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Domestic Violence Campaign: A Social Media Approach

Domestic Violence Campaign: A Social Media Approach

Introduce Your Campaign/ Critically Analyze the Issue

Intimate partner violence and other family violence is experienced in all parts of the United States. New York City is the largest city in the United States and it also sees the most domestic violence and family violence cases in the country. In 2013, New York law enforcement alone responded to approximately 284,660 cases of intimate partner violence (NCADV, 2015, pg.1). The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence defines domestic violence (intimate partner violence) as, “the willful intimidation, physical assault, battery, sexual assault, and/or other abusive behavior as part of a systematic pattern of power and control perpetrated by one intimate partner against another. It includes physical violence, sexual violence, threats, and emotional abuse” (NCADV, 2015, pg.1). This definition means abuse can happen to anyone in almost any way.

Intimate partner and family violence varies in the degree of severity and whom the abuse is inflicted upon. The abuse can range from emotional abuse and arguments to the murder and death of a partner. Intimate partner and family abuse also can happen swiftly and abruptly, making it difficult for the victim to seek help and safety. An abuser controls their victim, including controlling where they go, who they see, how much money they can obtain, and who they contact. An individual being abused is not going to be able to call for help unless the individual is hiding in a private space. This makes it extremely difficult for domestic violence victims to obtain help when they are in immediate crisis situations. Approximately 20% of domestic violence homicides include a child under ten years old (Noel, 2018, pg. 5). This may be because children are one of the most vulnerable victims and are easily controlled. 

The campaign proposed in this paper focuses on the need of those in intimate partner violence and other family violence situations where the victims are in crisis and need to safely obtain help. This campaign aims to make help and resources available through social media platforms for victims of domestic violence. Focusing on Instagram and Facebook, this campaign proposes a live chat feature that allows for immediate connection and if needed the contacting of police. This campaign also proposes using the chat feature for remotely connecting victims to resources and aiding in the accessibility of those resources. These features will make it safer and more direct for victims to seek and find help. Victims are often heavily controlled, but accessing social media can be done discreetly and in code, which best aids children. In today’s day and age, even young children know how to use social media and have access to either Facebook or Instagram. 

The target of this campaign is the CEO’s of Facebook and Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri. The programmers of the social media applications can internally create a private function for a live chat room that can contact the police in a crisis situation. There is a need for change in the accessibility of resources for the vulnerable populations of intimate partner violence and other family violence. Resources and help should be able to be accessed discreetly, remotely, and abruptly in crisis situations. 

This campaign will be using an emergent strategy to influence Mark Zuckerberg, Adam Mosseri, and the social media programmers to meet our demand of developing a live chat room that can exist to contact the authorities in a crisis situation. By using the emergent strategy, this campaign is able to utilize the fractal pattern by targeting large relationships in power who in turn can then influence others in smaller relationships to build toward the change. The target has the capabilities of changing the social media application system, and thus the element of adaptation within the emergent strategy is utilized. This change in application will create more possibilities and is a pathway for changing how we approach domestic violence crisis situations. 

There are multiple stakeholders within this campaign. The consumers of the program are stakeholders because they are the reason this campaign exists. Mark Zuckerberg, Adam Mosseri and the social media platform programmers are stakeholders, along with other existing domestic violence agencies in the NYC area who may collaborate with this program. Religious organizations such as churches, temples, and masjids are also stakeholders as many of these organizations support the fight against domestic violence. 

Up until the 1970’s, domestic violence was still seen by judges and police officers as men trying to ‘correct’ their wives and children. The accomplishments of the feminist movement in the 1970’s turned the issue of domestic violence from a private issue to a public issue. In 1973 the Supreme Court ruling of Roe v Wade made abortion legal, while other changes occurred like banning sex-segregated ‘help-wanted’ advertising and discrimination of gender in employment (Milligan, 2017, pg.3). Women were no longer able to be denied from juries or positions of power in jobs and government. There has been much growth in women’s rights in the United States since these times, but abusers and sexists are still finding ways to abuse/oppress women, partners, and children. The feminist movement was a revolutionary social movement as it transformed the system by targeting fundamental political and economic change. 

This campaign draws upon many of Paulo Freire’s ideas. The theory of ‘conscientization’ is based on the belief that in order to correct the institutional and structural oppression, the institutions must be changed (Freire, 2018, pg. 3). Changing the system of social media and how it can be used is what this campaign is all about. The systems of Facebook and Instagram can undergo program changes to add live chats that will maximize the ability to offer assistance in crisis situations. This campaign also draws upon Steve Williams’ idea of transformative organizing because this campaign has a vision, is reaching out, having one-on-one conversation with the targets, and transforming the social media platform (Williams, 2013, pg. 5). Domestic violence has been existing in the USA since the country’s birth, but social media has not. Using Williams’ ever-adapting strategy, social media can be used to get ahead of the current system that responds to domestic violence crisis calls. 

The main problem that this campaign addresses is the need for victims of domestic violence abuse to have easy access to resources that can help their situation. For example, if a woman is being abused by her husband, he may be controlling her to the point where she cannot leave her house. This means she cannot go anywhere to ask about resources that can help her, she cannot speak on the phone to someone who can help her, and she will not be able to call the police if they are needed. Many children are also on social media, and if they are being abused and controlled, can obtain help and establish contact with someone who can help them through the social media platform. These hassles are being maintained by the current system of resources available to domestic violence victims. While there are resources available, the person being abused must go out of their home and seek help. Some resources offer a hotline to call, but if an abuser is present the victim cannot call and speak. Social media would allow a much safer and discreet method of obtaining help and the appropriate resources. The root cause of domestic violence in general stems from the birth of the United States where women were not allowed to do anything outside of the traditional, conservative norms. 

Power Map

Organized Groups/People/ More Power

· Facebook

· Instagram

· Safe Horizon

· Stop Abuse Campaign

· Connect NYC

· Police Systems- 911

Unorganized Groups/ Less Power

· Children

· Victims of Intimate Partner Violence

Develop a Campaign

Intimate violence and family violence are among the challenges that society continues to grapple within the modern world that we are in. Violence in such small groups of people or between two people tend not to be realized by those that do not experience living in such environments, family’s relationships (Christens, 2010). This analysis will clarify more on

this issue and develop an example of a campaign plan to curb this ever-growing issue. A plan will be laid out that will develop community relationships and also dwell in the development of leadership skills among those that are affected by violence in society.

Statistics have been reviewed and have shown that domestic violence is evident in all countries. Though domestic violence may differ in numbers according to the country and different factors being experienced in the country (Buzawa& Buzawa, 2003). For instance, countries recording low numbers in the number of employed individuals’ grapples with a lot of cases of domestic violence. This may be attributed to desperation in acquiring a source of income among the people. Statistics about domestic violence in New York City were shocking where a survey in 2013 recorded 284,660 cases of intimate violence alone. This was termed catastrophic by professionals in the human right movements and organizations.

People experiencing such violence feel intimidated and at most do not feel the security to talk of their experience. Victims may be afraid of their abuser that they might do worse to them therefore, the mental torture and trauma they have experienced or were involved in will make them feel ashamed to speak up about the violence that they are subjected to. Long-term objectives of the campaign will include offering affected individuals a platform that they can seek help, where they may need people to talk to and can be assisted with counseling services from counseling professionals.

Having a place where they can express their emotions is of the essence as it is a journey of healing from violence. The organization will offer the services to individuals that present themselves in the selected centers that we have established. They will be welcomed with warm hands by working personnel who will be ready to help. The centers will have ample areas for listening and caring for each and everybody that is women, children and men that tend to present themselves will be given equal attention. Treatment services are also included in services where the medical team will be present to offer their diagnosis to the patients.

The campaign against violence will be pushed further to multitudes that continue using social media accounts. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram will prioritize the importance of seeking help to those that are being abused. Also, they will request for creation of private live

chats on these platforms to hide the identity of those that do not wish to be known. Escalating the message by these social media platforms and also to media stations will give those being abused the relief that they are not the only ones in such conditions, but also will give them the confidence to step out and be helped.

The campaign will further aim at fostering and building community relationships among the individuals in the community. Community relationships will be built by engaging victims in activities that they all participate in. Such include voluntary activities such as cleaning social

amenities and streets, cultural sharing events that aid in sharing knowledge about different cultures. This aids in the creation of rapport which is critical in people communicating with each other, and when they have the freedom of expressing emotions, they may talk about what is bothering them. Among these people, there is a big likelihood those in a violent environment

are involved in the activities; therefore, they are advised and guided to seek the much-required help. Those seeking help will consequently be guided in the processes of heading families or relationships and what to do in leading them. Fostering understanding among each other is very beneficial. Leadership is very essential as it continues to nurture relationships and families where the head is supposed to anticipate that everybody is happy and family needs whether

emotional or physical are met (Buzawa& Buzawa,2003).

The media to be used include televisions and radio stations as a way of passing the message on the campaign. The message of the campaign will be intensively provided in the print media where pamphlets will be produced and given to the women in different platforms like worship institutions. Also, during the campaign, five meetings will be conducted in the most affected areas. These people will be educated and at the end, they will receive the pamphlets for further reference. Approaching the institutions will require creativity where the importance of the meetings will be shown and how the community will benefit from the pamphlets. A good relationship will have to be created with the vulnerable in order for them to open up, which will determine the success or failure.

Organizing people is critically important in this campaign. Most of the affected people may fear such platforms which may setback the campaign. To avoid this, a lot of concentration will be given to creating a friendly environment for all the participants in the campaign and avoiding any form of negative stereotyping during the campaign, this will keep the parties involved positive about the campaign. Domestic violence should be addressed by each and everyone in the community. It should not be the obligation of large humanitarian organizations to note violence is happening amongst those in the community.

 In determining how to build community relationships we believe that one of the strongest ways is to get out in the community. Our first approach would be to attend meetings on a local level first the community based level within different places of worship, but also to speak to local town leadership to see if we would be able to speak during town hall events and community council meetings. We realize that this is a great way to establish our groups presence and meet the local leaders and faces that make up the community we are trying to organize. We will also use social media to announce our presence at these local meetings, for instance putting up posts in social media groups announcing when and where we will be speaking to try to gain more attendance and support.

We feel that while these approaches will help us to reach many within the community there are still some unorganized people that we would wish to bring in and show them our group. One major approach I feel that we can utilize to get to the unorganized would to utilize the door to door strategy that organizers used in the article by Lazare, 2016. “Lessons learned from the campaign to defeat the Trump style hate of sheriff Joe Arpaio. By utilizing this strategy, we hope to reach the people who either were too afraid to come to the community meeting or maybe were not interested, but by engaging in a conversation with us we hope to garner some attention and maybe bring some non-believers or doubters to our cause into the organization.

One tactic we will utilize to the technique of empowerment, we feel that if we help organize those who are most affected by the issue and we stand with them that this will help to empower them to help develop the added services we are advocating for. We do not want to advocate for this population, because we may inadvertently and unintentionally cause more harm than good, but by using the empowerment technique we hope to instill a greater sense of self confidence to allow them to bring their cause up from the perspective of people who were affected by it.

Developing leadership is not an easy task and will require a lot of patience and practice, but we would pay attention to the people who have come to our organization and we would try to accentuate the people who have been affected by this personally and we would get them more involved in the decision-making aspects of our organization. We would slowly give them more and more responsibility. It is important for us to build relationships with the community and more importantly these activists that we have determined to have leadership abilities. We would make it a strong point to become involved deeply in that community to help build trust, it can be difficult coming in as outsiders, but by building trust we can start to locate which people in these communities would make great leaders and begin the process to cultivate them into a leadership role in our group.

A skill from Transformative Organizing Model by Steve Williams 2013, Is to Extract every Lesson. Williams speaks about the need to evaluate, this is an important part of the process if our movement is going to grow and be successful, we must be able to take a good look into and each factor involved with it. It is important to make sure that we do the evaluation, it does not matter where it is done or how, it may be a self-reflective evaluation or a large group evaluation, but we must be able to take a strong look and discuss our goals. Were these goals met they met, what we could improve, what we did good, and be able to make changes in order to succeed with our campaign.

A skill from Transformative Organizing Model by Steve Williams that would be helpful in the aid of our campaign is to include and build upon personal experiences of our victims that are involved. We know that our group will be made up of many different individuals and an important aspect is to ensure we are empowering individuals who have suffered from the specific traumas we are organizing against. In doing this we must listen and incorporate the suffering and traumas that people have experienced to help better achieve our overall goal. It is important to remember that as a collective we are moving towards a common goal, but each person’s path towards this goal has been different and unique and we need to be able to listen, understand, and learn from one another if we are going to grow stronger as an organization and achieve our overall goals. It can be extremely detrimental to the overall group to ignore a person’s specific trauma or to easily discard it, it can lead to alienating people from the group and we may lose out on people who could have been strong leaders because they felt we deterred them and did not listen to their specific trauma and experiences.

Critical Responses

Our varying positionalities on the subject were affected by our personal life experiences. One member is employed by the ACS and during the pandemic she had seen a spike in domestic violence cases against children, this experience had helped shape her position on our topic. In addition, another group member witnessed her friend start a shelter and that in turn has inspired her to dedicate her social work career towards helping domestic violence victims. So, both professionally and personally our different viewpoints and experiences have driven us towards starting this campaign.

The different roles that were established during our project was that Leticia took charge as an organizer and set up zoom meetings and times that worked for everyone to discuss our project. Ariel was in charge of formatting and editing the campaign, Keri conducted research into the targets and the power chain behind our campaign. And Rebecca also contributed with Keri by researching different organizations that would be in support of our campaign.

The group process in establishing this plan was very smooth because we utilized various modes of communication to keep in constant contact with each other including various zoom conference calls, a group text chat, and emails. We felt the group process was not that much of an obstacle for us, because we made the time to keep in touch with each other and dedicated our individual resources to the group.

The labor was equitably distributed by breaking up the assignment into separate and equal sections and assigning different sections and jobs to each person. We all felt that the assignments were done fairly and everyone had an equal amount of work to complete. Rebecca was in charge of introducing our campaign and the analyzation of the issue. Khalilah was in charge of the power map Leticia was tasked with the first section of developing the campaign. Finally, Ariel also developed the second part of the campaign which spoke more of the community outreach. In addressing the issue of oppression and power within our group, we all were in agreement that we were all on an equal footing and those topics were not an issue within our specific group. We were fortunate to not have any major disagreements; however, we feel that this was in part due to our open communication and understanding of each other and when an issue would arise we would just respectfully discuss it and come to an agreement. The one improvement that we feel we can make going forward would be to make our zoom meetings or conference calls earlier in the process so we can avoid having to make corrections at the last minute and can present our project sooner.

 

    References 

Buzawa, E. S., & Buzawa, C. G. (2003). Domestic violence: The criminal justice response. Sage.

Christens, B. D. (2010). Public relationship building in grassroots community organizing: Relational intervention for individual and systems change. Journal of Community Psychology, 38(7), 886-900.

Friere, P. (2018). “The banking concept of education. In Hilty, E.B. (Eds.), Thinking about schools: A foundation of education reader. (pp. 117- 128). Routledge.

Milligan , S. (2017, January 20). Stepping Through History. Retrieved from https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2017-01-20/timeline-the-womens-rights-movement-in-the-us .  

NCADV. (2015). Domestic violence national statistics. Retrieved from www.ncadv.org  

Noel, C. (2018). New York City Domestic Violence Fatality Review 2018 Annual Report . Retreieved from https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/ocdv/downloads/pdf/2018_Annual_FRC_Report_Final.pdf .  

Williams, S. (2013). DEMAND EVERYTHING Lessons of the Transformative Organizing Model . Retrieved from https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5628e73ae4b0c53c5aff0e81/t/5c5c5c2a104c7b1288746fd9/1549556791324/Demand+Everything_Williams.pdf