Fanny Ramirez

Since 2020, TikTok has been at the center of a bitter battle between its vast American user base of nearly 170 million and the persistent threat of U.S. government bans over alleged user privacy ri...

Purpose: This article examines how crisis centers in Louisiana, USA, adapted their direct care services during COVID-19 to continue helping survivors affected by violence. Organizational resilience theory serves as the project’s main theoretical framework. As such, we report on how community- and university-based crisis centers drew on principles of resilience and resourcefulness to adapt their direct care services (e.g., crafting normalcy, putting alternative logics to work) during this difficult time. Method: We draw on 21 in-depth interviews with upper-level administrators from organizations working in violence against women conducted during the summer of 2020. The interview transcripts yielded 184 single-spaced pages of data that we analyzed using an inductive approach to qualitative data analysis. Results: Findings show that both community- and university-based centers were able to transition counseling and case management to telehealth services either through telephone or videoconferencing. However, three types of direct care services could not be fully transitioned to virtual formats: Shelters, legal services, and medical support. These areas of care often experienced temporary service interruptions until centers developed creative face-to-face interactions to help mitigate in-person contact. Conclusions: This study contributes to current understandings of how crisis centers can apply organizational resilience principles during public health crises to adapt and thrive in the face of adversity. By reporting on specific resilience strategies used by Louisiana centers we provide insights that will help social service providers and healthcare professionals be better prepared for future public health crises.

Drawing on communication affordance theory and literature on victim blaming, rape myths, and violence against women, this study uses a qualitative content analysis of 108 publicly available court judgements to examine the use of social media evidence in sexual assault trials in Canada. Our findings indicate that the defense and the prosecution use social media’s affordance of digital association to establish relational ties between victims and defendants. Both sides also draw on the persistence and visibility of social media to support different interpretations of the events surrounding the assault based on pre- and post-assault communications, especially as it relates to the matter of consent. Lastly, we find that news stories or public service announcements posted to social media are referenced in the courts as important motivators that encourage women to come forward about their assault.

Using survey data from a sample of 378 women who live in the United States and self-identify as either Black or Latinx, this study explores predictors of women’s digital monitoring practices in intimate relationships in the context of intimate partner violence (IPV). We use literature about surveillance, monitoring, and IPV to frame our study. Our results show three significant instances that influence the odds of monitoring a romantic partner: (1) past experiences with digital abuse, (2) past experiences with offline psychological abuse, and (3) age, with younger women having increased odds of engaging in digital monitoring compared to older women. Although relationship satisfaction was negatively associated with digital monitoring, it was not a predictor variable. This suggests that casual surveillance behaviors are highly ambiguous and not necessarily indicative of a poor relationship. In fact, for women with past abuse experiences, digital monitoring may function as a coping mechanism that brings personal reassurance.

Based on open-ended survey data of 400 women who self-identify as either Black or Latinx, this study examines women’s digital media sharing practices in romantic relationships amid a growing trend towards the personalization of digital technologies. Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory as well as scholarship on privacy and trust in romantic relationships frame our work. Approximately 56% of participants said romantic partners should not have access to each other’s social media accounts, 24% said they should, and 20%, said that access needed to be negotiated based on situational and personal factors (e.g., seriousness of the relationship, special circumstances). Justifications for sharing included having nothing to hide, trust, and a desire for open communication in the relationship. Explanatory themes for keeping social media and smartphone access private focused on trust, privacy, risk of conflict, and the need to respect a person’s individuality and personal boundaries. Interestingly, trust was a major motivator for both granting and denying access. We make sense of this duality of trust through the introduction of a trust/privacy dialectic relationship that extends current scholarship on CPM in romantic relationships.