#Mapping a movement: social media, feminist hashtags, and movement building in the digital age

ABSTRACT

Online feminist-based hashtag(#) campaigns, such as #WhyIStayed and #MaybeHeDoesntHitYou, have coalesced into the current #MeToo movement: a global movement to end gender-based violence, on and offline. This study examines issue framing domains within the #WhyIStayed campaign, illustrating how social media campaigns serve as a central component in social movement building. Results indicate #WhyIStayed participants contested dominant representations of intimate partner abuse (IPA) in multiple ways, including demonstrating the ubiquity of IPV and challenging victim-blaming. We argue these subversive acts lay the foundation for the contemporary #MeToo movement. Implications for social work and digital social movement scholarship will be discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminist hashtags
• social media
• digital organizing
• qualitative analysis
• collective action frames
• gender-based violence

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Bev Gooden for initiating this groundbreaking social media campaign, and for all of the tweeters who bravely shared their abuse experiences. We also would like to acknowledge Jessica Bagneris, Roxanne Franklin, and Joe Mienko, for their research support on this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We acknowledge that gender is a social construct. We are using the term woman-identified to be inclusive of all individuals that self-identify as female. This is inclusive of, trans and non-binary individuals that self-identify as female and/or women.