Date of Conferral
1-17-2025
Degree
Ph.D.
School
Human Services
Advisor
Gregory Hickman
Abstract
Military domestic violence (MDV) is an issue in the United States. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to explore how the mainstream media and published government content depicts MDV on the internet, and whether those narratives/video transcripts contained any agenda to generate influence. Ragas’ agenda-setting theory was used as a framework for this study. Agenda-setting is a communication specific phenomenon directed to influence individuals or organizations, based on what public relations practitioners present to the public. There are two research questions in this study. The first is: How do mainstream media narratives, and government documents depict survivors and support related to U.S. MDV? The second is: Does journalistic language or other jargon in documents/video transcripts involving U.S. MDV suggest any agenda? A group of 193 samples of extant data from online media and government sources were collected, uploaded to NVivo, and analyzed using thematic content analysis. The findings indicated that systemic, institutional, and cultural barriers to U.S. MDV victim-survivor support were present. In addition, media presenters and U.S. government representatives conveyed multiple conflicting agendas, including partisan marginalization of MDV victim-survivors, and agendas focused on individual influence and the need for organization-wide change in education, action, and awareness of MDV. This study contributes to social change and enhancing the social determinants of health at the individual, community, organizational, and societal levels by further defining the context within which U.S. MDV victim-survivors continue to live.
Recommended Citation
Pearson, Erica Ann, "Depictions of United States Military Domestic Violence Found on the Internet" (2025). Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies. 17182.
https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/17182
