Martha Clarke

She/Her/Hers/Herself

ClarkeMK@cardiff.ac.uk

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School of Journalism, Media and Culture,
Cardiff University

Lead supervisor:
Dr Hannah Hamad

Other supervisor(s):

• Dr Rebecca Saunders

Start date: October 2024 (Full time)

Award: General

Subject Pathway:
Journalism, Digital Media and Democracy

Thematic Cluster:
Rights and Governance Cluster

‘Sex Killjoy’: Social media backlash to incidences of sexual violence since #MeToo

This research project investigates the social media backlash to incidents of sexual violence. The study introduces the concept of "sex killjoy" to unite the various strands of research on backlash to sexual violence to better understand it. This term builds on two theoretical frameworks: feminist killjoy (Ahmed, 2010) and popular misogyny (Banet-Weiser, 2018).

My research questions are:

1. How can the concept of a ‘sex killjoy’ help us better understand the backlash to incidences of sexual violence?
2. Has the nature or quantity of social media backlash to incidents of sexual violence changed since #MeToo across social media platforms?

The study combines a content analysis to measure trends in backlash and Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis to examine language and power dynamics in the data. The Stanford Sexual Assault case will be one of the case studies examined because it gained widespread media attention in 2016 and 2019, providing a unique opportunity to directly compare the backlash to the same case pre- and post-#MeToo to assess whether the movement impacted backlash to sexual violence.

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