Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Oct;38(19-20):10900-10919.
doi: 10.1177/08862605231176792. Epub 2023 Jun 4.

Online Social Reactions to Disclosure of Sexual Victimization via #MeToo and Symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Prachi H Bhuptani  1   2 , Gabriela López  2 , Roselyn Peterson  2   3 , Lindsay M Orchowski  1   2
Affiliations

Online Social Reactions to Disclosure of Sexual Victimization via #MeToo and Symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Prachi H Bhuptani et al. J Interpers Violence. 2023 Oct.

Abstract

Sexual victimization is a major public health concern with significant consequences for survivors, their families, and society at large. Studies examining in-person disclosure of sexual victimization suggest that the way others respond to disclosure has a significant impact on survivors' well-being. With the advent of social media, more survivors are choosing to disclose their experience online. Research is needed to understand how social reactions to online disclosure of sexual victimization impact survivors. Accordingly, the current study examined the association between online social reactions to the disclosure of sexual victimization and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in a sample of 195 individuals who disclosed their experience online via the hashtag #MeToo. Symptoms of PTSD were positively associated with the level of assault severity reported by the survivor, as well as receipt of online social reactions to disclosure via #MeToo that made fun, insulted, or said something to hurt the survivor. Online social reactions to disclosure via #MeToo that involved turning away from the survivor or providing unsupportive acknowledgment of the experience were unrelated with PTSD symptoms. PTSD symptoms were also not associated with the receipt of positive online social reactions to disclosure via #MeToo. Like research addressing in-person social reactions to disclosure of sexual victimization, some forms of online negative social reactions to disclosure of sexual victimization via #MeToo appear to be associated with worse psychological outcomes among survivors. Thus, online disclosure of sexual victimization and its impact needs to be attended to in clinical and research settings.

Keywords: #MeToo; PTSD; disclosure; online disclosure; rape; sexual assault; social reactions.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

References

    1. Ahrens CE (2006). Being silenced: The impact of negative social reactions on the disclosure of rape. American Journal of Community Psychology, 38(3–4), 31–34. 10.1007/s10464-006-9069-9 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Andalibi N, Haimson OL, De Choudhury M, & Forte A (2016, May). Understanding social media disclosures of sexual abuse through the lenses of support seeking and anonymity. Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 3906–3918). 10.1145/2858036.2858096 - DOI
    1. Barlett CP, & Gentile DA (2012). Attacking others online: The formation of cyberbullying in late adolescence. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 1(2), 123–135. 10.1037/a0028113 - DOI
    1. Barlett CP, Gentile DA, & Chew C (2016). Predicting cyberbullying from anonymity. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 5(2), 171–180.
    1. Bennice JA, Resick PA, Mechanic M, & Astin M (2003). The relative effects of intimate partner physical and sexual violence on post-traumatic stress disorder symptomatology. Violence and Victims, 18(1), 87–94. 10.1891/vivi.2003.18.1.87 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types