A Critical Discourse Analysis of Sexual Violence and Power : #metoo in Swedish media

Sammanfattning: During the fall of 2017, a campaign named #metoo went viral on Twitter. The purpose of #metoo was to highlight how many that had experiences of sexual harassments and assaults. The campaign did also gain a lot of attention in traditional Swedish media. By looking at #metoo in Swedish printed media during the month of November in 2017, I have examined how the concept of sexual violence have been articulated, negotiated and represented. Sexual violence is a matter that has been important for both feminist scholars and activists for a long time, both from a theoretical and material perspective. Guided by a critical discourse analysis and a feminist poststructural approach, I have looked at sexual violence as a phenomenon that is discursively made and therefore, also non-stable and always up for negotiation depending on the specific time, place and context it is produced in. In my material, I have found three themes, boundaries, institutionalisation and tensions. They all, in different ways, support that by providing a picture of sexual violence as a fluid concept without clear boundaries, a tendency to turn all the issues of sexual harassments into a failure of the employer liability and the working environment. Also, by providing a picture of a colliding word view of sexual violence as both a brand new phenomenon in Sweden (especially related to immigration) and something that has always been a reality in many people’s life.