An increased risk of family violence during COVID-19 quarantine in Canada: strengthening social media-based collaborations between non-profit agencies to save lives

Family violence (DV) increases in the wake of COVID-19. Those are experiencing while social distancing at home is significantly impacted due to the extraordinary stress families face. The Artificial Intelligence Lab for Social Justice lab at the University of Toronto has been collecting Tweets that contain terms related to COVID-19 (e.g., #2019nCoV, #COVID19) since January 2020. To present, our lab has collected approximately 90 million Tweets related to COVID-19. Our computational social science team uses machine learning approaches to examine 1.the impacts and service needs of COVID-19 on family violence survivors; 2.how provincial and city level non-profit agencies use Twitter to communicate with family violence survivors in the COVID-19 context; and 3.how the COVID-19 supportive information for family violence victims is diffused on Twitter. The project findings will provide rapid, real-time knowledge of family violence during the outbreak, and mobilize Twitter to support and ensure victims' safety.