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.

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.

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