When Social Media Becomes the Mediator: Viral Exposure as an Emerging Pathway of Family Conflict Resolution in Domestic Violence Cases in Indonesia
Sri Pujiati, Meliza

Universitas Terbuka, Tangerang Selatan, Indonesia

Abstract

Domestic violence remained a persistent problem within Indonesian families, threatening household stability despite the existence of protective legal frameworks. This study was conducted because institutional mediation, carried out by regional women and child protection units and the police, no longer stood as the only pathway through which families sought resolution- increasingly, households turned to social media platforms to expose domestic conflicts publicly, using online visibility as a form of social pressure to obtain accountability or reconciliation. This shift raised sociological concerns about how digital exposure was reshaping conflict resolution within the family unit. The study employed a qualitative case-based approach, drawing on empirical interviews and focus group discussions previously conducted with protection officers and police mediators, combined with document analysis of publicized domestic violence cases circulated on social media. The analysis was framed through family sociology, examining digital exposure as an emerging form of social capital that operated alongside formal mediation. The findings showed that public exposure functioned as an alternative bargaining mechanism that accelerated responses from authorities and perpetrators, yet it also introduced risks to privacy, due process, and long-term family cohesion. The study concluded that digital-based resolution complemented, rather than replaced, institutional mediation, and it proposed that family support services integrate digital literacy and safeguards to strengthen inclusive family resilience in technologically mediated societies.

Keywords: domestic violence- family resilience- family sociology- social capital- viral exposure

Topic: Digital Power, Social Capital, and Inclusive Resilience: Interrogating Gender and Inequality in Technologically Mediated Societies (Digital Power- Social Capital- Inclusive Resilience)