As a spreadable hashtag, #MeToo has generated important public dialogue about sexual violence and the opportunities and limitations for having these conversations online. Social media platforms, as well as shared Google spreadsheets (Donegan 2018) and websites such as _Babe_ (Way 2018) have functioned as digital venues for testimonials about sexual misconduct and violence that #MeToo has inspired. This cultural landscape posits the urgent need for researchers to consider how sexual violence is made manifest through digital culture, while accounting for the ways in which digital technologies simultaneously enact violence that reproduces gendered, sexual, racial, and class inequalities.
This fishbowl begins this discussion by addressing the material, affective, industrial, and cultural relationships between sexual violence and digital media technologies after #MeToo. We consider several questions: Has sexual violence always been sociotechnical? How have digital tools been employed to “prevent” sexual violence? How can we connect moments of revelation and disclosure across digital industries and cultures to develop capacity and solidarity? How do digital testimonials function as a “feminist cataloging” (Ahmed 2017) of structural violence? What are the experiences of those who have disclosed online? How do they navigate the slippage between politics and the “economy of visibility” (Banet-Weiser 2015) in the age of social media and popular feminism? Which elements are prioritized? And how is power reproduced and reinforced?
Our named fish bring significant related expertise to this conversation, including analyses of anti-rape apps (Bivens and Hasinoff 2017), hashtag feminist activism (Clark 2016; Keller et al 2016; Keller 2018), the gendered dynamics of the games industry (Harvey and Shepherd 2016) and misogyny online (Vickery and Everbach 2018). Drawing on this experience, named fish will provide insights from their diverse research projects to generate dialogue with fishbowl participants and explore the relationship between sexual violence, power, and digital technology post-#MeToo.
