#MeToo receives over half-a-million mentions over one day
In the wake of reports over the numerous sexual harassment misconduct accusations directed at Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, over half-a-million social media users globally have shared their own experiences of harassment.
Alyssa Milano Tweet
The #MeToo social media movement began this week with over 505,000 mentions over a 24-hour period via social media platforms on Monday alone as people highlighted themselves as having experienced some form of sexual harassment by using the phrase.
Men and women either posted the phrase on its own or shared tales of their experiences, the first time that a global united front has been applied to sexual harassment, or in many cases violence.
Celebrities including Ugly Betty actress America Ferrera, Lady Gaga, Monica Lewinski and Sheryl Crow all shared their own experiences after a tweet by another US celebrity, Alyssa Milano suggested the idea.
If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet. pic.twitter.com/k2oeCiUf9n
— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) October 15, 2017
According to data provided by Meltwater, on Monday 16 October Twitter was found to generate the bulk of the messages at 97% with 0.47% emanating from Facebook and blogs and 2.7% from Instagram. Almost a third (30.13%) came from the US, 6.9% from the UK, 3.55% from Canada, 3.10% from India, 1.23% from Australia and 1.49% from France.
Many more messages were posted without using the hashtag and were not counted in the results, although at one stage Facebook had over 1.5m messages including 'me too' The Drum discovered.