The impact of #MeToo movement on social media users in the context of the spiral of silence: The case of Sakarya University Faculty of Communication

Social media networks have started to occupy a very important place in the lives of individuals day by day. Social media has become a medium where people start to make their voices heard and communicate with people who have experienced similar things. According to the spiral of silence, individuals may feel fear of isolation when they have an opinion that does not fit the general public, and accordingly, they may tend to remain silent by not expressing their opinions in public. By relying on the power of social media, individuals can share their views on every issue they feel lacking both socially and individually. The #MeToo social media movement is an ongoing activism movement since 2017. Millions of people from many nations of the world supported the #metoo movement, which broke out on social media when the Academy Award winning former filmmaker Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual harassment, on social media. In this context, focus group interviews, which is a qualitative research method, were conducted to reveal what kind of reactions the Sakarya University Faculty of Communication female students gave to sexist discourse and harassment, both individually and socially, and on social media. There were 6 participants in each focus group meeting and a total of 11 different focus group discussions were held. In these focus group meetings attended by 66 people, 10 questions were asked to each participant and all interviews were audio recorded. Information was obtained about the views of the participants about #MeToo and other related social media activism movements and their participation in these movements. The majority of the participants stated that they have been exposed to sexist discourse and harassment throughout their lives. None of the participants participated in the #metoo movement on social media. The majority of the participants stated that they did not share their own sexist discourse and harassment on social media. They supported the social media hashtags that try to prevent violence against women, which is only on the agenda in social media, and showed the behavior of conforming to the general society. Here, the result is that the spiral of silence can not be broken through social media.