BIO

I am first year political science and economics student with aspirations of going into the law field. My main interests lay within the scope of domestic law, economic equality, and the intersection between business and international law.

Domestic Violence Discourse As Political And Civic Engagement: A Textual Analysis Of Comments On Social Media

Abstract

Domestic violence continues to be an issue around the globe,
particularly in Africa; this research study works to analyze the role of
online discourse as a form of political and civic engagement when
talking about topics such as domestic violence. Social media platforms
encourage the mass sharing of ideas, views, and opinions that may
influence behavioral changes on a societal level. This study explores the
factors that make online discourse an effective medium by analyzing
language use. Using NVivo software, reactions and actions in these
comments are coded by highlighting the use of adjectives and verbs,
respectively. Qualitative discourse analysis allowed us to gain a deeper
understanding of language use in particular contexts on social issues,
which in the case of our study is domestic violence. Given how recent
this form of data collection is in analyzing language use in domestic
violence discourse, grounded theory is adopted to give way for themes
to emerge naturally from the discourse. We gathered data from the
comment sections of thirteen discussion threads on a Nigerian news and
information blog on Instagram, Instablog9ja. Two thousand of these
comments were cleaned, collated, and eventually analyzed to
understand how these comment sections serve the purpose of being a
space for dialogue and their potential as catalysts for cultural and
religious reforms.

Keywords: Political Discourse, Communications, Domestic Violence