The #MeToo hashtag was used in an enormous number of tweets
Following a week of more devastating and disturbing news about film producer Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood actor Alyssa Milano took to social media to ask women to share their own personal experiences of sexual harassment and sexual assault.
In a message posted Sunday, she asked Twitter users to reply "me too" to her tweet if they had been sexually harassed or assaulted in order to "give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem." They responded in droves and the resulting hashtag #MeToo swept round the internet as a huge viral moment.
Milano's tweet was retweeted more than 17,000 times in 24 hours and on Sunday alone the #MeToo hashtag had been used 109,451 times, according to data from social analytics company Crimson Hexagon.
That's a huge number, especially when compared to other feminist hashtags, such as #YesAllWomen and #EverydaySexism, that have resurfaced over the course of 2017.
#YesAllWomen exploded onto Twitter itself in the wake of the Elliot Rodger shooting that targeted women in 2014, and was used on 61,500 tweets on May 25 that year.
It made a resurgence in January in response to the molestation of women in India during New Year's Eve celebrations. Within the two days following the groping incident, the hashtag had been used almost 6,000 times, according to Crimson Hexagon. Users tweeted out #YesAllWomen over 10,000 times in the month of January.
The hashtag #EverydaySexism has been used by women to document their experiences with sexism, harassment, and assault. The Twitter account Everyday Sexism acts as a curator of these stories, in order to "show how bad the problem is."#EverdaySexism has been widely used by Twitter users throughout the year, especially in August when it was tweeted out more than 9,000 times, according to Crimson Hexagon.
As popular as other feminist hashtags have been this year, #MeToo amassed more uses in less than 24 hours than both #EverydaySexism and #YesAllWomen have for the entire year. This instantaneous surge shows a massive success on behalf of Milano and other women to draw attention to the injustices that they have faced.
#MeToo tweets by the Women's March, NARAL, and others have been retweeted thousands of times.
Per data collected by Crimson Hexagon, tweets using #MeToo primarily focus on assault and harassment, while #EverydaySexism mostly relates to the treatment of women in the workplace, with "bullying" and "management" as two of the top terms used with the hashtag. #YesAllWomen is often used in association with a multitude of other hashtags, including #equality, #humanrights, #blacklivesmater, and #intersectionalfeminism.
#MeToo has brought female voices back to Twitter in full force after last week's #WomenBoycottTwitter movement in response to actor Rose McGowan's temporary suspension from the site.
Alison Main is an intern with Real Time. She is originally from St. Louis, but she currently lives in Los Angeles, where she studies Broadcast and Digital Journalism at the University of Southern California. Alison has previously interned at CNN, both with "CNN Tonight with Don Lemon" and with the New York news bureau. The highlight of her journalism career (so far) was serving as political director for USC Annenberg Media during the 2016 election season.
