In this sense, studies such as those carried out by Lorente reveal the relationship between news media information and social sensitivity to VAW: “[…] as sensitivity increases, homicides decrease the following year; but when sensitivity decreases, murders increase the following year. There is an inverse relationship between sensitivity and number of homicides” (2009: 55).

The focus on the media’s capacity to advocate transcends national borders, and there are many academic discussions concerning what the intrinsic responsibilities of journalism should be:

“Because the public gets much of its knowledge concerning IPV3 from the news media, it is important to understand what media sources, such as newspapers, currently report. The role the media play in forming public conceptions or misconceptions about IPV leads to a need for a more in-depth examination of what the media present to the public. If the media do not portray IPV as important, then society at large will probably not view it as important” (Wozniak and McCloskey, 2010: 939).

Moreover, Aznar adds another cause for this concern: since the end of the 80s “the attention paid to new social problems has been increasing in the guidelines” (2005a: 39), such as racism, xenophobia, terrorism or violence against women, all of which pose a threat to democracies. For Aznar, these guidelines present two novelties: a) they deal with specific issues or problems of the information reality and b) in many cases their implementation and publication arises from civil society’s initiative and not so much from the professional journalism environment.

The media’s impact on forming public opinion in this specific area has also been addressed in academic research and there are studies that focus on analysing the media based on existing deontological manuals on VAW such as those by: Gallego (2003), Aznar (2005b), López (2006, 2007 and 2008), Carballido (2007 and 2009), Martínez-Rodríguez (2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013), Bandrés (2011), Zurbano-Berenguer and Martínez Fábregas (2011), Zurbano-Berenguer and Liberia-Vayá (2013), Easteal, Holland and Judd (2015), Zurbano-Berenguer (2015a and 2015b), Peris (2016), Sutherland et al. (2016), Edo (2017), Zurbano-Berenguer and García-Gordillo (2017).

Regarding the content of the protocols, some works analyse the recommendations to establish similarities and differences, and in most cases, the same conclusion is reached: the proposed recommendations in the manuals are significantly uniform. Martínez-Rodríguez (2012) summarises the 10 common features in the codes:

What the most appropriate term is (or not): gender violence, violence against women, male violence, domestic violence, etc.

What gender-based violence is: a social and structural problem, a violation of women’s human rights, dignity, and freedom.

Contextualisation of facts: cultural and sociological causes. Do not fall into justifications such as alcohol, drugs, jealousy, or mental illness.

Do not stereotype: VAW does not discriminate in terms of ethnicity, culture, educational level, or economic status; it occurs in all social classes.

Consider it as a social scourge and not as isolated and coincidental events.