#MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter - Shaping public discourse on the Internet

Another movement that I would like to draw parallel to with regard to MeToo is the BlackLivesMatter movement. Both movements came into momentum after events that triggered national discontent, and widely employed social media as a tool to spread information, values, and calls for action. Both movements allowed individuals to contribute to the ongoing struggles against inequalities embedded in racism and sexism. Studying BlackLivesMatter would shed light on the evolution of the MeToo movement.

For BlackLivesMatter, the online platforms were spaces to shape the public discourse and interpretation of the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner and of racism. In her paper, Nikita Carney argued that activists online used #BlackLivesMatter on social media to counter the veiled racism implied by the #AllLivesMatter hashtag. Different from mass media, platforms with user generated content gave individuals the opportunity to actively engage in the discussions that they otherwise had much less influence over. #BlackLivesMatter, as an example of the accessibility of the internet as a tool for change, was founded by black women instead of the singular model of leadership by politicians or clergymen, who led most of the historical movements for civil rights (Rickford 2016). People were given a voice that mattered.

In the context of this research, the MeToo movement also figured itself in the online public domain. While Twitter was where the movement started and progressed, Wikipedia preserved the public memory that lasted beyond the time period when MeToo was going on. More importantly, the edits on Wikipedia shaped what people consider “facts” about the men taken down. In #BlackLivesMatter, an important discussion was how “factual” was the factor of race when analyzing the tragedy of Ferguson (Carney 2016). Serving as an open-source “fact-book” instead of a platform mainly used for self-expression, Wikipedia consciously and unconsciously affected people’s opinion of what was true about individuals whom they hardly know of. As Wikipedia is often the first site one visits to get a quick overview of a subject, the existence or non-existence of a section in the Wikipedia page, such as “allegations of sexual crime”, defines a web-wanderer’s first impression of the individual in focus and possibly the subsequent searches.

The ability of commoners to lead and influence a movement was manifested in #BlackLivesMatter and is also a focal point of my research with regard to MeToo’s representation in the online space. As an open-source platform, Wikipedia has editors who are from all walks of life. By changing the content on Wikipedia, the editors changed how millions of people understand a subject. With such leverage of influence, editors could also use Wikipedia for a cause of advocacy by adding or deleting relevant content. In my research, I studied the editors for the pages of the sex offenders to understand their intent of editing.