Defining Sexual Misconduct: Power, Media, and #MeToo

• In-person event

In 2015, the New York Times ran just a single headline with the term “sexual misconduct.” Three years later, it ran scores of such headlines, averaging more than one per week, and expanded coverage across other media organizations followed. This shift in coverage is reflective of significant changes in public discourse about sexual harm helping to hold some perpetrators accountable for their behaviour and paved the path for #MeToo and related movements against sexual abuse and harm to receive national and global attention. Dr. Stacey Hannem and Dr. Christopher J. Schneider will be discussing their book Defining Sexual Misconduct which traces contemporary shifts in power in relation to the increased recognition and censure of sexual misconduct and the ways in which the shifting social landscape is communicated in the coverage of sexual misconduct in media.

STACEY HANNEM (PhD Carleton University) is professor of criminology at Wilfrid Laurier University. Hannem’s research and publications examine how structural and institutional forces, including law and criminal processing institutions, are implicated in shaping and reinforcing the stigmatization and marginalization of targeted groups. Notable research has focused on the legal regulation of sex work and the effects of crime and the justice system for families of incarcerated persons. Hannem is a co-editor of Stigma Revisited: Implications of the Mark (University of Ottawa Press, 2012) and Security and Risk Technologies in Criminal Justice: A Critical Perspective (Canadian Scholars, 2019). Her research has appeared in the journals Deviant Behavior, Symbolic Interaction, Feminist Criminology, Criminologie, the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, and Sexuality and Culture, among others. The Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction presented Dr. Hannem with the 2019 Kathy Charmaz Early in Career Award for her significant contributions to the society and the field of symbolic interaction.

CHRISTOPHER J. SCHNEIDER (PhD Arizona State University) is professor of sociology at Brandon University. Schneider’s research focuses on how developments in media and technology contribute to changes in social interaction and social control. He has written or collaborated on five books, including Policing and Social Media: Social Control in an Era of New Media (Lexington Books, 2016), and has published dozens of scholarly journal articles, book chapters, and essays. Schneider has received recognition for his research, teaching, and service contributions. He is the recipient of a 2021 Harper College Distinguished Alumni Award, given in recognition of outstanding professional achievement and community leadership. In 2020, he received an Emerald Literati Outstanding Author Contribution Award for his 2017 Couch-Stone Symposium keynote address, which was published in 2019 in Studies in Symbolic Interaction. A frequent contributor to media, Schneider’s work has appeared in hundreds of news segments and reports, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, NBC News, and Chicago’s WGN-TV. Schneider was endowed chair of criminology and criminal justice at St. Thomas University in the spring of 2019 and public visiting scholar at Wilfrid Laurier University in the fall 2016.