Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture - Volume 10, Issue 3, 2019

In Spain and France, a lot of attention was initially given to the #Me Too initiative that Alyssa Milano started in October 2017 and was later fuelled by Oprah Winfrey and her #Time’s Up claim in January 2018. However, in both Southern European countries the #MeToo was focused as a way for ordinary women to denounce the sexual abuse and harassment they had been suffering, sometimes for decades, in the past. Unlike Hollywood, the implication of well-known actors or powerful personalities was almost non-existent in Spain and France, but on the other hand the #MeToo movement did play a significant role when supporting women, individually or collectively, in their way to denounce, stop and overcome sexual abuse and harassment.

The international #MeToo initiatives organized in October 2017 received a quick and widespread response in Sweden. Women from a wide range of occupational groups and work environments – after sharing their stories in closed forums on social media – made their testimonies public under several related hashtags. The testimonies about allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse were described as men’s misuse of power in relation to women in weaker positions, often women who were younger and dependent. The published testimonies quickly led to a stream of news reports and commentaries in the legacy media, in some cases resulting in individualized scandals and media hunts. One of these scandals related to the Swedish Academy, the institution responsible for the Nobel Prize in Literature. While the initial Swedish #MeToo movement was dominated by broad collective mobilization in different societal areas pointing to sexual harassment as a structural problem, the individualized scandal coverage in leading media outlets in some cases represented unverified ‘naming and shaming’ that later led to ethical critique and new public debates. A political result of the #MeToo movement in Sweden was a new law prohibiting non-consensual sex that came into force in July 2018.

This study analyses articles of three Russian and four Japanese newspapers covering the cases of journalists facing sexual harassment from their news sources. It aims to assess the ability of the news media of the two countries to expand the coverage of these cases to a larger debate on the position of women through framing analysis of 431 articles. The study reveals that most of the examined articles emphasized the individual aspect of sexual harassment, confining the understanding of sexual harassment to the private sphere. In both countries, work culture of government organizations was linked to the issue of sexual harassment while reflections on the institutional context of media industry were minimal. In Russia, representation of the issue as a conflict between the media and the government was prominent. This was reflected in the unprecedented boycott of the State Duma by Russian journalists. In Japan, the establishment of an informal network of women working in the media industry was a positive development. However, overall findings suggest that the newspapers’ potential to become a forum where the problem of sexual harassment could be debated in relation to broader issues, was not realized to its fullest.

This article aims to articulate the process of broadcasting #MeToo in South Korea to understand the gatekeeping process and its impact on the expansion of the #MeToo movement. After Suh Ji-hyun, a prosecutor, spoke out publicly about her experiences of being sexually harassed, South Korea has witnessed the expansion of #MeToo and #WithYou, a solidarity movement with the victims, in every sector of society. To understand how a gendered and patriarchal society could bring huge support for the #MeToo, this article sheds light on the broadcasting process of #MeToo. The most trusted and influential news brand in South Korea is JTBC, a TV broadcasting company. This research conducted semi-structured interviews with JTBC journalists and analysed the content of the JTBC news. JTBC put higher news value on ‘victim’s voices’ delivered directly through TV live interviews and framed #MeToo as a ‘structural problem’ from the power relation. Through interviews with journalists, this research found that #MeToo stories could pass through the individual, organizational and social-system level, which made the intensive media coverage on #MeToo possible and eventually developed the expansion and impact of #MeToo among society including media organizations reflexively.

In this article the international #MeToo movement is analysed from the perspective of Brazil: characteristics of the Brazilian feminist movement, historical paths and new approaches using social networks; #MeToo as one expression of new feminism; related movements and collectives and #EleNão (NotHim) as an offshoot of #MeToo and its failed attempt to avoid the 2018 election of a misogynist and chauvinist movement in Brazil. The campaign to denounce cases of assault neither prevent nor reduce the high femicide rates, with the country ranking fifth in the world and being qualified as one of the most dangerous places for women. Violence against women in Brazil continues to grow. The data from 2018 is alarming, and the country is losing only to El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala and Russia. The trend will only increase given Brazil’s new political outlook. On the other hand, in the social networks Brazilian women have found the only possibility for being heard, and have slowly begun to make their voices heard by the judiciary system and traditional media. The return to feminist protest in the 2000s was marked by the rise of committees and marches with specifically feminist themes, such as the World Women’s March, the Marcha das Margaridas and SlutWalk.

This study examines the recent developments in the #MeToo and Time’s Up Movements in the United States and how these developments have been portrayed in the US media. Through examining examples of US media, this article shows the media’s portrayal of the movement as politicized and polarized changed and developed after the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court. The article argues that after Kavanaugh’s appointment, the media began to downplay the tensions of race and class in the #MeToo movement. Instead of focusing on tensions of race and class, the media shifted to focus on the polarization of #MeToo along political party lines.

This article focuses on the case of Mexico, by analysing the media coverage of #MeToo in Mexico and the public response in the social media (SM) and other spheres of society such as the Mexican state and universities. Two aspects of Mexico’s social context are considered for the study: (1) a country where women’s sexual harassment has deep roots in gender inequality and (2) the fact that during 2017–18 very notorious political campaigns contending for the country’s presidency were occurring; hence the study evaluates the presence of women’s sexual harassment topics in the candidates’ political proposals. The results show that in Mexico the #MeToo movement had the expected effect of thousands of women expressing themselves about this problem, highlighting the multiple work scenarios where sexual harassment occurs. It shows the impact of the #MeToo movement in local # social movements extending their influence from the entertainment industry to universities and other professions. The issue was covered in the candidates’ discourse for the 2018 presidential elections. In general, it can be affirmed that SM in Mexico are public places where different grassroots communities denounce injustices, participate and promote a more egalitarian culture.