In their new article, “From Weinstein to Kavanaugh: Shifting Coverage of Sexual Violence and the #MeToo Movement Across U.S. News Media,” a team of researchers from Social Media and Democracy examined how news coverage and framing of #MeToo shifted dramatically in partisan media during the Kavanaugh nomination and confirmation.
Abstract: This study explores the framing strategies and language features of U.S. news coverage surrounding sexual violence and gender issues across the ideological media spectrum at two pivotal phases of the #MeToo movement: (1) during its initial rise as a hashtag-driven social movement in 2017 and (2) during the Kavanaugh nomination and confirmation in 2018. Using structural topic modeling, community detection, and feature extraction, we reveal a heightened employment of political framing during the Kavanaugh accusations. Topical prevalence and language use in news treatment also showed clear partisan differences, consistent with theories of moral foundation and issue ownership. Implications for research on news coverage of gender rights and framing of social movements are discussed.
Full citation: “From Weinstein to Kavanaugh: Shifting Coverage of Sexual Violence and the #MeToo Movement Across U.S. News Media,” Min-Hsin Su, Jiyoun Suk, Porismita Borah, Shreenita Ghosh, Christine Garlough, and Dhavan Shah, Communication Monographs, Online 2023. DOI: 10.1080/03637751.2023.2282024.