Activating Identity and Political Action in the #MeToo Era

Twitter (now X) represented an invaluable space for sparking and mobilizing political movements. An example of this is the #MeToo movement beginning in 2017, which was one of the largest social and political reckonings with sexual violence the U.S. has ever seen. This study analyzes over 8 million tweets related to #MeToo over two years, aiming to provide new insights into the movement’s dynamics and its relationship to fourth-wave feminism. Our findings challenge assumptions about consciousness-raising efforts, showing that politicized calls to action do not immediately materialize in online spaces. The study also highlights a lack of intersectional discourse in consciousness-raising discussions, emphasizing the need for broader considerations of gendered sexual violence. We further offer among the first systematic evidence of the relative scale of #MeToo’s reactionary counter-movement, finding that oppositional discourse had come to dominate Twitter’s #MeToo ecosystem by 2019.