Viral Solidarity: How Women Leverage Social Media for Gender-Based Violence Support and Change

Background and Purpose:

Online spaces have become crucial for women experiencing gender-based violence (GBV) to seek support, share their stories, and advocate for systemic change. Social media platforms like Twitter/X, Reddit, and Facebook host survivor-led movements that challenge stigma, provide peer support, and demand policy reforms. However, little research has examined how women from diverse backgrounds (BIPOC, LGBTQ+, disabled, migrant, etc.) form online communities to navigate GBV. While digital activism has shaped public discourse and legislative change, the specific ways that women create and sustain these online networks remain underexplored in social work research. This study uses AI-driven data analysis to investigate how women mobilize digital spaces for safety, advocacy, and collective action, bridging the gap between online activism, social work policy, and survivor-centered practice.

Methods:

This study employs social media data mining techniques, including sentiment analysis, topic modeling, and network analysis, to examine digital conversations on GBV. Data is drawn from public Twitter/X and Reddit discussions, particularly those using hashtags such as #MeToo, #SayHerName, #MMIW, #DisabilityJustice, and #QueerSurvivorJustice. The analysis identifies key themes in how women discuss GBV, how online communities provide informal support networks, and how digital discourse shapes policy discussions and advocacy strategies. Using feminist theory, critical race theory (CRT), and intersectionality, the study explores how different groups of women experience and resist GBV in digital spaces and how these discussions influence social work interventions.

Results:

Preliminary findings suggest that women across different identities use online spaces to create survivor-centered networks, share safety strategies, and collectively advocate for policy change. While BIPOC women often focus on racialized violence and policing (e.g., #SayHerName, #MMIW), disabled women highlight barriers to accessing GBV services (#DisabilityJustice), and LGBTQ+ survivors discuss systemic erasure in shelters and legal protections (#QueerSurvivorJustice). Despite these differences, common themes include the use of digital spaces to bypass traditional barriers to support, the importance of peer-led advocacy, and the push for non-carceral, survivor-centered policies. Findings indicate that social work professionals and policymakers must better integrate insights from digital activism into service provision and policy development, ensuring that survivor-led solutions are recognized and implemented.

Conclusions and Implications:

This study demonstrates how women from diverse backgrounds use social media to build community, provide mutual aid, and advocate for systemic reform in GBV policy and services. Findings offer critical implications for social work practitioners, policymakers, and researchers seeking to bridge online activism with survivor-centered interventions. By examining how digital spaces foster collective resistance, this research provides evidence-based recommendations for integrating survivor-led digital movements into social work practice, ensuring accessible, community-driven, and intersectional approaches to gender-based violence support. This study advances SSWR’s 2026 theme by showing how social work science can align with grassroots activism to drive transformative policy and practice change.