Online disclosure, a mechanism for seeking informal justice?

Abstract

Recent scholarship considers digital platforms’ potential to serve as sites for feminist counter-spaces. ‘Speaking out’ or disclosing gender-based violence online allows survivors to give voice to their experiences and create a political arena for seeking informal forms of justice. What is significant in these instances is not a shift away from formal justice mechanisms but how the alternative ones take a survivor-focused approach to meet their needs and interests. The survivors who choose to disclose publicly – by describing their experiences in their own words – seek validation and solidarity and hold their perpetrators responsible for the harm they caused. Based on a multilevel justice approach, this research studies how – or whether – digital platforms enable community recognition and awareness regarding gender-based violence in Turkey. By exploring the experiences of six women from Turkey who were subjected to gender-based violence and disclosed online, we ask what justice means for our participants, why they chose to disclose digitally, and for what purposes. We consider their reasons for and experiences of such online disclosures and examine the extent to which these meet their justice needs. While it is evident that online spaces can function as sites of informal justice, it is vital to ask for whom and in which contexts justice can be achieved online. The data is analysed concerning the anti-gender resistance and the recent decline in human rights and judicial justice in Turkey.