Intimate Partner Violence on Instagram: Visualizing a Public Health Approach to Prevention

Kellie E Carlyle, Jeanine P D Guidry, Sharyn A Dougherty, Candace W Burton

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

Abstract

Social media platforms like Instagram are often used as venues for discussing relationships, making them ideal channels for promoting healthy relationships and preventing intimate partner violence (IPV). This is particularly relevant for IPV, which has been historically understood as a personal issue and lacked support for consideration as a significant public health issue. To explore a potential platform for IPV prevention, this study examines the ways in which IPV messages on Instagram reflect public health understandings of, and approaches to, prevention and how Instagram users engage with these posts. We analyzed 700 Instagram posts about IPV using the social ecological model as the theoretical framework for conceptualizing framing devices. Posts that mentioned individual causal attribution and individual solution responsibility were both present in the majority of posts and elicited more engagement than posts that did not. Encouragingly, the Instagram sample was more reflective of a range of different types of IPV experiences than previous analyses of traditional media content, possibly indicating that a public health approach to this issue is gaining traction.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)90-96
Number of pages7
JournalHealth education & behavior : the official publication of the Society for Public Health Education
Volume46
Issue number2_suppl
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2019
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Female
  • Health Promotion
  • Humans
  • Information Storage and Retrieval
  • Intimate Partner Violence/prevention & control
  • Public Health
  • Social Media
  • Young Adult

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