Communicating anti-Violence Policy on Twitter: The European Commission and #SayNoStopVAW

Abstract

On November 25th, 2016, EU Commissioner Vera Jourova announced that the 2016 International day for the elimination of violence against women (IDEVAW) would mark the start of ‘a focused year of action to combat violence against women’. The campaign was accompanied by an official Twitter hashtag: #SayNoStopVAW. This paper aims at exploring a sample of just over 2,000 tweets gathered in the first month of the campaign through multimodal analysis. Results are as follows. The number of users involved in the campaign remained remarkably limited. Despite assertive language, the campaign mostly revolved around awareness raising. Furthermore, the actual message of the campaign often ‘bent’ the fight for the elimination of violence against women to make it fit other purposes, most prominently economic growth. Support for the cause because of its intrinsic value remained marginal throughout the campaign.

Keywords

• European Commission
• gender based violence
• violence against women
• hashtag politics