Digital Communication and the Discursive Construction of Domestic Violence Survivors’ Identity on Nairaland

Abstract

This study examined how the identity of domestic violence (DV) survivors is discursively constructed in computer-mediated communication on Nairaland, Nigeria’s largest online discussion forum. Existing scholarship on Nairaland has concentrated on hate speech, political discourse, neologisms and impoliteness, while research on domestic violence in Nigeria has been predominantly epidemiological or legal; comparatively little attention has been paid to how survivors are linguistically positioned in digital interaction. Adopting Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis as its primary orientation, and drawing additionally on van Leeuwen’s social-actor framework, positioning theory and the victim–survivor distinction, the paper theorises survivor identity as a contested, co-constructed accomplishment that emerges in the interaction between an original poster’s disclosure and the responses it attracts. Because DV disclosure is sensitive and survivors constitute a vulnerable population, the study adopts a conceptual and illustrative design rather than reproducing identifiable posts; recurrent discursive patterns documented in the literature and observable across Nairaland’s public Family and Romance boards are demonstrated through anonymised, constructed examples. The analysis isolates recurrent strategies through which survivor identity is built and disputed, including self-positioning along a victim–survivor continuum, agency-obscuring grammar, victim-blaming and skepticism, religious and cultural framings of endurance, and solidarity-based affiliation. The study argued that Nairaland operates simultaneously as a space of disclosure and of secondary victimisation, and concluded with implications for digital advocacy, platform moderation and future empirical research.