Life
The phrase and hashtag #metoo has been one of the most viral and powerful occurrences in social media history. In case you somehow missed it, the actual "Me Too" movement was first sparked back in 2009 by activist Tarana Burke, and was repopularized when actor Alyssa Milano said on Twitter that anybody who had been "sexually harassed or assaulted" should reply to her Tweet with "Me Too," in order to give a proper visualization of the problem on Oct. 15. The ensuing power of the hashtag continues to be felt, as women and men use the #MeToo hashtag or simply post "me, too" across media platforms to reveal their own experiences, debate harassment culture, and express solidarity and support. How many people have posted "Me too" since October, though, and additional data related to the movement, shows how much the phrase has embedded itself in our culture, and how it isn't going away anytime soon.
Numbers, when it comes to phenomena like #MeToo, are important. They show a lot of different things: how powerfully something resonated, where it found the most audience members, who was most attracted to and energized by it, and what sparked new surges of popularity. This is particularly important considering the enduring taboo around discussing sexual assault and harassment, among both male and female victims. These numbers show what many women already knew: that people all over the world experience sexual harassment and assault, and every culture needs to do something about it.
It's Not Just About The Hashtag
It's not just about #MeToo itself; data can also reveal what the hashtag sparked in its users. While searches for #MeToo itself peaked in the U.S. in mid-October and have since dwindled, Google searches about the definition of sexual assault and harassment, EZYInsight reports, have been gradually on the rise since October. In our own analysis of Google trends, searches for "workplace harassment" have been on a gradual upward trend since October, too. Some people were also very interested in googling #MeToo alongside "men," but this search was only really popular in the U.S. in New York and California, which indicates that perhaps it wasn't a widespread idea.
The entire point of the #MeToo phenomenon was to make the scale of sexual harassment and assault worldwide highly visible — and it has, in ways that perhaps nobody predicted. Simply visibility, of course, isn't enough — and the fact that this hashtag has encouraged more allegations against prominent male abusers to be made public is a good thing. But the way in which people are talking about assault and harassment is now more open than ever before, and can teach us about the problem in unprecedented ways.