Abstract
This article analyses the coverage of the #MeToo movement in Swedish news media. The aim of the study was to explore how men and masculinity were represented. The results showed that masculinity was associated with violence, harassment, and a culture of abuse, as well as with progressive ideas of a “new man” that is both strong and gentle at the same time. The article discusses how the represented masculinities might be problematic in relation to the #MeToo movement’s ambition to reform a sexist society because of the stereotypical and gender-dualistic tendencies that permeate the material and the tendencies to individualize the represented assaults and perpetrators.
Highlights
This article analyses the coverage of the #MeToo movement in Swedish news media
Being considered to be an important producer and disseminator of meaning (Hall, 1997), the media representations of #MeToo show that contrary to what is considered to be the movement’s intent—highlighting sexual assault as a structural problem—the media often focused on individuals
There is a growing body of literature on media representations of the #MeToo movement, less is known about how media representations themselves contributed to the specific reproduction and challenging of notions of gender
Summary
This article analyses the coverage of the #MeToo movement in Swedish news media. The aim of the study was to explore how men and masculinity were represented. It seemed that the media primarily represented #MeToo as a markedly White phenomenon (Onwuachi-Willig, 2018; Tambe, 2018), and that they focused more on the campaign as such than on the possible solutions to the problems that the movement exposed. A study of UK newspaper coverage of the #MeToo movement showed that the fail to discuss effects and solutions may have defused the movement’s potential as a mobilizing social force (De Benedictis et al, 2019). Studying the specific realm of political cartoons, Hersey and Vidrine (2019) focused on gender, and discussed how the #MeToo movement and its main subject positions were represented, concluding that politicians and moguls were portrayed in a negative way while women were seen as contenders, worthy of being listened to and defended from future violence. Masculinities are understood as systems of meaning that change over time and that are dependent on context, the news media being one
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