Abstract
This article examines digital media debate over sexual violence by analyzing news reports and reader comments on the rape allegations against WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. Through analysis of the Guardian and New York Times, the article shows how this case became a flash-point for debate about feminist constructions of sexual violence. News reports amplified Assange’s defense that the allegations stemmed from feminist influence on Swedish law and would not be criminalized in England, provoking feminist and anti-feminist commentary. Thus, this article illuminates the salience of feminist constructions of sexual violence for digital news and points to broader social contestation over the meaning of rape fostered by digital media.
Keywords
Multiple legal, media, and common sense constructions of rape co-exist and influence each other. Since the early 1970s, feminist anti-rape activists have challenged conventional media discourses on rape with some success. However, past research shows that news reporting on sexual violence has been slow to change in the face of feminist critique compared with other media (Cuklanz, 1996; Kitzinger, 2004; Moorti, 2002). Nevertheless, some recent studies suggest that digital media have facilitated the circulation of feminist constructions of rape in mainstream news discourse (Durham, 2013; Worthington, 2008). This article contributes to these discussions by reporting on my critical discourse analysis (CDA) of mainstream digital news texts, opinion pieces, and reader comments on the sexual violence allegations against Julian Assange. My research treats sexual violence as a contested social construction and thus investigates conflicting constructions of sexual violence apparent in media texts on the Assange case.
My analysis uncovered a fierce dispute over constructions of sexual violence in reporting and reader comments on the case: Reporters and readers did not agree on whether the allegations against Assange would amount to sexual violence if true. The case became a flash-point for debate about feminist constructions of sexual violence because Assange’s defense claimed that feminists had unreasonably shaped Sweden’s sexual violence laws. Much reporting and commentary on the case amplified rather than challenged the defense’s recourse to rape myths. Articles about the case attracted commenters interested in refuting or defending feminist constructions of sexual violence. Thus, controversy over feminist constructions of sexual violence contributed to the case making “good copy.” Therefore, this case illustrates the salience of feminist constructions of sexual violence for contemporary digital news outlets. Furthermore, coverage and debate about the case indicates it occurred during a period of broader social contestation over constructions of sexual violence, suggesting avenues for further research. Below I outline the emergence of the allegations against Assange. I then discuss feminist criticism of previous news reporting about sexual violence and of digital media before detailing my research methods and analysis.
The Rape Allegations Against Assange
Assange led WikiLeaks, described by Charlie Beckett as a radical new hybrid combining “‘hacktavism” with some of the traits of more traditional investigative journalism. . . . Its cross-national servers and network of thousands of “mirrored” sites duplicating its content have created a new kind of publisher of last resort. (Beckett, 2012, p. 3)
In 2010, WikiLeaks initiated the “largest unauthorized publication of confidential government information in the history of modern journalism” bringing it into direct conflict with the United States (Beckett, 2012, p. 47). These leaks reached a mass global audience because WikiLeaks partnered with mainstream news outlets, including the Guardian and New York Times (NYT), thus Assange became a politically divisive celebrity (Beckett, 2012). In April 2010, WikiLeaks published a classified video of an American helicopter crew killing Iraqi civilians, followed in July by the “Afghan war logs.” On August 11, 2010, Assange arrived in Sweden hoping its strong journalistic freedom laws would foil U.S. efforts to neutralize WikiLeaks. By August 20, 2010, Swedish prosecutors were pursuing him for questioning about allegations of sexual violence against one of his Swedish hosts and another woman he met when he spoke at a public seminar in Stockholm.
According to court proceedings and leaked police reports, Ms. A alleges Assange pinned her down and spread her legs during a sexual encounter while preventing her reaching for a condom (High Court, 2011). Later he agreed to wear one, but she believes he deliberately damaged it so as to have unprotected sex (High Court, 2011). She alleges that several days later, he pressed his naked erect penis against her, although she had rejected previous sexual advances (High Court, 2011). These allegations resulted in one charge of unlawful coercion and two separate charges of sexual molestation (High Court, 2011). Ms. W alleges Assange penetrated her without a condom while she slept after a night in which he had repeatedly failed to convince her to allow unprotected intercourse (High Court, 2011). Ms. W’s allegation resulted in a charge of rape (High Court, 2011).
Assange left Sweden for England and fought Swedish attempts to extradite him. One line of his legal case against extradition argued that the allegations against him would not be rape or molestation under English law. In 2011, the Magistrates’ and High Courts ruled that the allegations would be sexual offenses under the law in England and Wales (High Court, 2011; Magistrates’ Court, 2011). In 2012, Assange lost his final appeal against extradition, whereupon he took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he remains to date. This article investigates news coverage of the allegations I cannot comment on Assange’s guilt or innocence.
Feminist Analysis of News Reporting on Rape
The allegations against Assange provide an opportunity for analyzing how news organizations represented “real rape” when confronted with claims that the conduct described should not be criminalized. Multiple discourses on sexual violence co-exist but some carry more authority. Jenny Kitzinger’s (2001) research with survivors of child sexual abuse shows how media provide a cultural resource that helps people to name and communicate about sexual violence. While audiences interpret media in light of their own experience, research shows that they assume the news genre adheres to high standards of truthfulness (Worthington, 2008). News provides a significant source of information about what can and cannot be said about sexual violence. Thus, analysis of news can reveal shifts in authoritative constructions of sexual violence.
Research on change in U.S. and U.K. media suggest that feminist campaigns since the 1970s had an important impact on how media represented sexual violence, but that news has been slower to change than other genre. American documentaries, talk shows, and dramas began to include more nuanced depictions of sexual violence from the late 20th century (Cuklanz, 2000; Moorti, 2002). However, Sujata Moorti’s (2002) analysis of U.S. television representations of rape in the late 1980s and 1990s found that, unlike other genre, “news tend to offer monolithic understandings that are framed primarily by patriarchal definitions of rape” (p. 213). Similarly, Lisa Cuklanz’s (1996) analysis of reporting on high profile American rape cases from the mid-1970s through 1990 found that news on rape routinely resorted to well-worn “rape myths” while dramatizations of rape cases showed more nuance (p. 16). The feminist construct “rape myths” describes a commonplace discourse on rape which perpetuates stereotypes of victims and perpetrators (O’Hara, 2012, p. 248). A British study of print news since the Second World War through the mid-1980s found news reporting on rape became less sensationalist since the 1970s, and journalists sometimes criticized victim blaming by judges or politicians (Soothill & Walby, 1991).
Kitzinger (2004) notes that while sexual violence has long made “good copy,” the forms and definitions of sexual violence that attract media attention vary across time and cultures (pp. 14-15). She highlights new and ongoing problems with news reporting in the United States and United Kingdom in the new millennium, including a focus on disputed allegations, amplifying the defense’s story, perpetuating “stereotypes about victims and victimization,” positioning perpetrators as “other,” using minimizing language about rape, focusing on events not social analysis, dismissing feminist research as biased, and adopting a “white gaze” (Kitzinger, 2004, pp. 23-31). Similarly, Shannon O’Hara’s (2012) analysis of U.K. and U.S. news stories published between 2006 and 2011 found they typically depicted rapists as monstrous “others” and recognized pre-pubescent children and the elderly as innocent victims of rape but treated complaints made by sexually active or attractive women or girls as suspect (pp. 250-255).
Feminist scholars have highlighted the gendered process of news production and the gendered nature of news as a product to explain patterns of reporting on sexual violence. Karen Ross and Cynthia Carter’s analysis of gendered change in British and Irish news media between 1995 and 2010 found some improvement in how often women appeared as sources, news actors, and journalists. Nevertheless, they conclude “women’s voices, experiences and expertise continue to be regarded by news industries as less important than those of men” (Ross & Carter, 2011, p. 1148). As Ross and Carter (2011) point out, research in both the United Kingdom and United States shows that newsroom norms and professional standards condition both male and female journalists to produce news which is biased toward men’s voices and activities.
Digital media have re-defined what counts as “news” as audiences can tailor their social media feeds to provide a mix of news from friends, family, organizations, and commercial news sources such as blogs and news corporations. Thus, digital media challenge “the role of mainstream media in the mediation of politics” as news corporations have less authority to frame political narratives or shape the news agenda (Beckett, 2012, p. 7). Michael Salter (2013) argues that “old media’s” one-directional, non-participatory format allowed “bourgeois white men” to maintain a “monopoly of speech”; however, digital technology subverts the “one to many” style of communication and connects “many to many” (pp. 227-228). Micro-blogs such as Twitter provide a constant flow of news from organizations and individuals, including hyperlinks to more content such as articles or video which people can check on various mobile devices.
Mainstream news corporations have responded to digital media by incorporating social media elements into their online format. For example, the NYT and Guardian host moderated reader comments under selected articles and include hyperlinks to further information within articles while the NYT incorporates “blogs.” Furthermore, social media have become an important journalistic “beat” for mainstream journalists who report on trending hashtags and social media controversies (Broersma & Graham, 2012). Mainstream journalists also use social media to communicate with their audience, and audiences may use social media to contest how journalists have framed events or to contribute more information about a story (Murthy, 2013).
Arguably, digital media may exacerbate gender hierarchies in news production because of the prevalence of online misogynist abuse. In both the United Kingdom and United States, women who speak publicly about gender inequality typically suffer misogynist abuse online, including rape threats (Bartlett, Norrie, Patel, Rumpel, & Wibberley, 2014). One U.S. study attributed an 11% drop in female, but not male, participation in online chat rooms between 2000 and 2005 to sexual harassment and misogynist abuse (Fallows, 2005). Research found that chat room accounts with feminine names averaged 100 messages containing sexually explicit or threatening language daily, compared with 3.7 for accounts with masculine names (Meyer & Cukier, 2006). Andrea Braithwaite (2014) shows how gamers deployed the “feminist killjoy” trope to reject feminist critique of sexist dialogue in a beta version of “World of Warcraft.” She adopts the concept “killjoy” from Sarah Ahmed’s (2010) observation that feminists expose “how happiness is sustained by erasing the signs of not getting along” and thus may be accused of “killing joy” (p. 582). Commenters in online gaming forums and fan sites positioned feminist criticism of sexist dialogue as “toxic” to their community and ruining their gaming experience (Braithwaite, 2014). Braithwaite (2014) argues that the “casual-to-vitriolic anti-feminism and misogyny in these discussions” does not arise from “digital space as a different kind of space,” rather digital space provides new opportunities for misogynist sentiment to “circumscribe participation and self-presentation” (p. 715). Relatedly, Sarah Banet-Weiser (2015) argues that feminism and misogyny have a “call-and-response connection” which is not new but currently fostered by “a flourishing of a ‘public’ culture of comments and feedback” in digital media.
Unsurprisingly, research suggests women may prefer moderated online spaces which prohibit abusive language (Pierson, 2015). Nevertheless, analysis of moderated comments on NYT stories found that the majority (72%) of those with an identifiable gender were by men and that women were more likely to comment anonymously (Pierson, 2015). Research shows that comments impact on readers’ reaction to an article’s content because many people engage with comments as much, or more, than with news stories (Anderson, Brossard, Scheufele, & Xenos, 2012; Dashti, 2013). Yet comments under news stories may exclude feminist and female voices.
Nevertheless, digital media may provide opportunity for feminists to shape discourse about sexual violence. Interestingly, an open letter in the NYT from Dylan Farrow accusing her father, director Woody Allen, of sexual abuse attracted equal numbers of identifiably female commenters as male, and 71% of comments from women supported Farrow compared with 38% from men (Pierson, 2015). Thus, women may be more likely to comment on stories about sexual violence than other topics and respond differently to news of sexual violence allegations than men. In other research, analysis of online comments on a TV report about campus rape found that they provided an opportunity for feminists to challenge rape myths and set the issue in a wider social context (Worthington, 2008). Similarly, an analysis of reader comments and bloggers’ critique of NYT coverage of an 11-year-old Texas girl’s gang rape showed how commentators “reasserted feminist criticisms of rape coverage in the media, without citation or reference” (Durham, 2013, p. 9).
Method
Assange’s prominence in digital news because of his role in WikiLeaks meant that the allegations against him elicited extensive commentary. While social media, blogs, and tabloid coverage would also provide rich data, this article confines itself to analysis of representation of the allegations in the Guardian and NYT. Both publications’ prior agreements to publish WikiLeaks’ material meant they paid close attention to the story. Furthermore, both enjoy a global readership, and other news outlets used them as a source on WikiLeaks. Additionally, both have hosted feminist commentary and enjoy liberal reputations. Both publications host moderated reader comments on selected articles and include hyperlinks to further commentary such as news blogs.
Using LexisNexis, I retrieved all Guardian and NYT texts that mentioned Assange’s name from August 2010, when the rape allegations first appeared, until December 2013, when coverage tapered off. I filtered for discussions of the allegations with the search terms rape, Sweden, assault, and sex. I eliminated texts that only mentioned the allegations in passing. The final data set consisted of 176 texts, although not all dealt with the allegations in detail. The data included news pages articles (153), editorials (2), letters to the editor (2), “live updates” (6), and opinion and blog pages (13). Only 31 texts came from the NYT, the majority (24) published in 2010/2011. The Guardian produced 145 texts, 92 of which were published 2010/2011. Thus, the Guardian devoted more attention to the debate about rape provoked by the allegations, although many of their stories repeated text from earlier pieces, possibly because of an orientation to online readers looking for new headlines to click. However, I included the NYT data because it offered rich discussion of sexual violence. I did not make comparing the two publications a focus of analysis.
I began analysis by constructing a chronological list of the 176 headlines and a timeline of significant events in the case. After reading and coding all texts, I noted thematic changes in relation to the timeline. Feminist constructs of rape and rape myths provided sensitizing concepts for coding while other themes emerged from the texts. I sorted the thematic codes into two conflicting sets. Firstly, themes deployed to dismiss the allegations: political conspiracy, Assange as heroic fugitive, positive reporting on Assange’s devoted supporters, Assange is innocent, trivializing the allegations, women scorned/scrutiny of the complainants, Swedish/radical feminists criminalizing sex/men. Secondly, themes deployed to highlight the seriousness of the allegations: the allegations amount to sexual violence, condemning media attacks on complainants, condemning rape myths in the coverage. Many texts only included themes from either the first or second set; however, some ambivalent texts contained a mix of themes. I coded texts that offered little commentary as neutral.
Most of the 176 texts did not discuss the allegations in detail; therefore, I selected the 33 which contained rich discussion of the substance of the allegations for CDA which I also used to analyze all headlines. CDA requires paying attention to the effects produced by features of the text such as grammatical form, word choice, metaphor, and so on. My analysis drew upon Norman Fairclough’s work on intertextuality, which provides a framework for considering news as “discourse representation.” As Fairclough points out, news largely consists of reporting others’ words. Journalists may critically or uncritically distinguish their authorial voice from those they represent through choice of reporting verb and use of paraphrase or quotation (Fairclough, 1992). Such “discourse representation” also includes how authors contextualize quotations within their narrative (Walsh, 1998, p. 206). I paid particular attention to hyperlinks, which provide new opportunities for integrating other texts into the news. In digital news, inter-textual elements of news stories, for example, quotations, may be hyperlinked to provide readers with easy access to other texts.
Additionally, I used CDA to analyze reader comments on three opinion articles from the 33 rich texts which explicitly addressed whether the allegations amounted to rape. I selected these articles based on the timing of publication. Two were published mid to late December 2010 when most commentary on details of the allegations occurred: prominent feminist writer Katha Pollitt’s “On rape, the left still doesn’t get it” published in the Guardian and statistician Nate Silver’s “A Bayesian take on Julian Assange” published in his NYT blog. I also analyzed comments on Julie Bindel’s 21 August, 2012, Guardian article titled “George Galloway must not fall into the trap of rape denial” published amid a revival of interest in the allegations when Assange fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy. Bindel’s article attracted 1,384 comments between 9:19 a.m. and 9:23 p.m. when comments closed. I read a sample of 300 comments from throughout the day: the first 100, the 100 following noon, and the final 100. Of these 300 comments, I analyzed the 156 which discussed rape (others discussed broader politics). I found no NYT articles on the subject in late 2012/2013 which invited reader comments. Most commenters chose gender neutral names; therefore, I could not analyze differences in comments made by men and women.
Analysis of News Texts
I will first consider news and opinion texts before turning to analysis of reader comments. Most reporting on the allegations occurred in late 2010, especially in December following Assange’s imprisonment and bail hearing in London and the subsequent leak of a Swedish police report on the case. During 2011 and 2012, reporting clustered around his appeals against extradition to Sweden. Assange lost his case for re-appeal on June 14, 2012, and fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy, sparking renewed interest in the case, which fell away during 2013.
My thematic analysis of all texts found most coverage assumed that the allegations stemmed from some combination of political motivations and women scorned until Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy. From August 20, 2010, when the Swedish Prosecutor’s Office issued a warrant for Assange’s arrest, until he lost his final case for appeal in mid-August 2012 only 18/127 texts treated the allegations as amounting to rape, 73 treated them as probably false and/or not really rape, while 41 were neutral or ambivalent. However, after Assange fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy in August 2012, only 6/49 texts dismissed the complaints as linked to a political conspiracy but none dismissed them as not amounting to rape. Twenty-three of these 49 texts treated the complaints seriously and the remainder were neutral. The discussion of each theme below provides textual examples.
My headlines analysis found that much coverage suggested the allegations served the U.S. pursuit of Assange because of his work for WikiLeaks. Until February 2011, headlines usually referred to Assange as the “WikiLeaks founder” or “WikiLeaks chief” thus tying the case to WikiLeaks. In many of these early headlines, Assange/WikiLeaks was the grammatical object, for example, “WikiLeaks: Interpol issues wanted notice for Julian Assange,” “Swedish Court confirms arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder” or “Pressure mounts on WikiLeaks as net tightens” (Booth, 2010; Burns and Cowell 2010; Leigh, Harding, Hirsch, & MacAskill, 2010). Thus, headlines highlighted Assange’s many pursuers and linked that pursuit to his role in WikiLeaks. The smaller number of headlines in which Assange was the grammatical subject privileged his point of view, usually quoting him or his legal team. For example, Julian Assange “says his life is ‘under threat,’” or “faces execution or Guantanamo detention” (Addley, 2012; Batty, 2010). Indeed, during his extradition hearings, his legal team’s arguments often made headlines, for example, “Julian Assange ‘would face bias in Sweden,’ retired judge says” (Addley, 2011a). Only 35 headlines used the word rape, and 19 of these occurred in texts argued that the allegations should be treated seriously.
Thus, consistent with Kitzinger’s (2004) findings, news about the allegations amplified themes from Assange’s defense until the courts made their final ruling when texts abruptly changed tune. However, critical feminist commentary formed a significant part of the in-depth coverage of the allegations as soon as details of the complaints emerged in late 2010, although mostly in the opinion pages. Twenty-three texts from December 2010 offered in-depth discussion of the allegations, as details about them emerged from a leaked police report and Assange’s court appearances. Of these, eight treated the allegations as amounting to rape, nine were dismissive of them, and six were ambivalent. During 2011 and 2012 as Assange appealed and re-appealed extradition, only three texts revisited the allegations in any depth, one treated them seriously and two were dismissive. However, after Assange sought shelter in the Ecuadorian Embassy, seven texts discussed the allegations in detail as serious and none contradicted them. Below, I detail themes which emerged from my analysis, drawing particularly on texts which discussed the allegations in detail. Most of these themes worked in concert to create a narrative about the allegations which absolved Assange. However, feminist critique of this narrative formed a persistent thread throughout coverage of the case.
Assange as a Sexy Outlaw
Consistent with Kitzinger’s (2004) and O’Hara’s (2012) findings on stereotypes about perpetrators, Assange’s public image as a free-speech outlaw in both the Guardian and NYT informed skepticism of the allegations. Early coverage linked the allegations to both Assange’s supposed allure to women and his political activism. Two Guardian stories called Assange “the new Jason Bourne,” or the “Ned Kelly of the digital age,” embedding discussion of the allegations in the broader story of Assange’s exposure of state wrongdoing (McVeigh & Townsend, 2010; Townsend, Harris, Duval Smith, Sabbagh, & Halliday, 2010). A NYT blog, “the Hunt for Julian Assange,” discussed the Obama administration’s desire to prosecute Assange, before linking to and quoting at length three commentators who framed the allegations as political smears over “consensual sex” or “impropriety” (Harshaw, 2010).
Following Assange’s December 8, 2010, arrest in London, a Guardian editorial titled “WikiLeaks: The man who kicked the hornet’s nest” associated Assange with heroic fictitious Swedish hacker Lisbeth Salander (Editorial, 2010a). The editorial also cast Assange as a sexual outlaw by comparing him to Oscar Wilde: “Is this the end or beginning?” Betjeman put those words into the mouth of Oscar Wilde as he sat in the Cadogan hotel waiting to be arrested for sexual offences in 1895. Similar thoughts must have flitted through the mind of Julian Assange as he prepared to present himself at a London police station yesterday. (Editorial, 2010a)
A month later Naomi Wolf (2011) similarly compared Assange with Wilde, writing in the Guardian: “Like Assange, he [Wilde] faced a legal proceeding for alleged sex crimes in which there was state pressure on the outcome.” In some stories, “sex crime” allegations added to Assange’s fascinating notoriety. Although a number of articles that trivialized the allegations still used the word “rape” in their headline, more preferred terms like “sex crime,” “sex claims,” and “sexual impropriety” in their headlines and in the body of the text (e.g., McVeigh & Townsend, 2010).
Discussion of Assange’s allure to women filtered through several early reports on the charges. For example, a NYT article referred to one of the complainants as a “groupie” (Bennhold, 2010b). One Guardian article quoted a friend of Assange’s: A personality like Assange, who is known throughout the world, in the media every day, has a huge attraction to women. A lot of women invited him to their beds and he took that opportunity too much . . . all the time . . . his weakness was—is—women . . . women responded to him in the way they might respond to meeting Mick Jagger. (Gentleman, 2010)
A December 17, 2010, Guardian editorial titled “WikiLeaks: The man and the idea” hyperlinked and quoted an Observer article which compared Assange with the 18th-century libertine, John Wilkes . . . fearless publisher, editor and politician who fought crucial skirmishes in the journey towards a free press in Britain. He risked exile, imprisonment and death for the right to publish . . . But in his own times he was also regarded as a rake. (Editorial, 2010b)
The editorial hyperlinked to Wilke’s biography, noting that reports of Wilke’s private “sexual liaisons—both factual and fictitious”—fuelled debate over his politics. Thus, the author insinuates the allegations against Assange could be “fictitious” while casting him as a rakish free-press hero.
For some writers, Assange’s heroic status and ability to attract women suggested the allegations stemmed from “rakish” rather than sexually aggressive conduct. However, two feminist Guardian contributors criticized coverage of Assange as a romantic outlaw accused of sexual impropriety. Libby Brooks (2010) argues that minimization of the allegations against Assange depended on “the assumption that a man’s good behaviour in public life somehow neutralises bad behaviour in private.” Pollitt (2010) pointedly asked, “WikiLeaks is revealing information citizens need to know—it’s a good thing. Assange may or may not have committed sex crimes according to Swedish law. Why is it so hard to hold those two ideas at once?”
Scrutiny of the Complainants
Stereotypes about victims also framed much discussion of the complainants. Consistent with the story of Assange as attracting “groupies,” Assange’s defense drew upon the “women scorned” trope to imply that the complaints only emerged because the complainants wanted revenge after discovering each other’s relationship with Assange. A statement from Assange’s lawyer declares, “Only after the women became aware of each other’s relationships with Mr. Assange did they make their allegations against him” (Stephens, 2010). News reports uncritically circulated this framing of the complaints. A Guardian story from November 2010 uncritically quoted the above statement from Assange’s lawyer: Weaver (2010). Likewise, an August 2010 NYT article uncritically quoted a “close friend” of Assange who claimed that the accusations stemmed from “ill feelings that erupted when the two women discovered they had been competing for [Assange’s] attentions” (Burns, 2010). Similarly, in early December 2010, Deborah Orr (2010) skeptically noted in the Guardian: “The second woman didn’t get upset until she had met and exchanged notes with the first one. Neither did the first, for that matter.” A September 2011 Guardian comment piece on Assange’s unauthorized biography recounted his denial of the allegations, concluding “it seems that William Congreve was right . . . : ‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned’” (Chancellor, 2011). Such coverage played on the notion that scorned women commonly make malicious rape complaints.
Assange’s defense pointed to the complainants’ lack of obvious distress after the alleged rapes as evidence that they invented the allegations, drawing on the myth that rape victims, like the legendary Lucretia, evidence immediate devastation. A December 18, 2010, Guardian article discussing a leaked Swedish police report stressed this line of defense (Davies, 2010). Only nine of 36 paragraphs detailed the complainants’ accounts from the police report. Fifteen paragraphs of the article interpret the allegations with reported speech from Assange’s lawyer. The article ends with a five paragraph direct quotation from the lawyer, including the following observation: We understand that both complainants admit to having initiated consensual sexual relations with Mr Assange. They do not complain of any physical injury. The first complainant did not make a complaint for six days (in which she hosted the respondent in her flat [actually her bed] and spoke in the warmest terms about him to her friends) . . . The second complainant, too, failed to complain for several days. (Davies, 2010)
Like the Guardian, the NYT gave credence to defense attempts to throw doubt on the allegations because the complainants did not appear distressed after the alleged rapes. The NYT’s coverage of the leaked police report emphasized that it “provides support for a claim made by Mr. Assange’s supporters that the women involved seemed willing to continue their friendships with Mr. Assange after what they described as sexual misbehavior” (Burns & Somaiya, 2010).
Coverage of Vilification of the Complainants
The Guardian treated online vilification of the complainants as newsworthy, mining social media for further stories about the case. In early December, Esther Addley wrote, “Rarely can there have been a rape case where the personal details of the alleged victims have been so eagerly sought out by so many” (Addley, 2010a). Similarly, a Guardian editorial justified publication of details from the leaked transcripts of police interviews with one of the complainants by arguing: It is unusual for a sex offence case to be presented outside of the judicial process in such a manner, but then it is unheard of for a defendant, his legal team and supporters to so vehemently and publicly attack women at the heart of a rape case. (Editorial, 2010b)
Previous analyses of news on rape cases suggests that, on the contrary, attacks on complainants’ character and scrutiny of their pasts provides a common feature of news reports on rape allegations (Kitzinger, 2004).
Addley’s December 7, 2010, article criticized the “misogyny” present in online discussion of the complainants. However, her article effectively amplified rumors about the complainants by quoting, although not linking to, various blog posts which discussed them. For example, she reported on bloggers’ interpretation of one complainants’ critical research about Cuba and work in the United States as evidence of her collusion in a “honeytrap to bring down Assange” (Addley, 2010). She also reported on a blog post detailing “seven steps to revenge” attributed to one complainant. Additionally, Addley told readers the complainants’ names and photographs could be found online.
A further article about online vilification of the complainants criticized Assange’s supporters, Brooks (2010) argued that “models of leftwing and liberal opinion” were unintentionally cooperating with “a motley assemblage of conspiracy theorists and internet attack dogs that has been mauling the characters of Assange’s accusers” by dredging through their online presence “for evidence of sexual deviance, mental instability and vengeful intent.” Later in December 2010, Pollitt (2010) sourced rumors about the complainants to an anti-Semitic conspiracy website and criticized left wing media figures who had repeated the rumors.
Disputing Feminist Definitions of Sexual Violence
Several articles picked up on the notion that feminists seek to criminalize ordinary heterosexual encounters from Assange’s defense, who argued that Swedish law arose from undue feminist influence and the allegations would not be treated as crimes in England (Magistrates’ Court, 2011). According to Jessica Valenti (2010), Assange’s attorney fed media a rumor that Swedish law treated unprotected sex as a crime and Assange had not been accused of rape but a lesser sex crime that existed only in Sweden. Valenti traced reports that Assange had been “charged with ‘sex by surprise,’ or some bizarre Swedish law having to do with a condom breaking, not rape” to an AOL news story quoting Assange’s attorney. The attorney claimed that Swedish prosecutors sought Assange “not for allegations of rape, as previously reported, but for something called ‘sex by surprise,’ which he said involves a fine of 5,000 kronor or about $715” (Valenti, 2010). Subsequent court proceedings in England made clear the charges did not concern “sex by surprise” or an accidently broken condom (High Court, 2011; Magistrates’ Court, 2011).
Although neither the Guardian nor NYT reported the “sex by surprise” story, they did uncritically repeat claims that the allegations would not constitute rape in most states. A December 7, 2010, Guardian article reported that Assange’s lawyer “summed up the issue” as a “dispute over consensual but unprotected sex” and that the allegations “reportedly centre on his willingness or otherwise to use condoms” (Booth, 2010). Another from December 9, 2010, flippantly remarked, According to reports, one woman claims that a crime was committed against her because the consensual condom was broken, she says deliberately by Assange. Just weird . . . The other reportedly says Assange had sex with her consensually at night, but non-consensually—and without a condom—when she hadn’t achieved consciousness in the morning. (It certainly puts a new slant on the unfortunate NHS advertising slogan: “Wake up to rape.”) (Orr, 2010)
NYT articles from September and December allowed that a consensual sexual encounter could become non-consensual (Burns & Somaiya, 2010; Jolly, 2010). Even so, one used the phrase “sexual misbehavior” to describe the allegations (Burns & Somaiya, 2010). The focus on the “condom dispute” and the term misbehavior effectively minimized the allegations.
The NYT featured two articles during December 2010 that highlight Swedish feminism as explaining the allegations. A December 7, 2010, article headlined “[i]n Sweden Sex Assault gets little tolerance” opened with the suggestion that Assange “may not have known that Swedish laws protecting women in their sexual encounters include wide-ranging definitions of sexual assault and rape” (Bennhold, 2010a). While highlighting positive features of Sweden’s gender relations, the article also suggests that Swedish feminists have gone to extremes in lobbying for an expanded definition of rape, quoting a Swedish lawyer, “Sometimes we lawyers joke that soon you [sic] have to have a written permission before you can have sex” (Bennhold, 2010a). A second December 18, 2010, article further highlighted Swedish feminist influence as behind the allegations. The article suggested that the Swedish pursuit of Assange “was not unusual given the success that the women’s movement in Sweden has had over the last 30 years in recasting Sweden’s criminal laws on sexual issues, making them extremely protective of women’s rights” (Burns & Somaiya, 2010). This article noted that the complainants’ lawyer, Claes Borgstrom, previously worked as Sweden’s equal opportunities ombudsman and spokesman on gender equality issues for the Social Democratic Party. The authors quote Borgstrom as saying “it was common under Sweden’s rape laws for men who force sex on women without a condom to face prosecution” (Burns & Somaiya, 2010). While not entirely negative about Sweden’s gender equality policy, both articles suggest that Sweden criminalizes sexual behavior that other states would not.
Similarly, a 2011 Guardian article paraphrased Assange’s defense that the allegations would not be criminal in English law: “After three ‘utterly consensual’ sex acts, she had objected to Assange having sex with her again without a condom, but ‘she let him continue.’ ‘It’s not natural to call this rape’” (Addley, 2011a). In another example, Robert Booth’s reporting voice blended with that of Assange’s defense at the High Court: “In essence, his lawyers would admit, his sexual behaviour with two Swedish women . . . might have been seen as ‘disrespectful, discourteous, disturbing’ but it was not illegal” (Booth, 2011). The Guardian published several articles in early 2011 highlighting Swedish feminist influence on the case. Headlines over slightly different versions of the same story retrieved from the data base proclaimed, “Lawyer pursuing Assange ‘biased against men’” and “Lawyer pursuing Assange ‘malicious feminist.’” Interestingly, the online version now reads, “Julian Assange ‘would face bias in Sweden,’ retired judge says. Sundberg-Weitman accuses Swedish prosecutor of being ‘malicious,’ but admits she has no personal knowledge of her” (Addley, 2011a). A March 2011 Guardian story headlined allegations that the police officer who first interviewed the complainants knew Miss A and shared her feminist views: “Miss A and the police interrogator had internet [sic] contact in April 2009, when Miss A wrote a blog about white men ‘who take the right to decide what is not abusive.’ The officer commented that the author ‘puts her finger on the bottom line and speaks out’” (Addley, 2011b). In this account, the shared feminism of complainant and police officer somehow explains the allegations.
Feminist Critique as News
Although the NYT publishes feminist opinion, I found no explicit feminist commentary nor critical commentary on public discussion of the case in the NYT. Feminist critique of treatment of the allegations as “not rape” appeared in the Guardian “comment is free” section in December 2010, which was when most discussion of the case occurred. Pollitt (2010) argued that while Assange’s supporters may rightly question the “zeal” of authorities’ pursuit of him, this did not justify their dismissive attitude toward publicly available details of the allegations. Similarly, in her article “[t]his ‘rape-rape’ defence of Assange will help nobody,” Brooks (2010) argued claims that not all forms of non-consensual sex count as “rape-rape” . . . feeds the narrative that consent is so difficult to prove in cases where the victim knew her attacker, or was drugged or drunk, and the violation so much lesser, that the only crimes worth prosecuting involve violent strangers in dark alleys.
Brooks use of the phrase “rape-rape” alluded to U.S. television host Whoopi Goldberg’s infamous claim that film director Roman Polanski, who fled the United States after his 1977 arrest for raping and sodomizing a 13-year-old girl, had not “rape-raped” the girl, presumably because of Polanski’s claim the girl consented. Goldberg’s claim in 2009 provoked critical feminist commentary on feminist blogs and social media, which both the Guardian and NYT picked up on (Kennedy, 2009; Kimmelman, 2009). By comparing Assange’s defenders with Polanski’s, Brooks highlighted their inability to accept that otherwise admirable men may rape, and that rape usually happens among acquaintances.
The Guardian also mined feminist social media on the Assange case for material, covering lively debates occurring on feminist blogs and feminist protest on Twitter. Richard Adams’ December 28, 2010, article “#MooreandMe the hashtag that roared” quoted feminist blogs at length and hyperlinked to them. Adams described how filmmaker Michael Moore sparked feminist protest when on December 14, 2010, he claimed on TV that “the charge is, his [Assange’s] condom broke during consensual sex. That is not a crime in Britain, and so they’re making the point, how can we extradite him over this? This is all a bunch of hooey as far as I’m concerned” (M. Moore in Adams, 2010). A December 15, 2010, blog post by Sady Doyle, hyperlinked in Adams’s article, criticized M. Moore for repeating lies about the charges. Doyle argued that “rape apologism,” “victim blaming,” and “the unwillingness of men in positions of power to consider rape a crucial issue that must be taken seriously” hurts the “progressive community” (Doyle in Adams, 2010). Her blog urged readers to tweet M. Moore using the #MooreandMe explaining how his comments caused harm. As Adams (2010) later detailed, within days M. Moore conceded during a TV appearance, “Every woman who claims to have been sexually assaulted or raped has to be, must be, taken seriously.” Subsequently, M. Moore tweeted Doyle an apology (Adams, 2010).
The Guardian “comment is free” section hosted further feminist debate in 2011. After Assange supporters had circulated photographs and names of the complainants online, resulting in death threats against the two women, the Guardian published a controversial piece by Wolf (2011) in which she argued that “The convention of shielding rape accusers is a relic of the Victorian era” and “[t]hough children’s identities should, of course, be shielded, women are not children. If one makes a serious criminal accusation, one must be treated as a moral adult.” According to Wolf (2011), “[a]nonymity serves institutions that do not want to prosecute rapists.” Suzanne Moore (2011) responded with a column lamenting the failings of Wolf’s “third wave feminism” and criticizing feminist supporters of Assange. In response, Katrin Axelsson of Women against Rape replied with a column titled “Rape cannot be disentangled from the wider campaign for justice: Julian Assange should not become the target for expressions of fury over sexism.” They argued that “allegations against Assange can no longer be disentangled from the political agenda shaping how they are dealt with” (Axelsson, 2011). Nevertheless, Axelssonalso took issue with Wolf, arguing “We know no one who’s found the protection afforded by anonymity ‘condescending’” (Axelsson, 2011).
After the Court Proceedings
Coverage took a notably different tone after June 2012, when Assange took refuge in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy. Even texts that claimed the extradition over rape charges provided a smoke screen for nefarious U.S. purposes now stressed the seriousness of the allegations (Addley, 2012; Greenwald, 2012; Milne, 2012; M. Moore & Stone, 2012). For example, an August 20, 2012, NYT op-ed article by M. Moore and fellow filmmaker Oliver Stone insisted that Assange should face the allegations but asked why Swedish authorities could not question him in London or provide guarantees against onward extradition to the United States (M. Moore & Stone, 2012).
Guardian reporting on comments made about the Assange case by British Member of Parliament, George Galloway, in August of 2012, exemplify this change in tone. A Guardian article accompanied by the relevant clip from his podcast quotes Galloway: Even taken at its worst, if the allegations made by these two women were true, 100% true, and even if a camera in the room captured them, they don’t constitute rape . . . Woman A met Julian Assange, invited him back to her flat, gave him dinner, went to bed with him, had consensual sex with him, claims that she woke up to him having sex with her again. This is something which can happen, you know. I mean, not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion. (Booth, 2012)
Galloway’s podcast repeated themes from earlier coverage of the case: prior consensual sex and the conduct of the complainants. In other parts of the podcast, he repeated the misinformation that one complaint simply concerned a broken condom.
However, in contrast to earlier coverage, journalists corrected Galloway’s assertions. After quoting Galloway, Booth wrote, A magistrates [sic] court has already ruled that: “What is alleged here is that Mr Assange [sic] ‘deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep, was in a helpless state.’ In this country that would amount to rape.” (Booth, 2012)
Booth hyperlinked his text to the relevant court rulings. Several other Guardian articles reported approvingly on negative reactions to Galloway’s comments. For example, one quoted from and hyperlinked to statements of a magazine editor who dropped Galloway as a contributor: “There is no excuse, ever, for sex without consent, and regardless of the details of the Assange case, Galloway’s comments and inappropriate language about rape per se are alarming” (Carrell, 2012). Another reported criticism of Galloway’s podcast by senior figures in his own Respect Party and hyperlinked to a statement by their leader who resigned because of Galloway’s views (Jones & Halliday, 2012).
Several Guardian articles on Galloway’s remarks indicate the salience of feminist constructs of rape myths in news at the time. All articles on the topic include hyperlinks to news reports, blogs, or video about other public figures’ propagation of rape myths. For example, reports linked Galloway’s comments to U.S. Republican candidate for Missouri Congress, Todd Akin’s, claim that women could not become pregnant from “legitimate rape,” a term which quickly became an Internet meme during a presidential election year in the United States (Bindel, 2012; Editorial, 2012; Freedland, 2012; Freeman, 2012). A Guardian editorial titled “Politicians and rape: A serious case of denial” hyperlinked to an article about the U.K. justice secretary’s attempt to distinguish “serious” rape from, presumably, less serious rapes. The secretary had been forced to apologize for suggesting any rape should not be considered serious (Editorial, 2012). Another article, “Everyone’s talking about rape,” included hyperlinks to stories about Akin, several comedians’ questionable attempts at rape jokes, and further reading on political debate over definitions of rape (Freeman, 2012).
Reader Comments
Reader comments provided a forum for fierce debate over the allegations and what counts as sexual violence more generally. In contrast to the news texts, reader comments showed no change in tone between 2010 and 2012. Criticism and defense of feminist definitions of sexual violence and of women in general formed a major theme, illustrating Banet-Weiser’s (2015) argument that online comments foster a “call-and-response” relation between feminism and misogyny. This “call and response” was most evident in the two articles by feminist writers and not so much in Silver’s article which attracted only one anti-feminist comment.
Previous research has found that women who speak publicly about gender inequality online, or even speak at all, suffer misogynist abuse and sexual harassment (Bartlett et al., 2014). Both Pollitt and Bindel frequently speak and write on gender equality issues in mainstream media. The Guardian moderates comments and thus commenters mostly confined themselves to debating how to understand the allegations and did not indulge in personal insults against the writers or other commenters. However, a small number of commenters disagreed with Pollitt in disparaging terms, such as “[l]azy, pointless piece” and “[p]athetic article” (KrustytheKlown, 2010; pelleneroth, 2010). One commenter called Bindel an “attack dog” (liberalfish1, 2012).
Nevertheless, hostility toward feminism, women’s rights, and sometimes women in general formed a major theme in comments on Bindel’s and Pollitt’s, but not Silver’s, texts. Many commenters argued that feminist definitions of sexual violence ruined sex, effectively deploying the “feminist killjoy” trope noted in Braithwaite’s (2014) study of online gaming forums. In this case, commenters argued that feminists want to redefine normal sexual activity to the detriment of men. One complained, it’s rather sad to see how many women on these threads are unwilling to take responsibility for their actions when it comes to sex. If you are drunk you are still responsible for giving consent, if you don’t want sex without a condom check it yourself whether your partner has it or not. Having second thoughts and regret the day after is a poor excuse for trying to ruin someone’s life with a very serious accusation like rape. (hfakos, 2010)
Another said, “None off [sic] you Guardian feminists speaks Swedish. If you did, you would realise there is a very vigorous debate in Sweden about what many call the witch hunts against men” (pelleneroth, 2010). This same commenter later quoted and linked to an article in which Assange called Sweden the “Saudi Arabia of feminism” (pelleneroth, 2010). Another commenter complained, “Feminism keeps bastardising words like rape, misogyny etc” (thetrashheap, 2010). Bindel came in for accusations of “typical hardcore feminist anti-men rantery,” while another commenter dismissed her argument saying, “[c]itations needed. (Preferably not from the feminists)” (BobJanova, 2012; Generian, 2012). Only one comment on Silver’s article suggested anti-feminism predicting “that rape activists will come crawling out of the woodwork to denounce you [Silver]” because he did not offer an analysis “more heavily weighted in favor of the women’s testimony” (jjfad, 2010).
The feminist killjoy theme was also evident in debate over whether sex with a sleeping partner constituted rape. Commenters conflated the possibility of bringing sex crime charges against someone for sexual contact with a sleeping person with the outlawing of all sexual contact between sleepy partners. Thus one commenter complained, “Oh the pity; the joy of being awakened for a second round of love making by a passionate partner, arousing one from slumber is under threat. How sad that it has come to this, lawyers in our beds” (ginko, 2012). Three commenters on Pollit’s article and one on Bindel’s joked about the need for lawyers or consent forms in the bedroom: “Is 200 pages of fine print going to be sufficient? . . . Have you inserted your male organ half an inch too deep causing discomfort? Wait as sec, we’ve got a paragraph about it you f . . . rapist!” (Absynth, 2010). Only two commenters on Pollit’s article (including one Guardian staff writer) debated such comments while commenters on Bindel’s article divided more evenly, with many supporting her criticism of Galloway’s comments.
Many comments on Pollit (2010) and Silver (2010) supplemented arguments from Assange’s defense, current in the news at the time, with rumors about the complainants, sometimes providing links to further reading about those rumors. For example, one of Silver’s commenters repeated the “honeytrap” theory, linking to a news blog titled “Assange Accuser Worked With U.S. Funded, C.I. A. Tied Anti-Castro Group” (Mike 71, 2010). Three comments on Pollitt’s article repeated reports that Ms. A. attended a party with Assange after the alleged assault and had allowed him to stay in her flat and taken a “trophy photo” of him in her bed, and that Ms. W. bought him breakfast (KrustytheKlown, 2010; pelleneroth, 2010; Zdzislaw, 2010). Commenters also reiterated the “women scorned” theme, for example, a commenter on Silver’s article claimed, “He wouldn’t answer his phone to them, they developed the ‘I’ve [sic] been used syndrome (even when they had consensual sex) and went to the cops to start the hornets buzzing in their nest. RETALITORY NONSENSE” (downundersoloutions, 2010).
In response, other commenters reframed interpretations of the complainants’ conduct, although I saw no evidence of such reframing changing commenters’ positions. For example, one commenter explained, “What the other woman said or tweeted afterwards . . . has no bearing on whether or not she was raped. I know women who have continued to live with their rapists for months, even years, bought them birthday presents and ironed their shirts” (Rozainaziara, 2010). Another pointed out that it is “perfectly normal for women not to report rape, or to wait some time before doing so, or to be prompted to do so when they find out that the man concerned has done something similar to someone else” (Neutronstar, 2010). No other commenters responded to these arguments.
In the absence of anti-feminist vitriol, Silver’s comments provided a more measured debate over the allegations. More than a third of commenters who disagreed with Silver’s argument about the political context of the allegations pointed out the predictability of sexual violence in certain contexts. For example, one comment hyperlinked to a blog with statistics on rape allegations and argued “there are some underlying conditions you are ignoring about how easy and common rape is for powerful, well-connected men and how often and easily they get away with it” (G, 2010). Two commenters compared Assange’s supporters to Polanski’s, as Pollitt had in the Guardian the same month (Don, 2010; Groundhog, 2010). Another comment pointed out, “Violence against women is the *norm* in our country and internationally” (John Sanbonmatsu, 2010). Other commenters noted, as one put it, “the long history of rape apologism and victim-blaming that exists in the legal system, and the culture at large” (Don, 2010). While a few of Silver’s commenters joked about the allegations as being over a broken condom, others refuted them by clarifying the nature of the allegations in relation to U.S. laws and one linked to a Rape Crisis Center blog on the case (Rachel, 2010). Commenters’ concern with violence against women did not attract accusations of feminist extremism or misogynist abuse, perhaps reflecting Silver’s generally liberal readership.
Conclusion
My analysis of digital news coverage and reader comments about the rape allegations against Assange shows fierce disagreement over constructions of sexual violence. Many texts uncritically repeated Assange’s defense, which deployed stereotypes about rape victims and perpetrators along with anti-feminist rhetoric. Major themes drawn from the defense and repeated in news coverage and comments represented Assange as a free-speech outlaw fallen victim to extreme feminist definitions of rape and malicious women scorned. Thus, the case became a flash-point for debate over feminist constructions of sexual violence.
Feminist writers who opined on the allegations and criticized coverage of them attracted commenters who railed against feminism for seeking to criminalize sex and men. The trope of the feminist killjoy ran through comments on feminist-authored articles. Whether in jokes about lawyers in the bedroom or musings on the joy of waking up to sex, commenters claimed that feminists wanted to ruin sex. However, commenters also weighed-in to support feminist writers and dispute minimization of the allegations against Assange. Furthermore, Silver’s argument that the allegations were probably false prompted commenters to introduce feminist analysis of sexual violence into the conversation, for example, by citing research on the commonality of sexual violence and low rates of false allegations.
Controversy over feminist constructions of rape contributed to the case making “good copy.” Therefore, reporters rehashed debate about the case from blogs and social media. Addley’s (2010) article covered online threats against and rumors about the complainants, effectively recirculating those rumors to a larger audience although her article condemned the misogyny of such attacks. By contrast, Adams’s (2010) report on feminist blogging and protest over the case linked feminist commentary on the case to a wider audience. Thus, the clash between feminist and anti-feminist constructions of sexual violence playing out in blogs and social media provided controversial material which added drama to reporting on the allegations.
Finally, my analysis points to a more general salience of controversy over constructions of sexual violence for mainstream digital news outlets. In 2010, Pollitt compared Assange’s supporters to defenders of Polanski who cannot accept that a man whose work they admire may be sexually violent in his private life. Interestingly, two commenters on Silver’s article independently made the same observation about Polanski and Assange supporters. Similarly, stories on Galloway’s 2012 remarks compared him to other politicians and entertainers who have made ill-informed comments about rape and been mocked by feminists on social media (Bindel, 2012; Editorial, 2012; Freedland, 2012; Freeman 2012).
Further research about reporting on public figures propagating rape myths could illuminate the influence of feminist constructions of sexual violence on what can and cannot be said about rape as commentators apply the lessons of past high profile cases to subsequent ones. Future research could also trace the extent to which news texts on high profile rape cases identify rape myths in defense strategies and whether this produces more critical commentary on such strategies. Thus, although my analysis shows that news reports continue to uncritically repeat rape myths propagated as a defense strategy, the persistence of feminist critique and newsworthiness of controversy over constructions of sexual violence indicates fomenting change.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.