The Evolution of #MeToo: A Comparative Analysis of Vernacular Practices Over Time and Across Languages

Abstract

Drawing from a thematic analysis of 960 tweets for English, 960 tweets for German, and 753 tweets for Mandarin, this article explores how the #MeToo movement was taken up and used in different ways in the first 12 months. The article achieves this by drawing on the concept of platform vernacular, identifying three new, at times overlapping, vernacular practices: spotlighting, interconnectivity, and meta conversations. We argue that these vernacular practices function more than simply as the dominant “grammars of communication” in #MeToo but connect individual experiences of sexual violence to broader political structures such as patriarchy, homophobia, xenophobia, and racism. Yet, as our analysis uncovered, while the vernacular practices enabled #MeToo to be politicized, these systems of oppression were not always challenged, but at times, reinforced. As such, while previous research has shown how (affective) vernacular practices shape what we know and feel about sexual violence, this article highlights how vernacular practices fundamentally shape how the public contextualizes and (mis)understands sexual violence as a political issue. Overall, the article contributes to scholarship in the field of new media, feminism, and communication by showing how hashtags are taken up by the public in different ways and how shared vernacular practices emerge across languages, even when the content, focus, or rhetoric may diverge.