Framing digital citizen-spurred social movements. The case of the #MeToo social movement.

On October 15th 2017, actress Alyssa Milano posted a tweet urging men and women to publicly share their sexual harassment and assault stories using the hashtag #MeToo. Within days, extensive media coverage from both traditional and digital media as well as national and international news corporations were talking about what we now refer to as the #MeToo movement. This research investigates how Dutch and American newspapers frame the digital citizen-spurred social movement #MeToo. Prior research referencing international news cultures was used to gain a better understanding of Dutch and American news reporting. This research included an analysis of journalistic practices, such as journalistic professionalization. Furthermore, research referencing social movement theory and the protest paradigm were acknowledged in order to define the existing news framing devices which were used in this research project. Using forty Dutch and American newspaper articles, and eight existing news framing devices a cross-comparative analyses was conducted to conclude if similarities and differences exist between Dutch and American news reporting of the #MeToo movement. The results show that differences exist in the Dutch and American news reporting of the #MeToo movement. These differences include that the Dutch news reporting is more likely to implicitly marginalize the movement in comparison to their American counterpart. Furthermore, American journalists are more open to expressing their approval of the #MeToo movement in their news coverage. Despite this, the majority of the media framing of the #MeToo movement between Dutch and American news cultures is the same.