Domestic violence against women has increased globally due to the coronavirus pandemic. Now, an MIT-led experiment designed with that fact in mind uses some forms of social media to raise awareness among women about where they can find resources and support to deal with domestic violence. We showed that it is possible.
In a randomized experiment set in Egypt, women recruited on Facebook were asked to send videos via social media and watch a television program by a prominent Egyptian human rights lawyer on the themes of gender norms and violence. Sent a reminder. In this study, receiving a video or reminder increases consumption of media content about the issue, increases knowledge about available resources, and increases reporting and hypothesizing use of some resources to respond to violence. It turns out that I did. However, the experiment did not seem to change her long-term attitudes toward gender, marital equality, or sexual violence.
MIT professor Photini Cristia, who led the study, said, “Women have increased knowledge of where to find resources for what to do and how to get information.” I understand,” he says.
The experiment also showed that the text messaging service WhatsApp was the best way to ensure participants saw messages and videos, at least in this setting compared to Facebook.
“Content consumption through social media has increased,” says Christia. “He found WhatsApp to be much more effective than Facebook in terms of reaching his audience and getting his message across.”
The paper “Empowering women facing gender-based violence during COVID-19 through a media campaign” was published today. nature human behavior. This project is supported in part by MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), which supports randomized field experiments that provide solutions to poverty and other social problems. I am.
The author is Christia. He is the Ford International Professor of Social Science in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the MIT Social Engineering Systems Research Center (SSRC). Horacio Larregui, associate professor of economics and political science at the Mexican Autonomous Institute in Mexico City. Elizabeth Parker Magyar, doctoral candidate in the MIT Department of Political Science. Manuel Quintero is a new student in the Sociotechnical Systems doctoral program at MIT.
More information, new resources
To conduct the study, the researchers partnered with the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights in Cairo to assess the impact of disseminating the “You’re Not Alone” media campaign. Social media is an increasingly common presence in this country of about 100 million people, with about 38 million Facebook users and her 24 million WhatsApp users. (Meta owns both Facebook and WhatsApp).
The researchers first surveyed 10,000 women on Facebook and selected 5,618 women to participate in the experiment. The experiment was conducted from July to September 2020. The women were divided into four groups and received different messages on WhatsApp and Facebook about content related to taboo resources for women. Domestic Violence with links to TV programs produced by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights. There was also a control group that was administered the content after the study was completed.
In the end, they found that about 45 percent of the experiment participants visited websites hosting TV shows and watched an average of 2.6 episodes. Sending personalized her WhatsApp messages to people had the highest viewership. In contrast, sending group WhatsApp messages to 8 to 12 women at a time led to lower engagement, with only about 9 percent of WhatsApp group messages developing into extended conversations on the subject.
“While WhatsApp was cost-effective in reaching women, it could not be used as a way to actually facilitate social interaction, as offline interventions have done, such as at movie screenings. ” Parker-Magyar said. “We also made the decision not to include men, who understandably play a key role in changing norms and sustaining violence. An extension of our research explores how to better encourage participation in online groups And we think we need to consider how to implement grouped online interventions for all audiences.”
She added: “In the big picture, given what we know about the seriousness of the risk of gender-based violence during the COVID-19 crisis, we are finding that WhatsApp can help us get our message across. ” he added.
Before participating in the experiment, only 28 percent of the women surveyed knew about online resources and 22 percent knew about organizations that support women experiencing gender-based violence. In 2015, 36% of “ever married” Egyptian women between the ages of 15 and 49 reported experiencing domestic violence. In that context, researchers’ “moderate” coverage of content on resources to end violence against women could represent an important outcome.
Survey: Similar attitudes before and after
In a follow-up study of 4,165 women from September to October 2020, researchers found that even after participating in an experiment, gaining knowledge about resources and viewing some content, participants’ It turns out that the core long-term beliefs did not change. About the position of women in society.
“Attitudes toward gender, marital equality, and the legitimacy of gender-based violence have not changed,” Larregui said. “It was heartening for us to see an increase in women’s knowledge of the resources they have access to, as well as our partner organizations and hotlines. There has also been an increase in behavior seeking.”
Mr Larregui added: “While we were responding by design to immediate needs during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was encouraging to see similar results across content on TV and WhatsApp. This helps demonstrate that similar social media-based interventions may be powerful or scalable beyond the pandemic.”
Some of Egypt’s persistent gender norms may have influenced this particular finding. Egypt ranks 129th out of 153 countries in the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Global Gender Gap Index. Only about 25 percent of women are in the labor force in Egypt.
“We think this change is significant, even though it may not seem large-scale,” says Christia.
Christia is working to expand this type of research by conducting similar experiments in different countries to further assess the impact of such interventions.
“We want to continue to look at these kinds of issues around gender equality, gender inclusion and gender-based violence,” she says.
Larregui received funding for the project from the French National Research Agency under the Investissement d’Avenir program.