Believability: Sexual Violence, Media, and the Politics of Doubt

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.