Communication Studies, Department of
First Advisor
Dr. Kristen Hoerl
Date of this Version
Summer 7-28-2023
Citation
Brand, Amanda. "Public Mediations of Accountability in the #MeToo Era." PhD dissertation, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023.
Abstract
Tarana Burke initially launched the Me Too movement to cultivate solidarity among sexual assault survivors in 2006, and public appropriations of this effort have resulted in a kairotic moment of accountability in sexual assault cases. Particularly, the 2017 hashtag, #MeToo populates media platforms as the public invokes it to make sense of sexual assault cases, bearing witness to victim-survivors, assigning blame, or disavowing culpability. Challenging legacies of public denial, #MeToo marks a cultural shift in which victim-survivors are not only speaking out, they are also being heard and believed. I argue that accountability is rhetorically-constructed, negotiated, and imposed through public mediation, filtered through ideological structures. I read public discourses, including news coverage and documentary series, to trace the changing contours of accountability in the #MeToo era. Specifically, I look at three high-profile cases in which the alleged abusers resisted labels of monstrosity. Whereas public mediations of Harvey Weinstein’s accountability cast him as a monster, the public mediated the accountability of Brett Kavanaugh, Jeffrey Epstein, and Robert “R.” Kelly through different tropes. Instead, they were cast as innocent men of the law, embodiments of self-made masculinity, and the promise of post-racial, neoliberal America, respectively. As such, these men evaded accountability for decades. Public mediations of their accountability traded in tropological economies that mobilized white masculine lability to sustain and reinforce white masculine sovereignty, abject hegemony, and supremacy in the face of threats thereto in the #MeToo era, illustrating that white masculine hegemony, anti-victimism, and rape culture persist in the #MeToo era.
Advisor: Dr. Kristen Hoerl
Comments
A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Major: Communication Studies (Women’s and Gender Studies), Under the Supervision of Professor Kristen Hoerl. Lincoln, Nebraska: July, 2023
Copyright © 2023 Amanda N. Brand