Tweeting rape culture: Examining portrayals of victim blaming in discussions of sexual assault cases on Twitter

Abstract

Social media has become an important aspect of contemporary culture and cultural change; it has accordingly become a valuable resource for informing feminist theory. Social media is a digitized social reality that lends itself to analysis and research. This study examines rape culture in the widely used social media platform, Twitter. We collected tweets from four days surrounding the Torrington and Steubenville Rape Trials and the Rehtaeh Parson’s story of rape, victimization, and suicide. Using qualitative content analysis, we identified three themes related to rape culture: (1) the virgin–whore binary and the just world, (2) sharing information on the sexual assault cases as subnews, and (3) rape myth debunking to support victims. Additional analysis indicated that Twitter users who engaged in victim blaming were more likely to be retweeted and have more followers than Twitter users who engaged in tweeting victim support content. The research demonstrates that rape culture is an aspect of social media and that data about rape culture can be readily accessed and studied. It also suggests that in future research, social media can be used to study how individuals and groups who are exhibiting rape culture interact with others who are engaged in victim support.