Reporting of Sexual Violence in the #MeToo Era

#MeToo, #SayHerName and #BlackLivesMatter are successful social media projects in recent history, but minimal academic work has examined the role of journalists in reviving, and reporting on, these sexual violence-related hashtags. US community activist, Tarana Burke coined #metoo (1.0) in 2006 to forge a visibility about the intersectional issues related sexual violence that women and girls of colour have experienced. By 2013 another hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter, was organised by women of colour and/or queer and trans feminists who question sexual violence and the forces of heteronormativity. Law scholar Kimberle Crenshaw co-founded the #SayHerName campaign in 2014 to highlight the sexual violence that black women experience. In October 2017 New York-based journalists (Ronan Farrow, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey) broke the story about US film producer Harvey Weinstein as a sexual abuser of wealthy, white female Hollywood celebrities. All this work, along with the viral stories led by Hollywood survivor, Alyssa Milano revalidated Burke’s #metoo. Now known as #metoo 2.0, this hashtag sparked a movement across the globe with more than 85 million people sharing the hashtag, particularly in the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Israel, India and Australia. This collection of twelve chapters brings together fourteen scholars across gender, ethnicity and regions (the US, Nordic countries, Australia, Middle East and Asia). These scholars have conducted conceptual, methodological or empirical research about the issues related to reporting on sexual violence in this hashtag era, from its missing gaps in reportage about intersectionality, to how advocacy, campaign and solutions journalism, driven narrative helps to address these international societal issues related to #metoo, #SayHerName, #BlackLivesMatter.