What: Women’s advocacy group Aware has released a three-minute video as part of their We Can! Singapore campaign.

Why: We Can! Singapore was launched in May this year to change social attitudes towards violence.

Who: Uploaded on Nov. 29, 2013, the video shows three staged scenes of a man abusing a woman, supposedly his girlfriend, along different stretches of Orchard Road.

Three different people -- two Caucasians and a Malay -- stepped forward to help the supposedly abused woman.

A host then appears to reveal that the ‘abuse’ was staged as part of a video to raise awareness on domestic violence in Singapore, and a test to see if Singaporeans would step in to help.

1. Guy spots couple quarrelling

2. Guy intervenes

3. Host reveals skit is part of social experiment

Developing story: The video has since drawn flak from viewers. Reaction to the social experiment method employed by Aware to bring attention to domestic abuse is polarised at best.

As of Dec. 3, five days after the video was released on YouTube, it has received more than 10,000 views with 52 thumbs up and 48 thumbs down.

Aware has been criticised for some of the methods it employs to draw attention to its previous causes.

In November this year, Aware brought up the issue of misogynistic lyrics used in a marching song, “Purple Light”, sung by full-time National Servicemen to Mindef. This resulted in that particular verse of the song to be banned.

With this present video, it tried to employ the Internet's potential for virality to get the message across, even at the risk of drawing flak.

This current video to highlight domestic violence has inadvertently been accused of trivialising domestic violence by employing a staged skit, as the realities of domestic violence is more severe.

And more crucially, getting bystanders to intervene may be difficult due to the "bystander effect", where no one in particular wants to take up the responsibility to act.

But bad publicity is also publicity, so the anti-domestic violence message will still be carried further via criticism.

Watch the full video here:

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