Private Harms, Public Silence: The Private/Public Divide in Online Visibility of Violence Against Women in China

• In Event: Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 8: The Role of Digital Platforms in the Practice and Study of Movements: Global Cases

Abstract

The digital age promises a voice to everyone, yet the vast majority of personal grievances, even those concerning severe social injustices like violence against women, remain invisible. What determines whether an individual’s grievance capture public attention, and which do not? While extant research focuses on the factors that make content go viral, it often overlooks the barriers that prevent most grievances from gaining traction in the first place. Using an original dataset of 20,700 violence against women incidents disclosed on the Chinese social media platform Weibo during July to December 2024, I find that the likelihood of receiving public attention is powerfully structured by a resilient, pre-digital social boundary: the private/public divide. Incidents occurring within familial or intimate relationships—traditionally seen as private—are significantly less likely to receive any attention than those in work, service, or stranger relationships, even when they are seemingly identical in terms of incident severity, poster influence, timing, and censorship status. Moreover, conventional amplification tactics—such as multimedia usage and strategic framing—fail to close this gap and often widen it. Instead, the key to visibility is boundary-crossing novelty, where private incidents adopt "public" cues like institutional intervention. These findings shift our understanding of digital exclusion from a lack of viral tactics to a struggle over symbolic categorization, showing that marginalized harms must achieve structural legibility before they can mobilize attention.

Author

• Zhaodi Chen, Indiana University-Bloomington