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Time's up. Or is it? Journalists’ Perceptions of Sexual Violence and Newsroom Changes after #MeTooIndia.

Sreedharan, C., Thorsen, E. and Gouthi, A., 2020. Time's up. Or is it? Journalists’ Perceptions of Sexual Violence and Newsroom Changes after #MeTooIndia. Journalism Practice, 14 (2), 132-149.

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DOI: 10.1080/17512786.2019.1682943

Abstract

The #MeToo movement, which engulfed much of India’s news and entertainment industry in October 2018, was projected by many as a watershed moment for Indian journalism. Driven largely through social media activism, it created significant media discourse and public outcry, leading to the ‘outing’ and resignation of scores of journalists. This paper explores the perception of #MeTooIndia in regional and national newsrooms. Drawing on Manuel Castells’s ideas of networked social movement, we consider the origins of #MeTooIndia, including its mediation on private and social networks. We then draw on 190 semi-structured interviews with journalists working in 14 languages across the six administrative zones of India to explore the ‘cause’ of the campaign—the prevalence of sexual harassment and sexual violence in workspaces—before turning our attention to the impact, or potential for impact, that journalists saw in it. We find most journalists felt the movement was “good”, but did not think it influenced their newsroom environment or newswork in any meaningful manner. Regional journalists expressed more pessimism about the #MeTooIndia, men more so than women.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:1751-2786
Additional Information:Journalism Practice (special edition: Journalism and Sexual Violence)
Uncontrolled Keywords:Journalism, India, Sexual Violence, Sexual Harassment, MeToo, Social Movement
Group:Faculty of Media & Communication
ID Code:32692
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:02 Sep 2019 08:55
Last Modified:14 Mar 2022 14:17

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