Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse

<jats:p>While current mainstream media stories oscillate between Canadian troops in Afghanistan attempting to restore safety and democracy and the imminent threat of a war on terror on domestic soil, a sorely neglected story concerns the continued war on women in Canada. In this paper, we look at one site of this war—the case of missing and murdered women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Employing a frame analysis, we analyze 128 articles from The Vancouver Sun published between 2001 and 2006. We argue that prevailing and historically entrenched stereotypes about women, Aboriginality, and sex-trade work continue to demarcate the boundaries of ‘respectability’ and degeneracy, interlocking in ways that situate these women’s lives, even after death, in the margins.</jats:p>