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Linguistic Analysis of Online Domestic Violence Testimonies in the Context of COVID-19

Worldwide, an increase in cases and severity of domestic violence (DV) has been reported as a result of social distancing measures implemented to decrease the spreading of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19). As one’s language can provide insight in one’s mental health, this pre-registered study anal...

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Autores principales: Buchner, Valentin L., Hamm, Sharina, Medenica, Barbara, Molendijk, Marc L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9834616/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36650826
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/21582440221146135
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author Buchner, Valentin L.
Hamm, Sharina
Medenica, Barbara
Molendijk, Marc L.
author_facet Buchner, Valentin L.
Hamm, Sharina
Medenica, Barbara
Molendijk, Marc L.
author_sort Buchner, Valentin L.
collection PubMed
description Worldwide, an increase in cases and severity of domestic violence (DV) has been reported as a result of social distancing measures implemented to decrease the spreading of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19). As one’s language can provide insight in one’s mental health, this pre-registered study analyzed word use in a DV online support group, aiming to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on DV victims in an ex post facto research design. Words reflecting social support and leisure activities were investigated as protective factors against linguistic indicators of depression in 5,856 posts from the r/domesticviolence subreddit and two neutral comparison subreddits (r/changemyview & r/femalefashionadvice). In the DV support group, the average number of daily posts increased significantly by 22% from pre- to mid-pandemic. Confirmatory analysis was conducted following a registered pre-analysis plan. DV victims used significantly more linguistic indicators of depression than individuals in the comparison groups. This did not change with the onset of COVID-19. The use of negative emotion words was negatively related to the use of social support words (Spearman’s rho correlation coefficient [rho] = −0.110) and words referring to leisure activities (rho = −0.137). Pre-occupation with COVID-19 was associated with the use of negative emotion words (rho = 0.148). We conclude that language of DV victims is characterized by indicators of depression and this characteristic is stable over time. Concerns with COVID-19 could contribute to negative emotions, whereas social support and leisure activities could function to some degree as protective factors. A potential weakness of this study is its cross-sectional design and the lack of experimental control. Future studies could make use of natural language processing and other advanced methods of linguistic analysis to learn about the mental health of DV victims.
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spelling pubmed-98346162023-01-13 Linguistic Analysis of Online Domestic Violence Testimonies in the Context of COVID-19 Buchner, Valentin L. Hamm, Sharina Medenica, Barbara Molendijk, Marc L. Sage Open Article Worldwide, an increase in cases and severity of domestic violence (DV) has been reported as a result of social distancing measures implemented to decrease the spreading of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19). As one’s language can provide insight in one’s mental health, this pre-registered study analyzed word use in a DV online support group, aiming to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on DV victims in an ex post facto research design. Words reflecting social support and leisure activities were investigated as protective factors against linguistic indicators of depression in 5,856 posts from the r/domesticviolence subreddit and two neutral comparison subreddits (r/changemyview & r/femalefashionadvice). In the DV support group, the average number of daily posts increased significantly by 22% from pre- to mid-pandemic. Confirmatory analysis was conducted following a registered pre-analysis plan. DV victims used significantly more linguistic indicators of depression than individuals in the comparison groups. This did not change with the onset of COVID-19. The use of negative emotion words was negatively related to the use of social support words (Spearman’s rho correlation coefficient [rho] = −0.110) and words referring to leisure activities (rho = −0.137). Pre-occupation with COVID-19 was associated with the use of negative emotion words (rho = 0.148). We conclude that language of DV victims is characterized by indicators of depression and this characteristic is stable over time. Concerns with COVID-19 could contribute to negative emotions, whereas social support and leisure activities could function to some degree as protective factors. A potential weakness of this study is its cross-sectional design and the lack of experimental control. Future studies could make use of natural language processing and other advanced methods of linguistic analysis to learn about the mental health of DV victims. SAGE Publications 2023-01-10 /pmc/articles/PMC9834616/ /pubmed/36650826 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/21582440221146135 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Article
Buchner, Valentin L.
Hamm, Sharina
Medenica, Barbara
Molendijk, Marc L.
Linguistic Analysis of Online Domestic Violence Testimonies in the Context of COVID-19
title Linguistic Analysis of Online Domestic Violence Testimonies in the Context of COVID-19
title_full Linguistic Analysis of Online Domestic Violence Testimonies in the Context of COVID-19
title_fullStr Linguistic Analysis of Online Domestic Violence Testimonies in the Context of COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed Linguistic Analysis of Online Domestic Violence Testimonies in the Context of COVID-19
title_short Linguistic Analysis of Online Domestic Violence Testimonies in the Context of COVID-19
title_sort linguistic analysis of online domestic violence testimonies in the context of covid-19
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9834616/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36650826
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/21582440221146135
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