#MeToo and the use of social media to build community around a social issue
The #MeToo movement, propagated by Black activist and survivor Tarana Burke, gained momentum online beginning in 2006 on MySpace, and has since grown into an international movement against sexual violence. The movement went viral in 2017 with actress Alyssa Milano’s encouraging survivors of sexual violence to share their stories on social media.
Milano Tweeted with the goal of giving people “a sense of the magnitude of the problem” of sexual violence, and empowered a global community of survivors to speak out against the harm that had been done to them. The Journal of Public Interest Communications describes how advocacy groups employ social media as a means of “foster[ing] dialogue and engagement with publics,” and the #MeToo movement is no stranger to this. By 2018, the hashtag had been used on Twitter upwards of 19 million times, with heartbreaking stories coming from all genders, ages, and walks of life. The hashtag accompanied personal anecdotes, as well as critiques about celebrities and politicians with sexual violence allegations against them. The momentum of the movement has not ceased since then, and makes regular resurgences with popular events, such as the most recent presidential election.
Social media movements are notorious for disrupting dominant, harmful ideologies. This can occur in the form of K-Pop stans dropping fancams and memes under #WhiteLivesMatter Tweets in order to direct attention away from harmful, violent narratives, or the #MeToo movement combating the ideals that defend and protect abusers in positions of power, such as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who came to power in 2018 in spite of multiple allegations of sexual assault against him.
In “Information, community, and action: How nonprofit organizations use social media,” Saxton and Lovejoy determined the three main categories of nonprofit organizations’ social media usage: information, community, and action. This same lens can be applied to examine how the #MeToo movement uses social media to garner momentum and attention. Primarily, the spread of information is critical. Though #MeToo is largely anecdotal, the emotional presentation of subjective information is just as important to the movement as Tweets sharing numerical statistics on sexual violence. Community building is an inextricable aspect of the #MeToo movement, with survivors from all over the globe feeling connected by the hashtag regardless of language or cultural barriers. When Tarana Burke began the Me Too campaign over ten years ago, her goal was for survivors to feel heard, understood, validated, and — most importantly — not alone. The movement has fostered community between survivors who otherwise would have had no connection to one another. Vox found that, after the accusations against Harvey Weinstein surfaced, a domino effect occurred that empowered countless survivors across the globe. The Pew Research Center found that nearly 30% of Tweets using the hashtag were not in English, proving that this issue does not discriminate against locality, and that this movement truly provides community and union for survivors across the globe.
Of course, a movement is not truly a movement without action being taken. The Me Too hashtag is a rallying cry for action, with the whole movement’s purpose being to bring sexual violence out of the shadows and enact justice for survivors. The social media movement made way for real life action. Countless survivor marches have donned the hashtag across the globe. Beyond this, policies have been enacted as a result of the movement, such as one banning nondisclosure agreements around sexual harassment in the wake of allegations against Harvey Weinstein. The Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund has helped nearly 4,000 survivors seek justice for the violence against them. While fostering community is absolutely critical in a movement surrounding such a sensitive issue, action is, ultimately, the guiding force of the #MeToo movement. Community among survivors means nothing if the community is not being given the justice it deserves.
The #MeToo movement has done an incredible job of harnessing the power of social media for the good of so many people. It is living, breathing proof that social media is truly a platform for enacting positive social change.