The Global Diffusion of the #MeToo Movement

• In Event: Communication as Human Rights Politics: Digital Natives, Censorship, Diffusion, and Appropriation

Abstract

Why has the #MeToo movement spread to some countries while not to others? Why has the movement become more active and generated offline actions in some places while not in others? Since 2017 when dozens of women accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct, women started to attach a MeToo hashtag on social media platforms in the U.S. and the movement quickly spread around the world. In a short period of time, one could find the hashtag in many other languages including Arabic, Farsi, French, and Hindi on the internet. However, not all online movements have been connected to offline actions such as offline mobilizations, legal actions, or indictments. Many of them just remained online. This study is an initial attempt to examine this puzzle. Studies on the diffusion of a movement focus on the geographical proximity, social media penetration rates, or regime types. This study, however, will focus on political opportunity structures to examine the diffusion process. We argue that the nature of the #MeToo movement puts forward political opportunity structures as one of the most important factors. That is, the movement will be more active when more and more women who have been victimized in their homes, schools, and workplaces reveal their personal stories in public. Sharing a personal story is a costly action. Consequently, as a rational actor, each woman will calculate the cost and the benefit of her action. When the political opportunities are in favor of the victims, more and more women will calculate higher benefits as compared to the costs in participating in the movement and thus we expect to see more active online-offline mobilizations. In particular, we will evaluate political openness, left-wing governments, and the number of women parliamentarians as political opportunity structures. We expect that as a country becomes more politically open, as a national government is controlled by left-wing parties, and as the number of women parliamentarians increases, the #MeToo movement will be more active in the country.

Authors

• Myunghee Lee

• Amanda Murdie, University of Georgia