Using YouTube vlogs to study women's experiences of participating in #MeToo

Area of Science:

• Social Sciences
• Media Studies
• Gender Studies

Background:

• The #MeToo movement amplified women's voices on sexual violence.
• Qualitative research on social movements often relies on interviews.
• YouTube vlogs offer a unique, publicly available data source for lived experiences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine women's participation in the #MeToo movement through YouTube vlogs.
• To reflect on the methodological and ethical considerations of using vlogs as qualitative data.
• To contribute to scholarly understanding of digital ethnography and social movement analysis.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of YouTube vlogs tagged with #MeToo.
• Qualitative data analysis of vlog content.
• Methodological reflection on using vlogs versus traditional interviews.

Main Results:

• Vlogs provide rich, authentic experiential data on #MeToo.
• Using vlogs presents unique benefits for capturing participant perspectives.
• Ethical and analytical challenges arise from using public, user-generated video data.

Conclusions:

• YouTube vlogs are a valuable, albeit complex, data source for studying social movements like #MeToo.
• Further research is needed to refine methods for analyzing qualitative vlog data.
• Scholars should carefully consider the potentials and pitfalls of digital data in social science research.