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Domestic Abuse and the Transition to a Balanced Social Network

One guaranteed way to gain power (emotionally or physically) over a person is through isolation. The process of isolation can manifest in varying forms. Some abusers will instill guilt in their victims for not “prioritizing” their relationship or for causing jealousy; or they will gain financial control, dictating activities and social outings; or they could gain control of social media and phones, placing a limit on the victims interaction with others. The act of isolating someone is commonly seen in the workplace (purposefully excluding one from normal teamwork or activities), in relationships with the elderly and children (who are both dependent on care from others), and in romantic relationships (commonly where the victim is not financially independent). Specifically in domestic abuse, it is prevalent for the abuser to maintain control of all interaction with the outside world, which easily includes controlling the victim’s cell phone.

 

When isolation occurs, all relationships with friends and family are strained if not broken. Additionally, the abuser would be against the creation of new relationships/friendships. Because of this definite loss of strong ties. From a social network graph point of view, this means that all strong ties turn into negative ties, in one transition over time. Upon looking at the entire graph, initially, there exists many strong ties with the victim between friends and family, and with time, the connections are forced to become weak. Additionally, the final graph of this relationship will adhere to the strong triadic closure property. Abusers will identify ties that are strong with the victim, but weak with themself (ex: family members). The strong tie will be forced to weak and what is left is one strong, controlling tie between the abuser and victim. Additionally, the strong ties that are shared between the abuser, victim, and someone else could be maintained as it is also possible the third person would be ignorant to the abuse as they have a strong tie with the abuser. This demonstrates that the graph becomes balanced, containing a majority of balanced triadic closures (-+- or +++).

 

By understanding this pattern, perhaps isolation could become detected among heavy social media users by monitoring the frequency of contacts over time, which could correlate to the strength of the relationship. There is a small chance of this being able to work or become a viable option for detecting abuse, but it could be of use to friends and family to recognize a victim’s isolation.

https://www.breakthesilencedv.org/isolation-and-domestic-violence/

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