Abstract
This chapter analyzes media responses to the Shitty Media Men list, an open-source document briefly circulated on the Internet in late 2017 that enabled women to anonymously report instances of sexual misconduct and violence perpetrated by men working in the US media industry. The chapter employs an ethical lens to explore concepts of moral communication in the social media age alongside the concepts of sexual misconduct and violence that the list allegedly documents. In describing and discussing the claims and counter-claims made by key commentators, including Katie Roiphe, Andrew Sullivan and the list creator Moira Donegan herself, the chapter considers how these were taken up in social media to contribute to a re-ordering of cultural expectations about sexual behavior and work practices, as well as techno-libertarian concepts of free expression in cyberspace.
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Notes
- 1.
Interestingly, author Moira Donegan states that there were 14 red highlights. The version available on Wordpress has 15.
- 2.
Translates as ‘Creepy as fuck in the direct [text] messages’.
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Haire, B., Newman, C.E., Fileborn, B. (2019). Shitty Media Men. In: Fileborn, B., Loney-Howes, R. (eds) #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15213-0_13
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