Vernacular practices in digital feminist activism on Twitter: deconstructing affect and emotion in the #MeToo movement

In 2017, the #MeToo movement garnered international attention when millions of people used it to share experiences of sexual violence via social media. Through an analysis of 570 tweets randomly and purposively sampled within the first 24 hours of the movement, we were interested in answering the following questions: (1) What emotions are present in #MeToo tweets?; and (2) What are the vernacular practices in the #MeToo movement, and how do they convey affect? Through applying Robert Plutchik (2000) structural model of emotion, we were able to identify a wider range of emotions evident in feminist hashtag campaigns than has previously been identified and analyse their varied functions. Furthermore, we show how the difficulty in narrating personal experiences of violence and sharing discernible emotions via this hashtag fed into four vernacular practices, which we argue stimulate affect. Thus, the article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of two often conflated concepts—emotion and affect—and their different roles within #MeToo. The article ultimately shows how a movement such as #MeToo can be highly affective, even when participants disclose very little emotion or detail.