Understanding Narratives of Trauma on Social Media

Abstract

Background: Victims of domestic and sexual violence often share their narratives on social media. Doing so helps them access validation, solidarity, and support from external sources, which has been shown to enhance resilience and facilitate healing.

Problem Statement: We address two aspects of such narratives of trauma: (1) identifying causal relationships between narrative elements and (2) analyzing the effect of such elements on social support received.

Method: We retrieved 5561 such narratives from Reddit, a popular online platform. We applied Large Language Models to extract features from these narratives and analyzed them computationally.

Findings: Our analysis reveals that prolonged abuse increases selfblame and reduces the intent to seek legal advice; the presence of support increases the likelihood of a victim adopting coping strategies; night-time abuse and intoxication are strongly associated with higher rates of violence; victims experiencing nightmares are more likely to provide detailed descriptions of their abusers; suffering economic and familial abuse increases the support received online. Our research thus corroborates leading psychological theories of narrative, social support, and resilience in online stories and contributes to understanding trauma narratives. In this way, our research can facilitate enhanced social support for victims.