Believability Sexual Violence, Media, and the Politics of Doubt

by Banet-Weiser, Sarah; Higgins, Kathryn Claire

• ISBN13: 9781509553815
• ISBN10: 1509553819
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2023-06-26
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

The #MeToo movement created more opportunities for women to speak up about sexual assault. But we are also living in a time when “fake news” and “alternative facts” call into question the very nature of truth.

This troubling paradox is at the heart of this compelling book. The convergence of #MeToo and the crisis of post-truth is used to explore the experiences of women and people of color whose claims around issues of sexual violence are often held in doubt. Banet-Weiser and Higgins investigate how the gendered and racialized logics of “believability” are defined and contested within media culture, proposing that a mediated “economy of believability” is the context in which public bids for truth about sexual violence are made, negotiated, and authorized today.

Author Biography

Sarah Banet-Weiser is a joint Annenberg Professor at the Annenberg Schools for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California, and is the Director of the Annenberg Center for Collaborative Communication.
Kathryn Claire Higgins is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Introduction: (Post)Truth, Belief, Media, and Sexual Violence

1 Construction:  #MeToo Media and Representations of Believability

2 Commodification: Buying and Selling Belief in the #MeToo Marketplace

3 Contest: Media, ‘Mob Justice’, and the Digitization of Doubt

4 Conditional: Kavanaughs, Karens, and the Struggle for Victimhood

Conclusion: #BelieveWomen, Revisited



References

Index