A look at #MeToo a year after it went viral

October marks one year since the social media phenomenon #MeToo exploded, dislodging scores of men from their high-power positions and sparking a national conversation about workplace sexual harassment.

Originally started as a grassroots effort by activist Tarana Burke more than 10 years ago and set ablaze after a tweet by actress Alyssa Milano, those two simple words have become a viral rallying cry for millions of women, and some men, who are fed up with the blatant abuse of power.

So just how popular has the hashtag become?

A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that the #MeToo hashtag was used more than 19 million times on Twitter since Milano’s initial tweet. That’s more than 55,000 uses of the hashtag per day.

In addition to analyzing the frequency with which #MeToo is used on Twitter, the Pew Research Center interviewed over 4,000 social media users to find out how often they saw sexual harassment-related content online.

It turns out that roughly two-thirds (65 percent) of U.S. adults who use social media said they regularly see posts that relate to the topic. Twenty-nine percent of that group said a great deal of what they see on the social networking sites is focused on the issue, Pew found.

“The hashtag has had an extraordinary impact because it shows the ability of women and survivors of sexual harassment and violence,” said Kathy Spillar, executive director of Feminist Majority, a women’s advocacy and policy research organization. “It has taken an issue that was whispered about in workplaces and given it a forum.

“The question now is will policy decision-makers, who are overwhelmingly men, do something about it?”