The #MeToo Movement Ideologies and its Global, Diverse and Big Audience

#MeToo Movement
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Introduction
The #MeToo movement has caught headlines in several countries where women who have been sexually assaulted have taken to the media to air their experiences and vent their frustrations in a bid to create awareness on sexual harassment, especially in the workplace. The goal of the movement according to Milano 2017 as cited in (Schimdt, 2017) was to ‘give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.’ the movement has led to a conviction, trial, and investigations into several high-profile individuals, especially in politics and entertainment. One of the most prominent cases was leveled against Bill Cosby, who had been an iconic actor for several decades and in the wake of #MeToo movement, several women surfaced. Cosby was tried and found guilty, and he is now serving his time in prison for sexually harassing women during his prime acting career years. The movement has continually caught traction and has been snowballing in to other countries where more women have continued to voice their issues. Though the envisioned results of the movement are far from being attained, the movement has been successful as it has led to justice for some victims.
Online tools
Social media
The movement was born in the social media platforms. The movement was born on social media, and it gained traction to become a global phenomenon. The convenience offered by social media in spreading the information has prompted law enforcement officers and other victims to take action. The movement, born out of a social media hashtag, has continually been shared on social media in many countries globally.
Source: (Burke, 2018)
It has also been accompanied by other hashtags with a global circulation that are focused on tearing down the patriarchal structures in the society and foster a more equitable society. The primary way in which social media is meant to influence the public is to encourage victims to share their stories and vent their frustrations for what happened to them or loved ones. Secondly, it is meant to encourage more people to come forward and speak against sexual harassment. The celebrities who have come forward have sought to encourage victims to share their stories and hopefully seek justice. Speaking against sexual harassment stops the sexual predators from continuing to sexually assault other people. In the wake of the allegations, many people have been fired, sued, resigned, settled disputes arbitrarily among other ‘acts of justice.’
The main reason what makes social media a very effective approach to propagate the #MeToo movement ideologies is its global, diverse and big audience. #MeToo movement is found in almost all communities in the world. The first few hours of the conception of the social media hashtag #MeToo, it was retweeted all over the world. By November 9th, 2017, (Fox, 2017)notes that there was ‘more than 2.3 million ##MeToo tweets from 85 countries; on Facebook, more than 24 million people participated in the conversation by posting, reacting, and commenting over 77 million times since October 15.’ the spread of the message on the social media was very fast, and it led to a bill tabled in the Congress barely a month since the commencement of the #MeToo campaign CITATION Mat17 \l 1033 (Kwong, 2017). Secondly, social media is a cheap way to spread the message. The cost of putting the #MeToo hashtag to go viral was negligible compared to the impact it had around the world. By urging social media users to retweet and share the hashtag, the information reached a far wider audience than anticipated at no extra cost on the campaigners and promoters of the message.
On the other hand, social media has its disadvantage. Many people call it toothless activism (Heller, 2017). It is not effective to bring the criminals to justice and often, the hashtag has not brought justice to the victims of sexual harassment and assault. Secondly, popular social media is blocked in some countries, and many communities use the platforms in different languages. The information therefore if disseminated in English, may not be reached in rural China and or India where they primarily use the local version of the social media platform. The countries where social media platforms are blocked such as China, the information not reach the intended audience.
Websites
There is a website that was created in the interest of #MeToo movement. #MeToomvmt.org website is the official website where most victims share their stories, and it also features a section showing live tweets. The website offers ‘a comprehensive database consisting of local and national organizations dedicated to providing services and safe spaces for survivors of sexual violence, healing stories, as well as articles and a glossary of terms to help give voice to your experience’ (Metoomvmt.org, 2018). The website is designed o register victims and help them meet advocates who can help them in the course of finding justice. The website helps the victims to share their ordeals to people who can ‘understand’ their problems.
The main advantage of the website is that it was primarily created for a specific course to fight sexual harassment and assault. The information on the website is only about sexual harassment and how to seek justice. As opposed to other online platforms such as social media, websites have a narrower focus and approach to the issue. On social media the information is cluttered and it appears amidst other information and users may miss it. As for websites, whenever a user visits it, he/she can be sure it will be featuring information directly or indirectly related to sexual harassment. On the other hand, the main disadvantage of the website has less traffic than social media platforms. Thus, it generally reaches relatively fewer people than social media platforms.
Blogs and vlogs
There are many videos mainly published by traditional media houses on online streaming services especially YouTube on the #MeToo movement. The movement has become autonomous and traditional media have picked up on it to inform the public, and they have become key promoters of the movement’s message. Most media houses have featured the movement’s agendas when covering the cases of Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer, Harvey Weinstein and other celebrities who have been implicated for sexual assault. There are thousands of blogs which feature content related to the movement.
One advantage of the blogs, vlogs and media houses coverage on the issue is that they package the information in a manner specific to their audiences. All of these publishers have a specific audience, and they have a unique approach on how to communicate the message to them. Therefore, the efficacy of the communication is higher since the information is packaged and intended for a specific audience. On the other hand, these online platforms have a very narrow audience. Comparing with the social media users, the people reached by the information routed through blogs and vlogs is relatively very small. For example, ABC news is a reputable news organization with over 5 million subscribers on YouTube as of December 2018. However, the media house covered the #MeToo movement in October 2017 and published a short video on the same on their YouTube channel which to date only has slightly over 14 thousand views  (ABC N...