Doctoral student Yan TAN and Prof. Shih-Diing LIU have published a new article, “Witnessing #MeToo in Japan: mapping digital footprints in online news comment sections” in Feminist Media Studies.
In this article, TAN and LIU employ a feminist critical discourse analysis of Japanese netizens’ varied responses to the victimization experience of Shiori Ito, a #MeToo symbol in Japan, in terms of the public witnessing of personal rape stories. Their findings show that three different discursive positions—victim-blaming, feminist, and reformist in orientation—negotiate and contest the notions of rape and reveal how the Japanese socio-political context restricts and enables possibilities for the #MeToo movement. This study conceptualizes these heterogeneous, fragmented, and multifaceted popular narratives as constituents of the digital footprints of #MeToo and clarifies their implications for Japanese gender politics.
Link to the article:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2022.2137827
