Image Credit: Pixabay.com (https://pixabay.com/en/metoo-women-harassment-sexual-2859980/)
On October 15, 2017, actress Alyssa Milano urged socal media user to share their stories of sexual harassment using the hashtag #MeToo.
Maybe you’ve heard of it.
Of course, you have. As have the millions of others who have used the hashtag since.
This post goes inside numbers to detail the proliferation of the #MeToo movement social media.
Shout out to Monica Anderson and Skye Toor at Pew Research for this study, from which I am pulling today’s numbers.
How many times has the hashtag #MeToo been used on Twitter?
More than 19 million, according to the Pew Research study. That’s an average of 55,319 #MeToo tweets per day!
What day had the most #MeToo mentions on Twitter?
Was it September 27, 2018, when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate? No.
How about October 17, 2o17, which is when Harvey Weinstein resigned from the board of his entertainment company? Nope.
Actually, it was September 9, 2018, when Les Moonves resigned from CBS. There were more than 800,000 #MeToo tweets that day.
Is #MeToo a worldwide, multi-language phenomenon?
It is. Although 71% of #MeToo tweets were written in English, the remaining 30ish percent were written in another language. Afrikaans was the most common (7%), followed by Somali (4%), and Spanish (3%)
How often are your employees exposed to #MeToo and other discussions sexual harassment online?
Yep, I buried the lede. Because the answer is a lot.
Image Credit (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/11/how-social-media-users-have-discussed-sexual-harassment-since-metoo-went-viral/)
Nearly 2/3rds of social media users reported that they had encountered at least some online discussion of sexual harassment or assault. For what it’s worth, men are just as likely as women to read about sexual harassment on social media.
Either way, this overall increased awareness of the #MeToo movement could help explain the rise in sexual harassment charges filed with the EEOC. It’s could also explain why many executives are changing the way they behave at work. But, that’s another study for another day.
Perhaps tomorrow.
As for the today, if you’re hanging out at the Garden State Council-SHRM (GSC-SHRM) Annual Conference in Atlantic City, NJ today, stop on over and say hello. I’m delivering two sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.