Is violence against environmental defenders related to election cycles? We explore a novel theoretical framework positing that violence against environmental defenders increases before elections. Unlike typical election-related violence, we suggest that this violence is not directly geared toward influencing election outcomes. During high-profile events such as national elections, media coverage is heavily skewed towards these events, creating a media vacuum on local issues that can be exploited by actors wishing to perpetrate violence with minimal scrutiny.

By extending this logic, we hypothesize that other high-distraction events, like the World Cup, create similar opportunities for violence due to the temporary diversion of media and public attention. Using a global dataset on land and environmental activist murders and statistical analysis, we empirically test this hypothesis. Our findings reveal that instances of violence against environmental defenders not only spike during electoral periods but also during other high-distraction events in the media, such as the World Cup. Our framework emphasizes the role of media distraction in facilitating violence against vulnerable groups.