The Politics of ‘Speaking In’: Forming Online Survivor Communities

One common context in which victim-survivors disclose their experiences online is in online communities of peers (O’Neill, Int J Crime Justice Soc Democr 7(1):44–59. https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.v7i1.402 , 2018). Although several studies have examined such online communities in the aftermath of sexual violence, few have explored how and why victim-survivors use and form these communities through qualitative interviews. This chapter explores this phenomenon, which I describe as ‘speaking in’, and extends the arguments posed in the two preceding chapters by discussing how survivors form communities, and the implications that can arise from disclosing in them. The discussion also provides further insights into how online communities form, why victim-survivors use them, and why anonymity is important to some people making disclosures. To do this, the chapter draws from content analysis of posts made to an online community on Reddit, as well as qualitative interviews with victim-survivors who had disclosed in these types of community contexts.