Communicating media information about intimate partner violence
transformation process, legitimacy of violence, and gendered dynamics
Keywords:
Domestic Violence, Social Representations, Communication, Gender, MediaAbstract
Based on the social representations approach and on the rumor paradigm, this study analyses the propagation and transformation of media information about intimate partner violence in communications between same-sex participants (N = 255). Results of qualitative and quantitative analyses illustrate the impact of pre-existing shared social knowledge on the transformation of the information propagated. They show that men assess violence as more legitimate than women and that this difference increases as intra-group communication progresses. The article concludes with the ideological issues underlying the propagation of information about intimate partner violence and the practical implications for combating this phenomenon.
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