| This thesis examines the public perception of the Ray Rice and Janay Rice intimate partner violence (IPV) incident that occurred on February 19, 2014. This event became the source of thousands of tweets, revealing a representation of public response to IPV through the lens of sports, African American celebrities and gender. Exploring public response through social media, this thesis analyzed a sample of 332 tweets at two time periods, one centering around the NFL announcement of a two-day suspension of Ray Rice and the other later announcement regarding the announced indefinite suspension of Ray Rice. The thesis includes a qualitative investigation of tweet contents to examine public sentiment regarding IPV victimization and accountability during the two time periods. This study expands on research on IPV and social work through being one of the first research projects to integrate an analysis of gender, violence and social media. |
