Abstract
How has the global #MeToo movement impacted local communities in India? As a movement that is associated with a social media hashtag, what does it teach us about the role of social media in producing social change, and about the relationship between social media and news media? Pallavi Guha answers these questions through an extensive study of anti-rape activism and news coverage in India between 2012 and 2020. In addition to case studies of rape and sexual harassment coverage in news media and social media, she interviewed both feminist activists (n = 37) and journalists (n = 38). Many of her contacts were interviewed both before and after the onset of the global #MeToo movement in 2017.
The #MeToo movement dates back to the foundational work of Tarana Burke that began in 2006, but became associated with celebrity experiences of sexual harassment and rape, in 2017, as Burke’s #MeToo hashtag began getting used on social media testimonials by celebrities speaking out against Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, and several others. Thus, Guha is measuring the impact of the later wave of the movement as it shaped national and local discourse in Indian media.
Professor Guha is a journalism scholar at Towson University in the USA, who was raised in India and has worked internationally in media. In Hear #MeToo in India, she works in the tradition of feminism without borders as elaborated in the work of Chandra Talpade Mohanty (2003). She views the women that she interviews as collaborators on the production of the book, while also acknowledging that the book can only reproduce a limited portion of the women’s voices speaking about rape and sexual harassment.
A frequent perspective on social media is that it works in contrast to, or autonomous from, news media, and the two forms of media are often studied independently. Guha finds a very different pattern in her analysis. The primary content posted by activists on their social media accounts consists of stories from news media. One of the major goals of feminist anti-rape activists in their social media activism is to push journalists to increase their coverage of rape and sexual harassment with the hope that increased coverage may then lead to social reform. Guha refers to this as ‘interdependent agenda building’ (p. 42), referring to the interdependence of news media and social media.
Three significant disparities in the coverage of rape and sexual harassment by news media and social media are discussed in this study. First, there is a disparity in coverage based on the caste of the victim. (Guha explains in the first chapter how she grapples with the language of victim or survivor, and ultimately decides to use the word victim.) Rape and sexual harassment of women from lower castes is largely ignored by both news media and social media. Second, rural rape and sexual harassment is largely ignored. The combined implication is that rape and sexual harassment of lower-caste and rural women are presumed normal, but that upper-caste and urban women should be safe from this violence, rather than working to protect all women regardless of caste or location. Third, as noted in the final chapter of the book, there is a massive gap between the number of rapes that occur in India daily, and the frequency of news coverage. ‘This gap between the actual incidence and news reporting needs to be closed, which is possible by interdependent agenda building’ (p. 113).
Methodologically, this book makes an interesting use of online tools for examining social media patterns. These include the use of the discontinued Facebook platform NetViz, Google’s #MeTooRising data visualization platform, and the data visualization tool Gephi.
This research is situated in the Indian context. Every context is unique, but sexual harassment and rape are ubiquitous. The location of this book is not an invitation to view sexual harassment and rape in India as uniquely awful; rather, it is an invitation to continue the inquiry across, beyond, and without borders. The book reveals the interdependence of news media and social media in the process of seeking social change, which builds on our theoretical knowledge of the relationship between these two media formats.
The book closes with a very clear call to action, which I commend. This call to action encourages greater interdependent agenda building, and use of this agenda building to represent the experiences of women in rural and lower-caste settings.