PM Seminar: Hanna Feige
Society and economy
Welcome to a PM seminar with doctoral student Hanna Feige, entitled: Judging Sexual Violence: The Roles of Credibility, Reliability and Gendered Common Sense.
Seminar
Welcome to a PM seminar with doctoral student Hanna Feige, entitled: Judging Sexual Violence: The Roles of Credibility, Reliability and Gendered Common Sense.
Evaluating credibility in rape cases is contentious: physical evidence, when present, is often ambiguous, and many cases hinge on competing accounts. Sweden’s 2018 reform shifted to a consent-based framework and introduced negligent rape (‘oaktsam våldtäkt’), centering voluntariness. While the reform reflects changing social norms, early research points to uneven application, particularly in courts’ assessments of the complainants’ voluntariness. My dissertation examines how credibility and reliability are constructed in judicial reasoning, how gendered perceptions and rape myths shape those constructions, and how judicial discourse has evolved since the reform.
The project employs a mixed-methods design, combining qualitative annotation with computational text analysis of more than 5,000 Swedish court rulings from district and appellate courts. Exploratory statistical analyses identify clusters of narrative patterns and associated forms of reasoning, while topic modeling and sentiment analysis complement qualitative reading by mapping discursive themes and evaluative language over time. The studies aim to (1) detail how credibility and reliability are assessed and (2) test how rape myths and gendered perceptions influence who is believed and why. Findings will support reflexive dialogue with legal professionals, encourage more consistent reasoning in rape adjudication, and advance the transparent, responsible use of computational methods in socio-legal research.
Discussants: Martin Joorman and Victoria Vallström
Co-organized by EMOGU, KRIMSEM, and FEMSEM