Discovering Conversation Spaces in the Public Discourse of Gender Violence: a Comparative Between Two Different Contexts

31st Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation (PACLIC 31), pages 376–383 Cebu City, Philippines, November 16-18, 2017 Copyright c⃝2017 Meliza De La Paz, Maria Regina Estuar and John Noel Victorino Discovering Conversation Spaces in the Public Discourse of Gender Violence: a Comparative Between Two Different Contexts Meliza M. De La Paz Ateneo de Manila University Katipunan Ave., Quezon City Philippines, 1108 azidelapaz@gmail.com Ma. Regina E. Estuar Ateneo de Manila University Katipunan Ave., Quezon City Philippines, 1108 restuar@ateneo.edu John Noel C. Victorino Ateneo de Manila University Katipunan Ave., Quezon City Philippines, 1108 jvictorino@ateneo.edu Abstract A huge factor in gender-based violence is per- ception and stigma, revealed by public dis- course. Topic modelling is useful for dis- course analysis and reveals prevalent topics and actors. This study aims to find and com- pare examples of collectivist and individualist conversation spaces of gendered violence by applying Principal Component Analysis, N- Gram analysis and word association in two gender violence cases which occured in the different contexts of the Philippines and the United States. The data from the Philippines consist of 2010-2011 articles on the 1991 Viz- conde Massacre and the data from the United States consist of 2016-2017 articles from the 2015 Stanford Rape Case. Results show that in both cases’ conversation space there is a focus on institutions involved in the cases that does not really change over time, and a time-dependent conversation space for vic- tims. Even in two different contexts of gen- der violence, patterns in conversation space appear similar. 1 Introduction In 2010, around 20 people in the United States were being physically abused by a partner every minute (Black, Basile, Breiding, et al, 2011). Gender-based violence is a prevalent problem, even until today: 1 in 3 women have experienced some form of physi- cal or sexual violence worldwide(World Health Or- ganization, 2016). The emphasis on gender points to the context that this violence happens because of unequal power relations between women and men. Gendered expectations and structures of power are passed down and learned through interactions and discussions - discourse datasets are a potential source to analyze for this (Butler, 1988). This study uses principal component analysis, word frequency counts, word associations, and N- gram analysis to compare two different public dis- courses on gender violence, specifically articles written about the Stanford rape case and the Viz- conde massacre. This is done between two sets of discourse that happens in an individualist soci- ety(U.S.) and a collectivist society(Philippines). It aims to analyze a conversation space to see what as- pect of gender violence discourse appears to be the primary focus - victims, perpetrators, institutions or society as an initial diagnosis of how gender vio- lence is framed in such discourses. People v. Brock Allen Turner(the official name of the legal case of the Stanford rape) began on Jan- uary 18, 2015 when a college student athlete named Brock Turner was indicted for charges of rape and sexual assault. Turner was convicted on March 30, 2016 for …

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