Towards ‘romantic media ideologies’: digital dating abuse seen through the lens of social media and/or dating in teenage narratives

ABSTRACT The article addresses the teenagers’ perception of those forms of teen dating violence that occur on digital media (i.e., ‘digital dating abuse,’ DDA), such as snooping around, controlling behaviors, and aggravated sexting. It contributes to the strand of studies on DDA and those on the mutual shaping relationship between technology and society by focusing on the interplay between social media usage practices and dating practices among teenagers narrating DDA. We carried out 7 focus groups in Rome with 43 high school students aged 14–16 years, in order to explore whether and how the negotiation with social media platforms and the interaction between dating partners affect the adolescents’ perception of DDA. The thematic analysis reveals that participants refer to idioms of practice informed by media ideologies when seeing DDA as an issue related to social media, or to dating scripts supported by romantic ideologies when seeing it as an issue related to dating. They oscillate between these two interpretative ‘lenses,’ thus intertwining the platform social usage norms and broader societal beliefs surrounding dating relationships. In doing so, they give rise to ‘digital dating scripts’ and ‘romantic media ideologies’ which nowadays rule their dating relationships in a very specific way.