Digital footprints of #MeToo

ABSTRACT

When #MeToo exploded onto social media in October 2017, it dramatically ruptured public consciousness in revealing the widespread nature of sexual harassment and violence around the world. Yet, despite the global attention afforded to #MeToo, it was preceded by numerous initiatives, which we argue created digital footprints instrumental in rendering #MeToo intelligible. As such, the aim of this article is two-fold. Firstly, it offers the first attempt to map a diverse range of initiatives which have mobilized to fight sexual violence, and in doing so, makes visible the global genealogy of digital feminist activism responding to sexualised violence. Secondly, building on these digital footprints and looking towards the future of digital feminist activism, the article demonstrates the power and potential of initiatives that expose the structural conditions enabling sexual violence to occur through the collective sharing of experiences across cybernetworks via processes of “ethical witnessing.” We conclude by advocating for greater recognition of those voices and experiences that feminist scholars and activists alike continue to fail to witness and call for greater efforts to archive the genealogy of digital feminist mobilisation in order to capture the complexity and diversity of its past, present and future.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital feminist activism
• #MeToo
• sexual violence
• rape culture
• ethical witnessing

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback which helped to improve this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Although as we noted earlier the standpoints from which experience and knowledge is positioned in feminist activism can be uncritically and problematically positioned as “universal.”

2. There is a major consensus amongst academics that digital feminist activism is “counter-public” in nature given the extent it seeks to disrupt or counter public discourse—much of which seeks to deny the existence of rape culture and the prevalence of sexual violence (see Bianca Fileborn and Rachel Loney-Howes 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) scheme, grant number [DE190100404].

Notes on contributors

Rachel Loney-Howes

Rachel Loney-Howes is a Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Wollongong whose research explores digital feminist activism in relation to sexual violence. E-mail: [email protected].

Kaitlynn Mendes

Professor Kaitlynn Mendes is a feminist cultural sociologist who has written widely around representations of feminism in the media, and feminists’ use of social media to challenge rape culture. E-mail: [email protected].

Diana Fernández Romero

Diana Fernández Romero is a senior lecturer in Communications and Media at Rey Juan Carlos University (Madrid, Spain). Her research interests include Discourse Analysis, Communication and Gender, Gender-based Violence and Digital Feminist Activism. She has been Visiting Researcher at Birkbeck, University of London, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin or Università di Bologna. E-mail: [email protected].

Bianca Fileborn

Bianca Fileborn is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology, and ARC DECRA Fellow, in the School of Social Sciences, University of Melbourne. Her current work examines victim-centred justice responses to street harassment. E-mail: [email protected]. Orcid: 0000-0002-7246-5072.

Sonia Núñez Puente

Sonia Núñez Puente is Professor of Gender and Media at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. She has led national and international projects on feminist digital activism and gender-based violence. She was a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen, a lecturer at Vanderbilt University, and a visiting scholar at Cambridge and Humboldt zu Berlin universities. E-mail: [email protected]