Breaking the silence on sexual assault and harassment: An analysis of #MeToo and #TimesUp tweets.
Drewett, C. (University of Adelaide), Augoustinos, M. (University of Adelaide), Oxlad, M. (University of Adelaide)
Following news articles revealing film producer Harvey Weinstein as a serial abuser, women from Hollywood and around the world took to social media using the hashtag #MeToo to detail their experiences of sexual harassment and assault. As a response to the overwhelming influx of stories from women, over 300 women from Hollywood came together to form the Time’s Up initiative to raise money to assist with legal expenses associated with sexual harassment cases. Using thematic analysis (TA) the aim of this project was to analyse the content of #MeToo tweets from the first day of its conception (October 16th 2017) and compare these with the content of #TimesUp tweets from January 1st 2018, the day the initiative was announced. The data corpus included 10,546 #MeToo tweets and 3,039 #TimesUp tweets. Seventeen themes were identified in the #MeToo data with the two largest being self-disclosure of personal experiences of harassment/ abuse (5,028) and the expression of support (1,508) for the movement and for women. Analysis of the #TimesUp tweets is still being finalised, with the aim of identifying differential patterns of protest between the two political/social movements.
Twitter: @drewett_chloe
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Gender and Inequality