Intimate partner violence online: Expectations and agency in question and answer websites
Lynn Westbrook · Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology · 2014
This article presents the first situation‐rooted typology of intimate partner violence (IPV) postings in social question and answer (Q&A) sites. Survivors as well as abusers post high‐risk health, legal, and financial questions to Q&A sites; answers come from individuals who self‐identify as lawyers, experts, survivors, and abusers. Using grounded theory this study examines 1,241 individual posts, each within its own context, raising issues of agency and expectations. Informed by Savolainen's everyday life information seeking (ELIS) and Nahl's affective load theory (ALT), the resultant Q&A typology suggests implications for IPV service design, policy development, and research priorities.