, 2022}). In research on episodic framing and VAW, ^{Meltzer (2023}) found that media coverage of VAW was underreported in news and almost never placed within a societal context of crimes against women and women’s rights. ^{Aldrete (2024}), in an analysis of episodic versus thematic framing in Mexican newspaper coverage of VAW, found that episodic framing was often focused on what the women did wrong instead of placing greater emphasis on the greater social issues concerning VAW.

2.4. Research Questions

The overarching research goal is to explore the differences and/or similarities that exist in the treatment of news about VAWG on the border between Texas and Mexico (Chihuahua and Tamaulipas). This following research question were asked:

RQ4: How are stories about VAWG framed in newspapers on the Texas-Mexican border? 3. Methods

We conducted a mixed-method to observe and analyze news content in Spanish and English. The first study utilized a quantitative approach, employing a content analysis method. Through a codebook, we identified and examined instances of VAWG, sources, and visual representations focusing on the Texas-Mexico border. The second part of the study identified qualitative frames for a more in-depth examination of how VAWG was presented and how these portrayals might influence audiences who consume the news.

3.1. Data Collection and Sampling Procedure

Both a quantitative and qualitative content analysis were performed on the news of the El Mañana de Reynosa (Mexico), El Heraldo de Juárez (Mexico), El Paso Times (Texas) and My RGV (Texas) news organizations on the border of the United States and Mexico. The Reynosa newspaper, in Tamaulipas state of northeast Mexico, was founded in 1947 and is across the border from Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, where My RGV, the largest news organization in the area, is located. My RGV is a collective of three newspapers: The Valley Morning Star (founded 1909 in Harlingen, Texas), The Monitor (founded 1909 in McAllen, Texas), and The Brownsville Herald (founded 1892). The Juárez newspaper is located in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua state, which is across the Rio Grande (a.k.a. Rio Bravo) from El Paso in southwest Texas. El Heraldo is a national Mexican newspaper founded in 1965 and the edition we analyzed focuses on Juárez. The El Paso Times (founded in 1881) is the largest news organization in the El Paso area. During a three-month period (October, November, and December 2023), the authors, fluent in English and Spanish, collected news stories in English from the two Texas newspapers: 35 from the El Paso Times and 29 from My RGV. Stories were collected in Spanish from two Mexican newspapers: 128 from el Heraldo de Juárez and 39 from El Mañana de Reynosa.

The selection criteria was: 1. News with at least one woman/girl who suffered violence during these three months; 2. This/These women/girls had to be mentioned in the news with her/their name or with the words “woman,” “women” or “girl/s,” “mujer/es”, “niña/as”, “hija/s”, “una/ la menor/es”, “una/la ex pareja”, “féminas” or “madre/hija”. 3. All the news has to be local; 4. Intentional acts of VAWG are the focus, excluding instances of harm resulting from accidents or natural disasters, which may lead to fatalities. We studied this issue through a gender focus and note that we did not find any stories about violence against transgender or nonbinary people.

Initially, the samples revealed 231 news stories. Following these four criteria, we revisited the sample and refined it. Some stories did not meet the criteria-for instance, news reports that mentioned “a group of immigrants” or “people” without specifying whether women or girls were involved. These stories were eliminated from the sample. Additionally, we identified duplicate news articles that had been saved twice, and these were also removed. The final sample contained 210 news stories: 120 from El Heraldo de Juárez and 34 from El Mañana de Reynosa in Spanish; 30 news stories from the El Paso Times and 26 from My RGV in English.

3.2. Qualitative Method: Thematic Framing Analysis

Two trained researchers examined three month’s worth of stories (October 1-December 31, 2023) gathered from the Texas and Mexican newspapers to identify frames, taking into account a coding frame presented by ^{Lee and Wong (2020}). The current researchers read 56 stories collected from the Texas newspapers, taking individual notes. We then met to discuss the categories and themes we identified and narrowed the themes further to identify common patterns in the coverage. We moved from descriptive codes to categorical codes, and finally to analytical codes that identified collective meaning, following ^{Hesse-Biber’s (2017}) qualitative coding outline. To analyze the Mexican newspapers, we repeated the process after incorporating translation software that allowed the researchers to read the stories in English. We randomly chose a sample of 50 stories from the Mexican newspapers to have a roughly equal amount to compare with the U.S. newspapers.

4.1. Quantitative Content Analysis

RQ1A aimed to identify the most frequent acts of VAWG reported on the Texas-Mexico border through the lens of newspapers. The findings indicate that in Mexico, murder (non-femicide) was the most frequently reported type of VAWG, with 35.8% of news in El Heraldo de Juárez and 26.5% news in El Mañana de Reynosa. In Texas, sexual violence was the most commonly reported form of VAWG in the El Paso Times (40%), while murder was the most frequently reported in My RGV (50%). It is noteworthy that violence associated with women and girls in the context of immigration was addressed exclusively in Mexican newspapers and was absent from Texas newspapers (see Figure 1). Regarding the correlation between acts of VAWG and victims, the RQ1B, the results showed that women (without girls) were primarily victims of murder (84.5%), femicide (15.9%), and domestic violence (10.9%). In contrast, girls (without women) were predominantly victims of sexual violence, particularly rape and pedophilia (57.1%). Furthermore, instances of double victimization-where both women and girls were affected-were immigration (30.4%) and human trafficking (13%). RQ1C explored which type of violence-physical, emotional, or sexual-was most frequently mentioned in the news. Results indicate that physical violence was the most commonly reported (81.4%), followed by sexual violence (21%), and psychological violence (1.6%). An interesting finding is that when a Mexican female journalist authored the news stories, psychological trauma was mentioned more frequently (30.8%) compared to stories written by men (3.8%). This contrasts with the situation in Texas, where there is a notable lack of female journalists covering VAWG. For example, in My RGV, none of the analyzed news stories were written by women, while in the El Paso Times, 8 stories were authored by women compared to 21 by men.

RQ2 examined the sources of news regarding VAWG on the Texas-Mexico border. Authorities (e.g., lawyers, ministers, politicians, representatives of the judiciary, or federal government) and police were the most common sources utilized by newspapers in this region to report VAWG incidents. Mexican newspapers relied more heavily on authoritative sources, with El Mañana de Reynosa (64.7%) and El Heraldo de Juárez (60.8%) demonstrating significant usage. In Texas, the El Paso Times predominantly relied on authorities (83.36%), while police emerged as the primary source for My RGV (57.7%) (see Table 2). Relatives were the third most frequently cited source in news stories, particularly in My RGV (Texas).

Source: Own elaboration.

Figure 1 VAWG acts and newspaper in the border 

RQ3 explored the types of images related to the topic of VAWG portrayed in newspapers along the Texas-Mexico border. In both Mexico and Texas, images often depicted arrests, suspects, or prisoners (41.9%) and crime scenes (29.5%). Images of arrests, suspects, or prisoners were most frequently associated with sexual violence crimes, such as rape and pedophilia (67.50%). In contrast, crime scene images were more commonly linked to murder cases (54.90%). Notably, in contexts involving VAWG, victims’ faces were more frequently displayed in cases of kidnapping (36.40%) and immigration (33.3%).

4.2. Qualitative Framing Analysis

Journalists employ frames to make sense of stories. They also follow production routines learned through education and professional training (^{Entman, 1993}; ^{Reese, 2010}). The three researchers for the qualitative section of this study have conducted numerous framing analyses and one is a former professional journalist who brought that experience to the analysis. We used a qualitative content analysis approach suggested by ^{Hesse-Biber (2017}) to code from a grounded theory perspective the articles from the news organizations. We first examined descriptive codes from the words used in the news stories, then advanced to more focused coding with analytical codes. We discussed the coding among the researchers throughout the process to confirm validity and reliability for our analysis of themes. In previous research, ^{Lee and Wong (2020}) used critical discourse analysis to identify the ways journalists framed stories in a Canadian newspaper and found the following themes: “Just Another Homicide” (failure to cover the story as violence aimed toward women), “It’s Only a Problem When Newsworthy” (failure to identify the violence as a societal problem), and “99 Reasons and He Ain’t One” (victim blaming). In the U.S. newspapers we examined, The El Paso Times and the website MyRGV (Rio Grande Valley), we found similar frames as those Lee and Wong identified. We uncovered the following from the Texas and Mexico news coverage.

5.1. Framing Violence on the Border

As established by previous research, news profes.sionals incorporate frames or patterns in the ways they present stories. These frames are learned through journalism education and newsroom training and become part of journalism routines (^{Entman, 1993}; ^{Reese, 2010}). Framing also is incorporated into the ways women are portrayed in the news media (^{Hardin & Whiteside, 2010}). Framing of women often places them as crime victims, particularly as victims of sex crimes (^{Everbach, 2013}). This type of coverage trivializes the victimization and deaths of women and girls at the hands of others. In addition, reporting this news in a way that blames women and girls for their own victimization only further victimizes them and does nothing to solve the problem of violence. Studying the way VAWG is framed in news media can help contribute to changes in media portrayals of women as victims and work toward giving them agency and gender equity.

We can see from our study that the patterns show U.S. newspapers continue to treat VAWG not as a societal problem that needs institutional change, but as an element of crime reporting. The stories here were framed as everyday crimes rather than contextual examinations of an epidemic affecting girls and women. They also were presented as short, individual stories that only rarely addressed the larger problem of VAW. On the whole, the newspapers in Mexico essentially did the same thing, although they did identify crimes against women and girls as a specific category of malfeasance.

The episodic framing identified here can be attributed to the fact that journalists are taught through production routines that crime news is important and that they should obtain information from official sources (^{Easteal et al., 2022}). Journalists often are under deadline pressure, which prevents them from thoroughly investigating crimes on their own and following up on stories. This can explain the short length of many of the stories, the lack of indepth reporting, and the reliance on official sources rather than humanizing the story through victims’ relatives, friends, or even the victims themselves. Some of the U.S. stories reflected rape culture by insinuating that women were to blame for their own victimization, but that phenomenon was not present in the Mexican newspaper stories. Perhaps the fact that Mexico has acknowledged VAWG as a societal problem and instituted government offices to investigate and prosecute these crimes has helped Mexican journalists avoid writing rape culture into their stories.

Previous studies have shown that training journalists about the damage that is caused by rape myths, victim-blaming, and the societal context of VAWG can improve news coverage by making it more accurate, fair, and informative (^{Easteal et al., 2022}). If provided with this information, journalists may transform their reporting from upholding rape culture and the status quo to identifying the societal problem of VAWG and possibly bringing about legislative and societal change.