Abstract
Over the past 10 years, South Africa has seen a frightful spate of violent hate crimes targeting LGBTQIA+ persons. However, only a few review studies have been conducted in this area to consolidate what is known about the recent SOGI-motivated crimes, and most of these studies sought to understand this phenomenon are either primary studies or opinion pieces in print and electronic media. Therefore, since news media is especially thought to play a critical role in shaping the public’s opinion and spreading awareness, using 90 newspaper articles from 2013-2023, this integrative review study analysed how acts of gender-based violence towards LGBTQIA+ persons were reported in South African print and electronic media. These newspaper articles were analysed using a thematic analysis and the SIFT (Symbol, Imagery, Figurative language Tone and Theme) method, to create a thematic network for subsequent themes. As such, the findings from these themes show LGBTQIA+ persons to experience various incidents of gender-based violence; most of which during the COVID-19 pandemic became increasingly brutal and violent. The findings also found discrepancies between the South African Constitution and law enforcement (or implementing agencies) to contribute to the structural challenges experienced by LGBTQIA+ when reporting these incidents. These structural challenges were also found to be entrenched in the beliefs and attitudes of community members and were subsequently reported to be prevalent in treatment curation and in the interventions created for survivors of gender-based violence.