Believability

Since the #MeToo movement, women have had far more room to speak publicly about sexual assault. Over the same years, phrases like "fake news" and "alternative facts" have made truth itself seem up for debate. Sarah Banet-Weiser's book, written together with Higgins, takes up this tension as its central concern.

The authors focus on women and people of color whose accounts of sexual violence are often doubted. They examine how notions of who counts as believable are shaped by gender and race, and how those notions are defined and disputed within media culture.

Their central argument is that a mediated "economy of believability" sets the conditions under which public claims about sexual violence are made, negotiated and validated.