A Cross Community Comparison of Muting in Conversations of Gendered Violence on Reddit

Gender-based violence (GBV) is an ongoing public health issue. Prevention practice and research on GBV contend with an incomplete understanding of its public health burden due to gender-exclusive definitions of GBV and inhibited survivor disclosure. Prior work in CSCW and HCI has explored sensitive disclosures and GBV conversations but excludes examination of conversation dynamics in surfacing knowledge of GBV. We used a mixed-methods approach to understand the phenomenon characterized by Muted Group Theory as a mechanism inhibiting disclosure in the context of GBV discussions on Reddit. Using an iterative process informed by literature of GBV research on cis-gender women, girls, trans, and non-binary populations, we developed comprehensive keywords to obtain, annotate, and analyze 298 posts and 10,369 comments about GBV across 7 subreddits. We found that muting faced by survivors offline, precluding reporting, is replicated on the Reddit platform. This study surfaced 5 categories of muting in discussions of GBV situated by variations in communication norms between dominant and non-dominant groups. These findings were supported by analysis of linguistic attributes that inform an Ensemble Classifier's detection of muting in conversations of GBV. The results offer that muting is a harmful occurrence in online disclosures of GBV that is mediated by existing moderation practices. This work contributes an expanded understanding of GBV conversations online, muting as a feature of those conversations, and an initial foray into detection to inform muting prevention.