While the general public may feel uncomfortable discussing sexual assault and violence with neighbors or coworkers, the popularity of Twitter, Snapchat, and a host of other social media platforms suggests that we are not shy about expressing our opinions online. Debates that just a few years ago would have taken place in real life have been relocated online; allowing eager commenters to share their thoughts on guilt or innocence with legions of virtual strangers. Crowdsourcing the Law explores how everyday participants interpret and apply law in the influential online court of public opinion. Engaging a multidisciplinary, case study approach, the book analyzes social media comments about public figures such as Bill Cosby, Brock Turner, and Harvey Weinstein to address ambitious questions like: How are rape myths being challenged, reinforced, and reinvented on social media? What is the promise and peril of the #MeToo movement for transforming the law? And can due process be afforded in the face of an increasingly powerful virtual jury?
Francine Banner is attorney and associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
Part I: The Survivors Chapter 1: The Casting Couch: Commonwealth v. William Henry Cosby, Jr. Chapter 2: Gold Diggers: Erica Kinsman v. Jameis Winston Chapter 3: Liars: Phi Kappa Psi v. Rolling Stone, LLC Part II: The Perpetrators Chapter 4: Railroaded: State of Mississippi v. Milam and Bryant Chapter 5: Monsters: People of the State of California v. Brock Allen Turner Part III: Crowdsourcing the Law Chapter 6: Reckoning: People v. Weinstein
Social movements, social media, mobilization, and public opinion are all instantly available to the public and, as such, are addressed in this book as a history of the present regarding sexual assault cases. How does public discourse construct victims? Who is worthy of the law's protection? Who gets to be angry? How do race and social position affect outcomes? In today's world of the #MeToo movement and other groups challenging rape culture, Banner (Univ. of Michigan, Dearborn) outlines the many ways that sexual assault is being addressed, and by whom, and the identity of those whose issues are taken into account for social and legal reforms. Several high-profile trials are used to illustrate the changing ways the public sees and is seen in relation to these issues (such as rape myths), especially via social media. The book describes these cases and the response to them from the public in detail, with consideration for the rapid social changes that are taking place as a result. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. * CHOICE * Crowdsourcing the Law is a very good book: deeply theorized and yet still written in an accessible manner, being published at just the right time. It will be extraordinarily useful for teaching about social media, popular culture, and the #MeToo movement, and in helping us think through questions of the relationships between jurisprudence and popular culture, and gendered social movements and the law. -- Renee Ann Cramer, Drake University In Crowdsourcing the Law: Trying Sexual Assault on Social Media, Dr. Francine Banner analyzes the contemporary landscape of sexual assault, ranging from allegations of celebrity rapists to institutional indifference to rape. She augments this analysis with insights about and data from social media, a platform for voicing opinions about such matters. Thoroughly researched and accessibly written, the book reveals the promises and the perils of relying on social media to create a legal and a popular consciousness about sexual assault. -- Gray Cavender, Arizona State University, School of Social Transformation Putting #MeToo in context, Crowdsourcing the Law is a compelling and thorough examination of a multifaceted contemporary phenomenon: social media users' fascination with sexual-assault allegations and with the legal treatment of sexual assault. In addition to being a valuable record of an otherwise difficult-to-capture historical moment, the book traces many of the cultural and legal roots of contemporary online experience, explaining how twenty-first-century online publics are both perpetuating and transforming long-standing myths concerning gender, race, inequality, and crime. Banner's thoughtful and persuasive content analysis of social-media commenting activity also supports a wealth of more general insights into the new social processes that social media make possible. Anyone with an interest in popular legal consciousness, especially in connection with contemporary politics and social movements, should find this book rewarding reading. -- Karen Petroski, Saint Louis University Francine Banner's groundbreaking new book captures almost in real time many of the nuanced ways that modern reports of sexual violence are handled not just by the legal system, but by the powerful force of social media. In this #MeToo world, victims of abuse are telling their stories in unprecedented numbers. Banner is one of the first scholars to collect and analyze these stories toward the end of understanding the role of social media in the pursuit of justice. The book is a must read for anyone trying to make sense of the recent outpouring of revelations of sexual violence. -- Hannah Brenner, California Western School of Law
