NARRATIVES OF WIFE BATTERING ON FACEBOOK: JOURNALISTIC INTERPRETATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT

ABSTRACT: This study investigated how social media discourses shape the framing and public understanding of domestic violence. Anchored on Reception Theory and the Mediated Public Sphere Theory, the study adopted a qualitative interpretive design, analyzing 113 Facebook comments on a widely circulated domestic violence post. Using a purposive sampling formula, 50 comments were selected based on relevance, clarity, and contextual depth, ensuring validity and reliability of the dataset. Findings reveal that Facebook users frame wife battering as both a social pathology and a moral failing, often oscillating between cultural justifications and calls for justice; interpretive journalism emerges as a powerful tool for amplifying these mediated voices, while the comments also uncover stark tensions between legal frameworks such as Nigeria’s VAPP Act and persistent societal practices that normalize violence. The study concluded that wife battering is a dehumanizing reality that enslaves both victims and perpetrators, reducing love to hostility. It recommends that interpretive journalists actively mine mediated discourses for deeper insights, that policy actors intensify community-based sensitization, and that legal frameworks be harmonized with public consciousness to close the gap between law and lived realities. KEYWORDS: Facebook, Interpretive Journalism, Social Media, Wife battering