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Me Too Speciale Jeyakumar & Vad 1 Abstract In October 2017, the Me Too movement, originally founded in 2006 by Tarana Burke with the goal of ending sexual violence and helping survivors heal, reemerged in the wake of the sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein. The ‘Me Too’ phrase became a viral hashtag, and Me Too has since become a global phenomenon, which opened up a conversation about sexual violence around the world. The movement has been widely covered in the media, and the aim of this MA- thesis is to get a better understanding of how the media has reacted to it and perceived it, and how this has affected the movement. This MA-thesis revolves around the representation of the movement in four American news outlets: CNN, Fox News, The New York Times, and Breitbart News. The MA-thesis examines the following research question: How do these news outlets represent/frame the Me Too movement, and what effect does this have on the perception of it and the discourse surrounding sexual abuse? The data analyzed in this MA-thesis consist of news articles from four major American news outlets in order to get an idea about how the movement was represented in American media overall, rather than in just one news outlet. The four news outlets were selected on the basis of their different news profiles and thus on the assumption that each news outlet has a distinct way of covering news, which would allow us to compare them with each other. The MA-thesis employs two theories in a qualitative analysis of the news articles: Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA) and Theo van Leeuwen’s theory of social actor representation. The analysis focuses on the first two stages of CDA, that is the description stage and the interpretation stage, and on a selection of van Leeuwen’s social actor categories. The MA-thesis employs the theories to analyze how the Me Too movement is represented in articles surrounding the movement in general and in articles surrounding three cases related to Me Too, which focus on specific social actors, namely Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K. and Asia Argento. The discussion then adopts a comparative approach: the MA-thesis discusses whether each news outlet represents Me Too differently depending on the case in question, and whether the news outlets represent the movement similarly or differently from each other. The discussion employs the third stage of Fairclough’s CDA, namely the explanation stage, to discuss how the news coverage affects the perception of the Me Too movement and helps shape the discourse surrounding sexual abuse. The MA-thesis further discusses the news outlets’ representation of the Me Too movement in relation to feminism, intersectionality, and white feminism. The MA-thesis concludes that the representation of Me Too from CNN and NYT showed support for the movement while still critiquing how much of an impact it could have going forward. Thus, their coverage left readers with a mainly positive perception of Me Too. The MA-thesis also Jeyakumar & Vad 2 concludes that Fox News and Breitbart News focused on how the movement could be misused, and thus their coverage left readers with a negative perception of the movement. Further, the MA-thesis also concludes that the news outlets all disapproved of abusers and framed sexual abuse as something that mainly happens to women. Finally, the MA-thesis concludes that only NYT’s coverage reflects intersectionality to an extent, and that all the news outlets’ representation of the Me Too movement could be characterized as white feminism. Jeyakumar & Vad 3 Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................ 1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 6 The Me Too Movement ....................................................................................................................... 8 State of the Art ................................................................................................................................... 12 “#MeToo: A Study on Sexual Assault as Reported in the New York Times” .............................. 12 “#MeToo: The Women’s Media Center Report” ........................................................................... 14 Theory ................................................................................................................................................ 16 Critical Discourse Analysis ............................................................................................................ 16 Description ................................................................................................................................. 18 Interpretation .............................................................................................................................. 19 Explanation ................................................................................................................................ 22 Social Actor Representation ........................................................................................................... 24 Exclusion .................................................................................................................................... 25 Role Allocation .......................................................................................................................... 26 Assimilation or Individualization ............................................................................................... 26 Differentiation ............................................................................................................................ 27 Appraisement ............................................................................................................................. 27 Feminism ........................................................................................................................................ 28 Feminism(s) ............................................................................................................................... 28 The Origin and Development of Feminism ............................................................................... 29 The Waves and Types of Feminism ........................................................................................... 30 First-Wave Feminism ............................................................................................................. 30 Second-Wave Feminism and Radical Feminism ................................................................... 30 Third-Wave Feminism: Embracing Femininity ..................................................................... 31 White Feminism ..................................................................................................................... 32 Intersectional Feminism ......................................................................................................... 33 Jeyakumar & Vad 4 Fourth-Wave Feminism: Online Feminism ........................................................................... 33 News Outlet Profiles .......................................................................................................................... 35 CNN: The Complete Account ........................................................................................................ 35 Fox News: Objectivity ................................................................................................................... 36 The New York Times: Fearless and Powerful Journalism ............................................................ 37 Breitbart News: Always Tell the Truth .......................................................................................... 38 Methodology ...................................................................................................................................... 38 Data Collection .............................................................................................................................. 38 Method of Analysis ........................................................................................................................ 40 Analysis .............................................................................................................................................. 41 The Harvey Weinstein Case ........................................................................................................... 42 CNN: Me Too Has Ignited a Global Reckoning ........................................................................ 42 Fox News: Me Too Can Be Used to Harm People .................................................................... 46 The New York Times: Me Too Encourages Survivors to Share Their Experiences ................. 48 Breitbart News: Questioning the Me Too Survivors and the Allegations ................................. 51 The Me Too Movement Case ......................................................................................................... 55 CNN: #MeToo Is Not Enough ................................................................................................... 55 Fox News: #MeToo Is Attacking Men and Destroying Careers ................................................ 59 The New York Times: #MeToo Only Topples the Powerful ...................................................
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