Exploring Violence Against Women

Dr. Miriam Hernandez never thought she would end up talking about violence. But once she started writing about it, she never looked back.

Dr. Hernandez covers minorities in the news media, immigration and gender-based violence in her research.

Additionally, she's an assistant professor at California State University Dominguez Hills in the Advertising and Public Relations program. She teaches the senior project class, social media strategies and strategic communication courses.

Dr. Hernandez found her passion in researching domestic violence after earning her Ph.D.—immigration was her final research component. During her research on how immigration shapes the United States, she read an article that addressed how immigration laws affect women.

"I read every article I could find on the topic and learned a lot, though there is still much more to discover," Dr. Hernandez said.

In the process, she ran across an article about domestic violence in other countries. She started exploring how it manifested in these groups and other cultures such as in Asia, Latin America and Europe. She was surprised by how abuse shares many commonalities and is truly a global problem.

During her journey of becoming a professor, she studied at City University of Hong Kong where she earned her doctorate in Communications. It took her five and a half years to finish.

"I took that long because I was not understanding the things that I needed to do," Dr. Hernandez said. "I was not submitting the quality of work that my professors were asking me to do. So even when I wrote my thesis, I thought this is not good enough, perhaps I'm not going to get my degree, and what am I going to do then?"

Now as a tenure-track associate professor, Dr. Hernandez says she can relate to how students feel.

"I know it's not always easy to keep going," Dr. Hernandez said. "That everything you do has to teach you something. You must want to know even if you don't know what to do. There are many lessons you learn, and you just have to push through."

After graduation, Dr. Hernandez continued her research and reported on femicide and domestic violence against women.

One of her favorite articles she wrote was published in Journalism Practice in 2023: "Covering Feminicidios: How Mexican journalists fight to improve representation of violence against women."

Dr. Hernandez found that Mexican journalists are challenged on how they report the everyday violence women face in the country. This particularly relates to the coverage of feminicidios (killing of women) in media.

"I wrote the article after four years of reading and interviewing journalists who cover violence against women," Dr. Hernandez said. "I realized that although this is a major problem in Latin America, there are very few articles that interview Latin American journalists. We need to understand what happens inside the newsroom that leads to biased reporting on this issue."

A second article she wrote was "Killed Out of Love: A Frame Analysis of Domestic Violence Coverage in Hong Kong," where she explains how the news coverage either protects the perpetrator or overlooks the victim.

The rate of domestic violence has increased significantly, with women being the main victims (83 percent on average for the 2005-2016 time frame). Most stories revolve around the perpetrators' feelings and momentary irrationality such as sadness, distress over a breakup, anger or "hot temperament."

Growing up in Monterrey, Mexico, roughly 565 miles north of Mexico City, Dr. Hernandez gained a unique perspective on the coverage of news in Mexico. She saw the effect it has on their culture and how it differs from others.

Dr. Hernandez says she never gave much thought about violence toward women due to victim blaming.

"People always say stuff like, 'Why was that person out of line? She was asking for it for wearing that,' and other expressions like that," Dr. Hernandez said. "What they are saying is, 'If I control what I wear, that won't happen to me.' So it's a way that you try to control the senseless violence that is happening and say, 'If I do this, this won't happen to me.'"

Dr. Hernandez says the reality of gender-based violence is that when you live with this type of identity, there is nothing you can do. You can reduce the risk to some degree, but all you can do is take precautions, Dr. Hernandez reasons.

"Usually what I like to know is that it can get better," Dr. Hernandez said. "I mean, the news media is still the first way that we think about communicating values to society. I think it's just about noticing. You open your eyes to the matrix, and you try to do better helping to open the eyes [of others] to the violence along the way."