Advancing Women's Rights in the Age of Social Media: An Analysis of the #MeToo Movement (original) (raw)
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Social Media Discourse Analysis: the #MeToo Movement
2019
With the advent of Web 2.0 and the emergence of digital media, the way in which people communicate has changed considerably. The creation of new technological tools and the introduction of new communicative practices that digital media brought along with them, like “tagging”, “blogging”, “hyperlinking”, “filtering” and many others, increased people’s opportunity to create and channelling information. The development of new forms of media, which facilitate the mixing of different communicative modes in new ways over time and space, has changed the whole idea of what is meant by a text or a conversation. Indeed, digital media has enhanced the number of communicative modes available to us at any given time. Considering the globalized and digitally networked scenario people are living in today, the aim of this work is to study the influence of digital media, in particular social media and social networking sites like Twitter, in the process of meaning-making and the creation of civic engagement and political participation. The first chapter of this thesis focuses on the study of digital media in the field of discourse analysis, highlighting the new affordances of the ‘read-write web’ and the birth of new literacy practices along with the rise of social networking sites (SNSs) and social media platforms, with particular regard to Twitter and its main characteristics. This research draws upon the principles of social semiotics theorized by the linguist Michael Halliday and the further studies on multimodality developed by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen. It also takes into examination the study on social networking sites carried out by dana boyd and Nicole Ellison in order to focus the attention on the process of collaboration and ‘peer production’ facilitated by social media. The second chapter focuses on civic engagement and political participation on SNSs and opens with a 2009 Facebook’s study that shows the contribution of the Web in the empowerment of citizenship and activism. The study goes then on by presenting the case of the 2013 hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which represents an example of the power of social media in gathering people. However, the main focus of this second chapter is on the rise of the #MeToo Movement, which although it was first created in 2006, gained attention only in October 2017 after actress Alyssa Milano’s tweet. In this specific case, social media, especially Twitter’s services and its social practices such as the “hashtag”, the “@replies” and the practice of “retweeting”, have shown their effectiveness in gathering activists with similar goals and create awareness about the movement. The third and last chapter is dedicated to analysis of Alyssa Milano’s tweet, from a digital, discursive and multimodal point of view. The first part of the chapter introduces the Hallidayan social semiotic approach to language studies and the three metafunctions he theorized. The chapter focuses then on Lemke’s concept of hypermodality, that features the integration of Hallidayan approach to language with multimodality and computer mediated communication. The chapter ends with a detailed analysis of the above-mentioned tweet.
#MeToo as Catalyst: A Glimpse into 21st Century Activism
2019
The Twitter hashtag #MeToo has provided an accessible medium for users to share their personal experiences and make public the prevalence of sexual harassment, assault, and violence against women. This online phenomenon, which has largely involved posting on Twitter and “retweeting” to share other’s posts has revealed crucial information about the scope and nature of sexual harassment and misconduct. More specifically, social media has served as a central forum for this unprecedented global conversation, where previously silenced voices have been amplified, supporters around the world have been united, and resistance has gained steam. This Essay discusses the #MeToo movement within the broader context of social media activism, explaining how this unique form of collective action is rapidly evolving. We offer empirical insights into the types of conversations taking place under the hashtag and the extent to which the movement is leading to broader social change. While it is unclear w...
A Critical Discourse Analysis of Sexual Harassment Against Women in Online Mass Media
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This study used Fairclough's critical discourse analysis theory to analyse the news articles published in Magdalene ??and Femina magazines in 2020. The authors particularly emphasised finding one of three aspects of Fairclough's socio-cultural practice: power. From this point, the authors attempted to find out the depiction of women and the stance of the contributors in the news articles about sexual harassment. This study found that the aspect of power constructed by contributors from news articles and magazines depicted women and men as vulnerable groups to sexual harassment. However, the harassment is described as still predominantly experienced by women. The findings also suggested that the contributors attempted to oppose male domination and power relations in the scope of work, especially in cyber sexual harassment.
#MeToo Movement: A Sociological Analysis of Media Representations
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The Me Too or #MeToo movement has come under the spotlight in recent years since more survivors/victims are now speaking out against their abuser. These survivors/victims repressed their abuse for years, ashamed to speak out in fear that they would not be believed or face extreme scrutiny and humiliation. Survivors/victims are now coming together to seek justice and to reform the judicial system and how they handle sexual abuse and violence cases. This movement has become more prominent now than it was when it first was formed in 2006 by Tarana Burke and reintroduced by Alyssa Milano using Twitter in 2017. The movement challenges everyday lifestyles and workplace environments to consider what behaviors constitute as appropriate. Companies and businesses are now implementing compliance workplace harassment training to avoid such incidences of sexual abuse and violence.
Empowering voices: The impact of the #Metoo Movement on Gender Equality through Digital Activism
This paper explores the impact of the #MeToo movement on gender equality through digital activism. It highlights how the movement, which gained significant momentum with the viral spread of the #MeToo hashtag in October 2017, has brought the issue of sexual assault to the forefront of public discourse. The paper examines the positive contributions of the movement, such as amplifying victims' voices, fostering a sense of community, and increasing social awareness. It also addresses the concept of slacktivism, questioning the effectiveness of online activism in creating real-world change. Through a detailed analysis, the paper underscores the role of digital activism in promoting freedom of expression and enhancing democratic engagement while also considering its limitations and challenges in translating online actions into offline outcomes. The study concludes that while the #MeToo movement has made significant strides in raising awareness and supporting victims, future research should focus on the potential drawbacks of digital activism and further investigate the phenomenon of slacktivism.
Feminist Media Studies, 2019
Hashtag feminism, a form of activism that appropriates Twitter’s metadata tags for organizing posts to draw visibility to a cause, has become a central component of the feminist media repertoire. Much discourse about hashtag feminism revolves around whether or not Twitter is an effective tool for activism. This instrumentalist approach leaves activists’ strategies for juggling both the affordances and limitations of hashtag feminism under-theorized. Taking up a case study of the #MeToo movement, I consider practitioners’ perspectives on hashtag feminism and highlight the processes through which activists develop tactics while work- ing within particular sociotechnical constraints. Through an analysis of a meta-tweets, or tweets about the campaign, I argue that hashtag feminism is a contentious performance in which activists make the personal political by making it visible, bridging the individual with the collective and illustrating the systemic nature of social injustice. As #MeToo demonstrates, however, making the personal visible on a globally networked stage opens activists up to a variety of risks. To address these limitations, #MeToo participants developed performance maintenance strategies, through which they evaluated the campaign’s shortcomings and advanced solutions. Their reflexivity points toward hashtag feminism as a complex recursive process aimed at achieving a transformative politics of visibility.
Tweaking Harassment Through Tweets: A Critical Discourse Study of #MeToo
International Journal of English Linguistics, 2019
The study aims to conduct an analysis of the discourse on #MeToo which the study takes to be the unmediated voice of the victims of sexual harassment to determine the ideology imbibed in the discourse. Teun A. van Dijk’s Ideology and discourse: A multidisciplinary introduction (2000) serves as the theoretical basis for the study as it attempts to categorize what constitutes harassment for the victims by looking at 3000 tweets posted over thirty days. The critical analysis of the data reveals that one of the most lacking elements in the life of the victims of sexual harassment is an acknowledgment of harassment as harassment. Most of the victims are abused, shamed and silenced when they try to share their panic experiences of life. The study shows that sexual harassment is a widespread social epidemic and can occur to a person of any age group, at any place and in any type of relationship. The study is significant as it presents the unmediated view of the victims of sexual harassment...
Networked feminism: counterpublics and the intersectional issues of #MeToo
Feminist Media Studies, 2020
In October 2017, millions of people shared public testimonials of sexual abuse and harassment in an expression of global vulnerability using the hashtag #MeToo. While #MeToo was triggered by Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano, the phrase can be traced back a decade earlier to when African-American activist Tarana Burke said "me too" in a private exchange of solidarity with young black girls who were survivors of sexual assault. This study examines over 200,000 tweets from the first three days of #MeToo to understand how the meaning and narratives of the feminist hashtag were discursively negotiated. Combining social network analysis and discourse analysis, the paper draws attention to the exclusivity of popular and networked feminism and elevates the voices of the multiply marginalised survivors who were erased from the dominant narratives of #MeToo. It is a call to white feminist researchers and activists to be mindful of the voices that are excluded when examining popular feminist actions. The study contributes an understanding of the power dynamics within digital feminist networks that reproduce colonial violence and oppression within mainstream neoliberal feminism and academia, and extends support to the existing research that documents how digital networks do not empower marginalised voices equitably.
The Media Coverage of the #Firstharassment Campaign and Its Perception by Facebook Female Users
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This article aims to reflect on the impact that the campaign #PrimeiroAssédio [first harassment], created by the NGO Think Olga, in 2015, had on the perception of Facebook female users on the subject of harassment, drawing from the perspective of Cultural Studies. This hashtag encouraged the sharing of content and placed the feminist issue of combating sexual harassment on the agenda. We have used Martín-Barbero’s (1997) concept of mediation to investigate the context in which users published posts on Facebook and have conducted interviews with women who have published comments in the campaign’s posts. In a context of prolific content generation and intense participation, with many people speaking to many people, many authors see the emergence of politically driven action on social media, the so-called “digital activism”, as being relative, holding little expectations of radical social change. Our interviewees’ answers indicate that, in terms of tangible changes, they found that the...