Harnessing big data for social justice: An exploration of violence against women‐related conversations on Twitter

Abstract

Social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat offer new means of communication, networking, and community building. Social media are mechanisms by which millions of people spread, share, and exchange information—ranging from sports and politics, to health and illness. Twitter users, in particular, also build communities on topics of interest. This paper examines Twitter content to examine the extent to which the topic of “violence against women” is posted and disseminated. We know very little about the intersection of social media and the social problem of “violence against women.” Is Twitter being used to advance advocacy efforts, seek information and assistance, and/or build communities among advocates and or victims? First, we need to know whether and to what degree Twitter contains posts on the topic of violence against women (VAW). This paper offers the first exploration into Twitter postings related to the topic of VAW. We collected 2.5 million tweets posted from 2007 through 2015. We then classified postings (referred to as “Tweets”). We compared posting on the topic of VAW to posting related to nine topics: politics, entertainment, sports, women, relationships, fashion, kids, school, and food. We found a small but actively engaged community that Tweets about VAW. Twitter users who post on the topic of VAW reply to one another in each conversation thread, but they rarely disseminate conversations through Retweeting. Our exploratory findings suggest that more might be learned from future studies that investigate the use of social media on the topic of VAW.