«"I won’t turn a blind eye!". The portrayal of the witness of violence against women through public service advertising»

The aim of this chapter is to examine how public service advertising can portray a prominent individual involved in mitigating the issue of violence against women: the witness of violence. In order to accomplish this goal, Section 1 will provide an overview of the main topics addressed in the chapter. Section 2 will present a literature review of the role played by public communication campaigns within the engaging bystander approach to violence prevention. Thus, Section 3 will outline the aims, methodology and main results of a textual analysis, which was conducted on anti-violence public service advertisements launched by the national governments of various European and non-European countries in the last 15 years. The primary goal of conducting textual analysis is to examine the communication strategies employed by governments’ public service advertisements in portraying what is known as the bystander’s decision-making process. Finally, tentative conclusions and suggestions regarding further research in this field will be provided.