Advocacy and Accountability:: A Comparative Design Analysis of Supporting Documentation for the Chinese Anti-Domestic Violence Law

Abstract

This paper performs a comparative design analysis of documentation related to the anti-domestic violence law in China as an apparent feminist project. Examining how the government-Affiliated "All-China Women's Federation"(WF) designs content on the anti-DV law, from an audit of its web resource database to a WeChat article on battling domestic violence during COVID-19, I argue that WF's political and sociocultural positionality meant that it rhetorically transcoded the anti-DV law into a mixed genre of promotional, educational, and informative communication, resulting in a confusing information system and less usable documents. In contrast, the "anti-DV vaccine handbook"created by a grassroots group and a public service organization serves as a feminist intervention, offering detailed content on how to respond to domestic violence during the pandemic, with actionable instructions that empower and advocate victims/survivors and bystanders, while also keeping accountable relevant agencies in enforcing and supporting the anti-DV law implementation. From this analysis, I provide a few questions toward a heuristic that helps TPC researchers think about applying apparent feminist methodology in global contexts that take account of networked arguments as well as the tensions between feminism and neoliberal and nationalistic ideologies, paying attention to the different manifestations of power dynamics.