‘He never hit me #WhyIStayed’: countering the U.S. domestic violence master narrative

ABSTRACT

In September 2014, TMZ leaked a video of NFL Baltimore Ravens running back, Ray Rice, assaulting his fiancé, Janay Palmer. By the time the video was released, Janay had married Rice, drawing heavy criticism from the media. To combat the victim-blaming discourse aimed at Janay, Bev Gooden, a domestic violence survivor, created the viral #WhyIStayed. Thousands of users tweeted their experiences of domestic violence, discussing reasons for both staying in and leaving abusive relationships. This study examines the complexities of domestic violence in #WhyIStayed/#WhyILeft victim/survivor narratives. By combining narrative theory with a semantic network analysis of 19,345 #WhyIStayed/#WhyILeft tweets, we argue that these posts operate as counter-narratives to the U.S. domestic violence master narrative. Three themes emerged from the semantic network analysis: lack of awareness of abuse, the prevalence of emotional abuse, and double-binds that constrain choices. We discuss their implications for domestic violence activism and online activism generally.

KEYWORDS:

• Domestic violence
• narrative
• hashtag activism
• semantic network analysis

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and constructive feedback. We would also like to thank Susan Scrupski and Big Mountain Data for providing access to Twitter content without which our research would not be possible. Thank you to Emily Fogle for your research assistance. We wish to acknowledge the labor of Beverly Gooden, author and originator of #WhyIStayed, and all those who tweeted their stories. This labor created an important conversation about the complexities of domestic violence. A special thank you to those individuals who were interviewed and shared with us their stories in hopes that it would help other domestic violence victims/survivors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).