Intersectionality of Intimate Partner Violence Among Chinese Women: Analysis of Online Forums on Domestic Violence

Intimate partner violence (IPV), affecting almost one in five Chinese women, is a prevalent problem in China that causes physical, psychological, or sexual harm to women. Despite the negative health outcomes related to IPV ranging from depression, substance abuse to even suicide, China still remains one of the countries where IPV has not been well understood. Compared to women from western context, Chinese women have a lower report or disclosure rate of IPV. Previous evidence has demonstrated that IPV has always been taken as a private issue within the family by Chinese women and these women are also concerned about the disturbance of family harmonyand losing face (dignity) of themselves once IPV is disclosed. In addition to that, the victim-blaming attitudes of the general public and the stigma related to IPV further contribute to the silence of survivors. All these factors make it difficult for the researchers to get access to this group of Chinese women and know more about their experience directly.

However, the prevalence of internet use and online forums have brought us new opportunities to know about Chinese women who experienced IPV. Online forums have become an important platform for people to communicate and get support where Chinese women who experienced IPV would share their experience. According to the report by China Internet Network Information Center in 2018, 772 million Chinese are Internet users, covering 55.8% of the total population. The anonymity of online forums can offer a more secured and open environment for this group of women to disclose their experience. With the rapid social and economic development in mainland China over the past decade, women are getting more opportunities in labor market and other fields overall while huge disparities regarding various resources still exist among women from different demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds. There is limited knowledge about how women with different demographic and socioeconomic characteristics experience IPV. Thus, this study aims to conduct a text analysis of how demographics and socioeconomic status influence IPV experience posted on online public forums by Chinese women who experienced IPV from the lens of intersectionality, which will provide unique insights into IPV experience and contribute to a better understanding of this population as well.

Baidu Tieba is the largest Chinese online community with various forums operated by the largest search engine company Baidu in China, which has been selected as the pool for searching potential forums used by Chinese women who has experienced IPV. Forums meeting inclusion criteria will be selected into the study: (1) the forum should be assessed by general public without registration or account; (2) the posts in the forum should be assessed by general public without registration or account; (3) the theme of the forum should be relevant to IPV. Three online forums have been selected according to the inclusion criteria.

The posts posted in these forums have been examined according to the followed inclusion criteria: (1) the post should be the original posts posted by women who have experienced IPV themselves; (2) the contents of the post should be the personal experience of women who have experienced IPV; (3) the posts should be posted within the time interval of the past year (August 1^st, 2017- August 1^st, 2018). Each of the three online forums has been examined separately for the posts meeting the inclusion criteria.

A total of 675 posts have been examined and the title of the posts, username of the people posted, the posted date and the web address of the post have been documented as well as the reasons for inclusion or exclusion. 72 posts (10.67%) have met the inclusion criteria.

Conventional content analysis will be used to analyze the experience of IPV among Chinese women who have experienced IPV and to describe their IPV experience. Two coders, native speaker of Chinese, will analyze each post separately. After the initial codes regarding IPV experience have been developed, codes will be categorized into various categories based on the similarities and differences of codes. Regular meetings will be held in order to reach consensus about the categories and themes. NVivo will be used for text analysis for this study.

Results about how demographics and socioeconomic status influence IPV experience among Chinese women will be reported from the lens of intersectionality and implications for future research will also be discussed.