Abstract

This dissertation offers a critical-theoretical intervention into how we approach the study of mediated phenomena. Using the example of the #MeToo Movement, I bring together intersectional feminism, posthumanism, and new materialism to delineate "intersectional entanglements" in order to develop the praxes of virtual dwelling, vibrant ethos, and vital structuring and to analyze the ways that stories from the "me too." Movement flow throughout individual, collective, and structural domains of power. I argue that we need to envision spaces and relationalities through the lens of intersectional entanglements to better attune to power imbalances and abuses and to more holistically attend to the motions of the "me too." Movement's stories. As such, I follow #MeToo and its digitally-born artifacts as they travel within and between various spaces to trace links, histories, and possible futures, looking towards individual posts, hashtags, comments, images, media stories, the sociopolitical and technocultural contexts from which data emerge, and the relationships between these pieces of data. Within the current technologically motivated big data moment of hashtag research, I take a specifically situated feminist perspective to this work, turning to the ways that the "me too." Movement circulates between different domains of power and various mediated spheres to focus on smaller curated sets of data that may be lost within larger abstracted aggregates. Reflecting the ethos of the #MeToo movement, this dissertation hinges upon personal stories, including some of my own interactions with these stories, and I follow hashtagged posts on my own social media feeds as they travel within and outside social media platforms. Throughout, this dissertation suggests that as stories from the "me too." Movement travel between various temporally and spatially mediated spheres and between domains of power, they reveal new opportunities for critiquing and intervening into white supremacist heteropatriarchal systems. Ultimately, as I develop the approaches of virtual dwelling at the individual level of power, vibrant ethos at the collective level, and vital structuring at the structural level for analyzing #MeToo's intersectional entanglements, I argue that following digital phenomena throughout culturally and digitally mediated spaces provides crucial insights of intersectional protest and resistance beyond the hashtag.