The Dark Side of Families: Current Family Violence Research
Original Paper
Abstract
Background: Family unit violence (including intimate partner violence/domestic violence, child abuse, and elder corruption) is a hidden pandemic happening alongside COVID-19. The rates of family violence are ascension fast, and women and children are disproportionately afflicted and vulnerable during this fourth dimension.
Objective: This study aims to provide a large-scale assay of public soapbox on family violence and the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter.
Methods: We analyzed over ane million tweets related to family unit violence and COVID-19 from Apr 12 to July 16, 2020. We used the automobile learning arroyo Latent Dirichlet Allocation and identified salient themes, topics, and representative tweets.
Results: We extracted nine themes from 1,015,874 tweets on family unit violence and the COVID-nineteen pandemic: (1) increased vulnerability: COVID-19 and family violence (eg, rising rates, increases in hotline calls, homicide); (two) types of family violence (eg, kid abuse, domestic violence, sexual corruption); (iii) forms of family violence (eg, physical aggression, coercive control); (4) run a risk factors linked to family violence (eg, alcohol corruption, financial constraints, guns, quarantine); (5) victims of family violence (eg, the LGBTQ [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning] customs, women, women of color, children); (half-dozen) social services for family violence (eg, hotlines, social workers, confidential services, shelters, funding); (7) constabulary enforcement response (eg, 911 calls, police abort, protective orders, abuse reports); (eight) social movements and sensation (eg, support victims, raise awareness); and (ix) domestic violence–related news (eg, Tara Reade, Melissa DeRosa).
Conclusions: This study overcomes limitations in the existing scholarship where data on the consequences of COVID-19 on family unit violence are lacking. Nosotros contribute to agreement family unit violence during the pandemic by providing surveillance via tweets. This is essential for identifying potentially useful policy programs that can offering targeted support for victims and survivors as nosotros fix for time to come outbreaks.
doi:10.2196/24361
Keywords
Introduction
Equally seen in the case of Ebola, epidemics increment the rates of domestic violence []. The World Health System declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March xi, 2020. To effectively control the spread of the disease, many countries have adopted rigorous measures to limit mobility, such as social distancing, stay-at-habitation orders (sheltering in place), closure of nonessential business, travel restrictions, and quarantine. Fifty-fifty though these measures are useful for infection control [], they bring a series of negative social consequences, such as psychological stress [-], unemployment [], ageism [], and increased rates of violence confronting women and children [-]. Since these rigorous measures overlap with many of the intervention strategies for family violence [], they are probable to increase the vulnerability of victims of family violence (including intimate partner violence [IPV]/domestic violence, elderberry abuse, and child corruption), by increasing exposure to an exploitative relationship, reducing options for support [], economic stress [], and alcohol abuse [,]. For case, isolation limits social contact with families and social services, and thus may facilitate family unit violence and prevent victims from seeking help [-]. During the COVID-19 quarantine, the abode becomes a dangerous place for victims while individuals are living in forced close quarters []. In improver, mental health exacerbated by social isolation increases the likelihood of locking victims of domestic violence in an unsafe dwelling environment and increases their vulnerability []. UNICEF [] reports that school closures increased child (sexual) abuse and neglect during the Ebola epidemic. It is also important to notation that child abuse and domestic violence are likely to co-occur when isolated at home [,]. During the COVID-xix pandemic, scholars accept suggested that new forms of family violence may occur; for case, abusers may threaten to infect their family members with the virus [].
In many countries, the reported cases of and service needs related to family violence dramatically increased since quarantine measures came into effect []. For example, calls to domestic violence hotlines accept risen by 25%, and the number of Google searches for family unit violence–related assist during the outbreak has been substantial []. According to National Domestic Violence Hotline representatives in the United states of america, abusers are attempting to isolate victims from resources and unleashing more violence by enforcing COVID-19 social distancing measures []. In the United Kingdom, calls to the Domestic Violence Helpline increase by 25% in the get-go week later the lockdown measures were implemented []. In China, domestic violence increased three times in Hubei Province during the lockdown []. There was a 10.two% increment in domestic violence calls in the Usa during the COVID-19 pandemic []. These reports illustrate that existing COVID-19 intervention measures (eg, living in a closed space with abusers for a long period) may profoundly impact victims and survivors of family violence. Co-ordinate to Bradbury-Jones and Isham [], "domestic violence rates are rising, and they are rising fast" (p 2047). Information on family violence during the pandemic are withal deficient [], and in that location is a need for farther inquiry.
We cannot capture the bear on of COVID-19 on family violence without acceptable surveillance []. Enhanced surveillance provides an understanding of the impact and risk factors associated with COVID-19, which is essential for developing policy programs to respond and mitigate adverse effects and offering targeted back up for victims and survivors []. Eysenbach [] defined infodemiology and infoveillance as "the science of distribution and determinants of information in an electronic medium, specifically the Internet, or in a population, with the ultimate aim to inform public wellness and public policy. Infodemiology data tin can be collected and analyzed in about real fourth dimension" (p 1). Co-ordinate to Eysenbach's framework, the automated analysis of unstructured data related to family violence and COVID-19 is an application of an infoveillance study. Understanding public discussions can assist governments and public wellness authorities in navigating the outbreak [].
During the implementation of social isolation measures, social media should be leveraged to enhance public awareness and share best practices (eg, bystander approaches, supportive statements, obtaining help on behalf of a survivor) [], and provide support []. Twitter is a existent-time network that allows users from across the globe to communicate via public and private messages, organized chronologically on a given user'southward account. Existing studies have confirmed Twitter's part in connecting practitioners and clients [-]. Researchers have used Twitter data to examine the nature of domestic violence [-]. A significant number of studies describe Twitter hashtag #MeToo equally a phenomenal tool for disclosing experiences of sexual harassment, and more importantly, to ignite a widespread social campaign or political protest on social media. Modrek and Chakalov [] examined tweets containing #MeToo in the U.s. and supported the function of machine learning methods in understanding the widespread sexual assault self-revelations on Twitter. Recently, Twitter has get a valuable source for understanding user-generated COVID-19 content and activities in real time [,].
Aim of the Study
There is a lack of information on the COVID-19 pandemic as it relates to family violence []. This report aims to provide a large-scale assay of public discourse on family violence and COVID-xix on Twitter using automobile learning techniques to fill this gap. The inquiry questions are equally follows: (i) what contents are discussed relating to family unit violence and COVID-19? and (two) what themes are identified relating to family violence and COVID-nineteen? The study offers a new perspective on the bear on, risks factors, and standing social support services during the pandemic for family unit violence.
Methods
This written report employed an observational design and followed the pipeline developed by the authors [], including sampling, data collection, preprocessing of raw data, and data analysis.
Sampling and Data Collection
Our COVID-xix information prepare used a list of COVID-19–relevant hashtags as search terms to randomly collect tweets from Twitter between April 12 to July sixteen, 2020 [] (). Twitter Developer'southward Python code was used to access the Twitter API to collect tweets. As shown in , our information set included a total of 274,501,992 tweets during the study period, of which 186,678,079 were in English language. Nosotros sampled tweets using keywords such as "domestic violence," "intimate partner violence," "family violence," "violence confronting women," "gender-based violence," "child corruption," "kid maltreatment," "elder abuse," and "IPV." The final data ready comprised one,015,874 tweets.
Preprocessing the Raw Data
We used Python to clean the data and remove the following items considering they did not contribute to the semantic meaning of the tweets: the hashtag symbol, URLs, @users, special characters, punctuations, and end-words [,,,].
Unsupervised Machine Learning
We used a car learning approach, Latent Dirichlet Allotment (LDA) [], to analyze a corpus of unstructured text. LDA was a generative statistical model that regards a corpus of text (tweets) as a mixture of a small number of latent topics. Each latent topic was assigned with a fix of linguistic units (eg, single words or a pair of words) counted by the algorithm. These linguistic units with high frequency were probable to co-occur and grade into different latent topics. With the LDA model, the distribution of topics in documents tin be inferred. LDA assumes a generative procedure describing how the documents are created, such that we tin infer or reverse engineer the topic distributions. The generative procedure of LDA for Grand documents, each of which has a length of Ni, is given as:
- Choose θ i ∼ Dir (α), with i ∈ {ane,…,M}.
- Cull Ï• k ∼ Dir (β), with thou ∈ {1,…,K}.
- For the j-th linguistic unit in the i-th document with i ∈ {1,…,M, andj ∈ {one,…,NN i }
- Choose z i,j ∼ Multinomial (θ i )
- Choose w i,j ∼ Multinomial (Ï•zi,j )
presents the definitions of these notations. With the generative process described to a higher place, the distributions of the topics tin can be inferred using the Python bundle genism.
Results
We analyzed 1,015,874 tweets mentioning family violence and COVID-nineteen in Twitter posts. Nosotros identified 50 latent topics and often mentioned pairs of words (bigrams) for each topic. We further categorized these 50 identified common topics into 9 themes and 33 topics (). presents ordinarily co-occurring bigrams and examples of representative tweets nether each identified theme and topic.
| Themes and topics | Terms | Tweet instance | |||
| Increased vulnerability: COVID-19 and family violence | |||||
| | Rising rates | violence increment, violence spike, violence risen, corruption up | "…seeking shelter at home, rates of domestic violence and abuse have skyrocketed. Further, women and girls at a high chance for trafficking…" | ||
| | DVa reports | violence reports, reports surge | "Several countries saw spikes in domestic violence reports." | ||
| | Hotline calls increased | crunch line, violence hotline, abuse hotline, calls increased, calls help | "…works with domestic violence survivors is seeing a spike in emergency shelter capacity and crunch line calls during the coronavirus pandemic." | ||
| | Homicide | murder domestic, violence homicide, murder wife | "Lots of social behaviours and issues are sadly coming to the fore during this pandemic...domestic violence where in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland 2 women are killed..." | ||
| | Suicide | suicide increased, suicide domestic, abuse suicide | "NY Gov. Cuomo: Suicides and increased domestic violence worth prices of coronavirus lockdown." | ||
| | (Mental) wellness | mental health, mental abuse, mental illness, abuse depression | "Longer shutdowns = even more domestic violence, more substance corruption, more than lonliness. More mental health symptoms." | ||
| Types of family violence during COVID-xix | |||||
| | Child abuse/maltreatment | assault child, children suffering, rape kid, FGMb child | "If nosotros\'re going to talk well-nigh quarantine, please don\'t forget that children are also in danger." | ||
| | Domestic violence | abusive partners, risk family, family impacted | "With #StayHome orders, many women are left in isolation with abusive partners, unable to access life-saving resource and support systems." | ||
| | Sexual violence | sexual attack, abuse rape, marital rape, rape incest, sexual corruption | "Thousands across the land are infected … shelters for rough sleepers, sexual abused have no place to go!" | ||
| Forms of family violence during COVID-19 | |||||
| | Physical assailment | cease striking, concrete domestic, physical corruption, physical violence | "…violence confronting women and girls has risen dramatically. My fear is more than women and girls will die from concrete violence than #Covid19." | ||
| | Coercive control | ability control, forced stay, coercive control, run away | "Domestic violence is about power and control. Abusers use more coercive control tactics surrounding the #covid19 pandemic to continue to maintain power and command over their partner." | ||
| Take a chance factors linked to family violence during COVID-nineteen | |||||
| | Drug abuse | overdose domestic, drug corruption, violence drug, addiction domestic | "@CaesarPodcast As I\'ve noted for years, the history of domestic violence and drug corruption was enough to brand him a prime suspect." | ||
| | Booze abuse | liquor shops, violence alcoholism, suicide alcohol, violence alcohol | "March 2020 saw a surge in \'reported\' cases of domestic violence. Alcoholism increases chances of abuse manifold on women'due south and children." | ||
| | Financial constrain | violence unemployment, financial ruin, task lost, violence fiscal | "Take measures to stop domestic violence, which is on the rise due to lock down pressures. No work and no income. Women are facing double burden of providing food for the family and also facing the violence created by the frustrations." | ||
| | Guns | gun command, violence guns, gun laws, gun violence, violence gun | "During this COVID-19 pandemic we are seeing a rise in gun sales, and a desperate increase in domestic violence cases nationwide." | ||
| | Trafficking | human trafficking, sex activity trafficking, trafficking domestic | "This is part of our anti-trafficking #COVID19 response and our new DV response and led by CM @AbbieKamin, @hawctalk." | ||
| | COVID-xix related | people stuck, violence covid19, unsafe home, corruption quarantine | "During the lockdown domestic violence happens, because the stress and also past the fact that coworkers/friends won't see the bruises." | ||
| Victims of family violence during COVID-19 | |||||
| | LGBTQc | trans people, trans women, men men, lesbian couples | "COVID-nineteen has serious consequences for cis and trans women everywhere including higher risks a outcome of …the ascent in domestic violence." | ||
| | Women and women of color | women unduly affected, beat wife, black women, female victims, women dice | "COVID-nineteen induced isolation and quarantine disproportionately affect women and girls. Around the world, there has been an increment in sexual and gender-based violence during COVID-xix." | ||
| | Refugee women | refuge domestic, charity refuge, violence refuges | "Refugee women are at greater risk for gender-based violence during the COVID-xix lockdown #WorldRefugeeDay https://t.co/iUPeae1vo8" | ||
| | Children | violence child, child abusers, abuse child | "Evidence shows that violence confronting children is increasing due to #COVID19 lockdown. The pandemic shouldn\'t create some other pandemic of torture and Rights corruption against children." | ||
| Social services for victims of family violence during COVID-19 | |||||
| | Hotline numbers chosen | 877 863, 863, 6338, one 800, 800 799, 799 7233, 799 safe, hotline 800, 800 273, 273 8255 | "Domestic violence help is available during #COVID19. Call the @ndvh hotline at one-800-799-7233, text LOVEIS to 22522, or log on to chat at https://t.co/KhIhLk0fq3. You are not alone. https://t.co/qKRP8i3wbr." | ||
| | Resources | social workers, social service, safety plan, crunch middle, limited access, service open up | "Risk of corruption through coercive command'due south, addictions'; mental health. No social work input is disappointing https://t.co/SbRhrpRlIE." | ||
| | Shelters | women shelter, violence shelters, seeking shelters, shelters open | "Shelters have formed a GBV rubber plan as victims of domestic violence are likely to be forced to stay at home with an abuser for longer periods due to the lockdown. https://t.co/wUQPsKeC4L." | ||
| | Funding | funding support, consider donating, raise funds | "…The beauty industry supports victims of dv during the COVID-xix by donating products to women\'s shelters and DV service organizations." | ||
| | Social media | visit website, violence website, retweet help | "…National Domestic Violence Helpline is there for victims, only it\'southward non for men. That is apparent from their website. https://t.co/bhYUbfOZmv" | ||
| | First responders: social workers | social workers, responding domestic, violence call | "Social workers would just become shot along with the wife or family unit, so who should society ship to domestic violence calls? Cops say domestic violence calls are the near dangerous" | ||
| Constabulary enforcement responses | |||||
| | Law enforcement | contact law, protection orders, 911 calls, police arrest, legal aid, protective orders, local police | "Calls to local police departments are up in the last month. Assistance is available. Visit: https://t.co/naSNuaDeP3 for a list of local resources. https://t.co/C1KeCOxKGh." | ||
| | Reports of DV cases | cases reported, corruption reports, report abuse, increment reports | "Due to the #COVID19 lockdown, there are increasing reports that girls and young women are facing gender-based violence…https: //flake.ly/3cgkfDt." | ||
| Social movements and sensation | |||||
| | Back up victims | aid victims, support victims, campaign combat, null tolerance, care victims, enquire help, achieve out, state of affairs aid, protect vulnerable | "COVID-nineteen Lockdown witnesses a global rise in Domestic Violence. Trapped at home with abusers at all hours, defective privacy to achieve out for help, and the sudden disappearance of regular support systems, has isolated individuals, specifically women and children, in violence. https://t.co/80Az37rMvy." | ||
| | Awareness | sensation domestic, raise awareness, help raise, sensation calendar month, raising awareness, spread awareness, assault sensation | "Women share horrific photos of injuries to heighten awareness of domestic violence every bit 14 are killed since start of lockdown. pics of their horrendous injuries to enhance sensation of dv, as killings in the home DOUBLED during the first three weeks of lockdown in the UK. https://t.co/8nOczKoWiu." | ||
| Domestic violence–related news | |||||
| | Personnel and events | Johnny Depp, Tracy McCarter, Rikers Island, Melissa DeRosa, Keith Ellison, Chris Chocolate-brown, Antonio Guterres, Alexandra McCabe, Robert Goforth, Tara Reade, Breann Leath, California's bail rules | "Today, Secretarial assistant to the Governor Melissa DeRosa issued a written report to Governor Cuomo outlining the COVID-19 Domestic Violence Chore Forcefulness\'due south initial recommendations to reimagine New York\'due south approach to services for domestic violence survivors. https://t.co/VpMJEd7Njc." | ||
aDV: domestic violence.
bFGM: female genital mutilation.
cLGBTQ: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning.
Increased Vulnerability: COVID-19 and Family Violence
Tweets mentioning rise rates of domestic violence equally a result of COVID-19 were frequent, with popular bigrams similar "violence increased," "violence higher," "rising violence," and "violence skyrocketing." Increases in hotline calls and reports of family violence were also influenced by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (eg, calls increased, calls help, reports surge). A representative tweet indicated, "a Miami Valley nonprofit agent is seeing a fasten in crisis line calls during the pandemic." Other consequences of the pandemic include homicides related to domestic violence and mental health issues (eg, depression, mental abuse).
Types of Family Violence During COVID-19
Findings showed that several types of family unit violence were mentioned together in a single tweet alongside terms related to COVID-19, such as "child abuse/maltreatment" (eg, set on child, rape kid), "domestic violence" (eg, abusive partners, violence partners), and "sexual violence" (eg, sexually assault, marital rape).
Forms of Family Violence During COVID-19
Two main forms of family violence were discussed on Twitter during the COVID-19: "concrete aggression" (eg, physically hurt, end hit) and "coercive control" (eg, power control, forced stay). The latter is demonstrated by this example: "…abusers may use more coercive control tactics surrounding the #covid19 pandemic to continue to maintain power and control over their partner."
Gamble Factors Linked to Family Violence During COVID-19
Nosotros found that the rising rate of domestic violence was associated with risk factors: "drug corruption," "alcohol corruption," "financial constraints" (eg, task loss, loss income), "guns," "trafficking," and "COVID-nineteen related" (eg, lockdown, stuck home, quarantine). Sample tweets include "March 2020 saw a surge in reported cases of domestic violence. Alcoholism increases chances of abuse manifold on women and children…" and "During the lockdown, domestic violence happens considering the coworkers/friends tin can't see the bruises."
Victims of Family Violence During COVID-nineteen
Tweets designated the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning) community, women, women of color, refugee women, and children as victims of family violence during the COVID-xix. Pop words in describing the victims and survivors of family violence included "trans people," "lesbian couples," "women disproportionately affected," "beat out wife," "blackness women," "female victims," "refuge domestic," "charity refuge," "violence child," "child abusers," and "abuse child."
Social Services for Victims of Family Violence During COVID-19
Social services for victims of family unit violence was a prominent theme discussed by Twitter users during the pandemic, as indicated by the high frequency mentions of hotline numbers. Resources, shelters, funding support, and visiting websites on family violence were besides frequently mentioned in tweets. In improver, confidential services, safe plans, and limited admission were representative topics identified in the sampled tweets. Social workers' safety was tweeted as a salient topic in our data set up: "…domestic violence cases are simply asking for a lot of social workers to get shot and killed" and "Has anyone actually asked social workers how willing they are to go on domestic violence calls…?"
Law Enforcement Responses
With the rising rates of family violence during the pandemic, reports of domestic violence cases (eg, cases reported, corruption reports, violence reports, increase reports, and reported increase) were a salient topic in the tweets. Police departments (eg, police officers, local law, police chief, 911 calls, contact police, police arrest) were the starting time responders on the front end lines during increased domestic violence reports during COVID-19.
Social Movements and Awareness
Findings likewise identified social justice movements and awareness to back up victims and survivors of family unit violence. Tweet content highlighted the advancement of zilch tolerance for domestic violence, indicated past popular bigrams such as "assistance victims," "entrada gainsay," "violence advocacy," "care victims," "raise awareness," and "awareness campaign" and sample tweets like "Women share horrific photos of injuries to raise awareness of domestic violence."
Domestic Violence–Related News
News events related to domestic violence cases during the pandemic were also identified, such as (1) American role player Johnny Depp's denial of domestic abuse allegations by ex-married woman Bister Heard; (2) Tracy McCarter's murder charge for the fatal stabbing of her husband in Manhattan; (three) vocaliser Chris Brown'southward abort in Paris on allegations of rape; (4) Tara Reade's sexual attack allegations against Joe Biden; (5) Kentucky legislator Robert Goforth's abort for 4th-degree domestic violence; and (6) death of law officer Breann Leath, who was shot on duty while responding to a domestic disturbance call.
News of solutions to help survivors of domestic violence were as well often discussed in the sampled tweets. For case, the governor of the New York Land Council on Women and Girls, Melissa DeRosa, created a task forcefulness to detect innovative solutions to the domestic violence spike during the COVID-19 pandemic. United nations chief Antonio Guterres chosen for measures to accost the surge in domestic violence linked to lockdowns that were imposed by governments in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The news article Child abusers eligible for firsthand release under California'due south new $0 cash bond emergency mandate [] has get a prominent topic due to the high volume of retweets. Given the new state rules, individuals arrested for child abuse will exist released on $0 bail in California. The original tweet was posted by Bill Melugin (@billFOXLA) and had been retweeted almost yard times ("RT @BillFOXLA: Under California's new $0 cash bail rules, kid abusers are now eligible for immediate release. San Bernardino County Sheriff @sheriffmcmahon tells me he had to release a felony child abuse suspect /w priors for domestic violence & child abuse immediately after arrest. @FOXLA").
Word
Principal Results
Our study employed a large-calibration analysis of tweets on public discourse related to family violence on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study's Twitter data consisted of a random option of more 1 1000000 tweets mentioning family violence and COVID-19 from April 12 to July 16, 2020. The machine learning technique LDA was used to extract a high volume of co-occurring word pairs and topics related to family unit violence from unstructured tweets. The study contributes to the agreement of public discourse and concerns of family violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nosotros identified 9 themes from the analysis: (1) increased vulnerability: COVID-19 and family violence (eg, increasing rates, victims affected); (2) types of family violence; (3) forms of family violence; (4) victims of family violence; (5) gamble factors linked to family violence; (6) social services for victims of family unit violence; (7) police enforcement responses; (8) social movements and awareness; and (ix) domestic violence–related news. The report adds to existing scholarship, where there is a lack of data on the COVID-19–domestic violence connection, or just anecdotal reports. Our findings contribute to understanding family unit violence during the pandemic past providing surveillance via tweets, which is essential to identify potentially effective policy programs in offering targeted back up for victims and survivors and preparing for time to come outbreaks.
Twitter users have discussed who is at college risk of family violence during the lockdown. Findings reveal a broader range of affected victims, such equally the LGBTQ customs. Salient tweets advise that women and children are disproportionately affected past family violence that is consequent with the majority of the research in the field [,-]. Violence against children has been associated with previous epidemics []. In addition, the sampled tweets propose that domestic violence–related discussions focus on the support and protection of victims instead of interventions confronting abusers, consequent with ane recent study using Twitter information for domestic violence research []. We find tweets mentioning family violence and COVID-xix have a limitation in primarily posting stories about male-to-female violence [] even though other patterns of violence be, including female person-to-male, male-to-male, and bidirectional IPV [].
Tweets about family violence and COVID-xix during the lockdown mentioned a range of risk factors associated with family unit violence during pandemics, such as drug abuse, alcohol abuse, financial constraints, guns, and trafficking. Our study reveals similar results with i recent report by Peterman and colleagues [], who summarized that 9 principal pathways that connect the COVID-nineteen pandemic and violence against women and children (ie, economic insecurity and poverty-related stress; quarantines and social isolation; disaster- and conflict-related unrest and instability; and inability to temporarily accept shelter from abusive partners). For example, public discussions indicate that booze abuse continues to exist a gamble factor for family violence during stressful events []. Financial constraints (eg, financial ruin, lost jobs, economic collapse) due to COVID-xix create barriers for victims of family unit violence for help seeking []. Beland and colleagues [] analyzed the Canadian Perspective Survey Series and constitute that financial worries due to COVID-19 contributed to increased family violence and stress. An increasing rate of domestic homicides identified in tweets suggests that guns are still a concern at home where family violence occurs. Specific COVID-19–related take a chance factors (eg, quarantines, social isolation) limit contact between victims of family violence and the exterior globe, trapping them at home with their abusers; these factors were indicated by the frequent use of words like "people stuck," "dangerous home," "people locked," and "abuse quarantine" on Twitter.
Multiagency integration of law enforcement responses (eg, protection orders, arrest), social services (eg, hotlines, shelters), and social movements and awareness are recommended to accost domestic violence and back up victims []. Social services (including deployment of social work practitioners, therapists, etc) for cases of domestic violence must be resourced during the pandemic. Due to the mobility restriction, a lack of informal support, such as that from family, friends, coworkers, further contributes to increased rates of family violence during the pandemic. Thus, information technology is more crucial than ever for victims to access voluntary sector practitioners' support during the COVID-19 pandemic []. Our results provide testify that some agencies continued to deliver services during the pandemic. For instance, several hotline numbers in the United States accept been frequently mentioned during the pandemic, such as "Illinois Domestic Violence Hotline, 877-863-6338 (877-TO END DV)," "National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 800-273-8255 (Usa)," "National Domestic Violence Hotline, 800-799-SAFE (7233) (U.s.a.)," "National Sexual Assault Phone Hotline, 800-656-HOPE (4673) (US)," and "Loveisrespect, Text LOVEIS to 22522 (US)." We also identified popular hotline numbers from the United Kingdom, such as Mind the Mental Health Charity (Listen Infoline: 0300-123-3393), the National Stalking Helpline (0808-802-0300), and the National Domestic Corruption Helpline (0808-2000-247). However, a commentary in the Canadian Medical Clan Periodical raises concerns about family violence support using videoconference or telemedicine settings where the abusers can be present []. Abusers can coercively command victims-survivors' use of mobile phones to access hotline support. Therefore, farther show is needed to indicate whether the services fulfill their roles.
Twitter conversations about highly publicized domestic violence cases were significant. News about Hollywood star Johnny Depp'south denial of abuse allegations when he was defendant of domestic violence against his ex-wife Amber Heard was a prominent topic in the sampled tweets. Our results show public discussions of high-profile cases of domestic violence (eg, athletes arrested for domestic violence), consequent with previous studies. Cravens et al [] used qualitative content assay to examine the factors that influence IPV victims to exit an calumniating human relationship using 676 tweets related to #whyIstayed and #whyIleft. Xue et al [] analyzed 322,863 tweets nigh domestic violence and establish that high-contour cases such every bit Greg Hardy's domestic violence example are prominent. These studies consistently show that Twitter continues to exist a source of news coverage on current events for domestic violence, even during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Limitations
At that place are a number of limitations to this study that must be acknowledged. First, Twitter data reveal insights from Twitter users and thus does non correspond the entire population'southward opinions. Despite this shortcoming, our study provides one of the get-go large-scale analysis of tweets using real-time data to identify the impact of COVID-nineteen on family violence. Second, nosotros did not include non-English tweets in the analysis. Future studies should carry out analyses on not-English tweets regarding the impact of COVID-19 on family unit violence. Third, even though our collected data cover ninety days of the outbreak since April 12, 2020, discussion patterns may evolve as the COVID-19 situation continues to alter over time. 4th, the search terms used in the study mostly reflect terminology used by professionals rather than victims when discussing family unit violence. For example, 1 report examined how child abuse victims mail service their stories on social media and establish that the victims rarely use explicit words to depict their experiences []. Thus, this study may be limited in capturing victims' opinions. To protect Twitter users' privacy and anonymity, we did not examine the sample's sociodemographic characteristics. Information technology remains unknown whether the collected tweets were from victims, abusers, organizations, etc. Information technology is also possible that abusers may preclude victims from reaching out for assistance on social media []. Futurity studies could consider sampling tweets from victims of family unit violence to further examine the bear upon of COVID-19.
Conclusion
Every bit seen in our large-scale tweets information set, people accept been actively discussing family violence in the context of COVID-19. We identified 9 themes and 33 topics relating to family violence and COVID-nineteen. The findings demonstrate that Twitter can serve equally a platform for real-time and large-scale surveillance of family violence past offering an understanding of the people who are discussing the bear upon and risk factors associated with COVID-19, which is essential for developing policy programs for supporting victims and survivors. This study provides insights for professionals who work with victims and survivors of family violence to develop a social network–based support system for informal and formal help when conventional in-person support services become unavailable during future outbreaks.
Conflicts of Interest
None declared.
Multimedia Appendix 2
Notations for Latent Dirichlet Allotment (LDA).
DOCX File , 13 KB
Abbreviations
| LDA: Latent Dirichlet Allotment |
| LGBTQ: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning |
Edited by G Eysenbach; submitted 17.09.xx; peer-reviewed by Fifty Schwab-Reese, T Freeman; comments to author 08.10.20; revised version received 14.10.20; accepted 26.10.20; published 06.eleven.20
Copyright©Jia Xue, Junxiang Chen, Chen Chen, Ran Hu, Tingshao Zhu. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Cyberspace Research (http://www.jmir.org), 06.11.2020.
This is an open-access commodity distributed nether the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/iv.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, get-go published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The consummate bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well every bit this copyright and license data must be included.
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