Believability

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.

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

"Believability ... is an essential text for anyone interested in the problem of sexual violence, feminist politics after #MeToo, or contestations around truth in our hyper-mediated and privatised public sphere.... [It]offers the best and most nuanced analysis of the cultural significance of #MeToo I have read ... the book is not only a crucial contribution to feminist thought, but also an important step towards reconceptualising the cultural politics of belief and truth in transformative feminist ways."
—European Journal of Cultural Studies

"Banet-Weiser and Higgins's timely book presents a powerful feminist analysis of the interacting forces of belief, media and sexual violence in the post-truth era ... a transdisciplinary masterpiece."
—LSE Review of Books

"Carefully crafted and apt ... a must read."
—CHOICE

"Banet-Weiser and Higgins succeed in providing an exciting, comprehensive overview of current English-language, Western media representations, discourses and marketing, as well as research on credibility in cases of sexual violence."
—Louise Haitz, Rezens.tfm

"...essential reading for those interrogating how truths “mean little in a society that has already decided that women—and sexual violence more broadly—are unbelievable by default.” The authors offer poignant and timely commentary that remains painfully relevant in the anti-violence movement."
—Maddie Brockbank, Herizons Magazine

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.