Detecting Victim Blaming Biases Using Social Media

ABSTRACT

In attempts to identify and remove biased individuals from a pool of potential jurors, attorneys have resorted to real-time social media investigations, looking at the opinions and affiliations of candidates. Attorneys’ conclusions are based less on founded research and more on their own personal opinions and common-sense theories. This study investigated the relationship between self-reported Facebook “sharing”/“liking” behavior and victim blaming in a sexual assault scenario. Using an online questionnaire, participants indicated how they would interact with controversial memes and news articles on Facebook, gave a recommended verdict and sentencing length for a sexual assault vignette, as well as completed a rape myth acceptance scale. Logistic and linear regression analyses showed that both gender and liberal sharing behavior were significant predictors of verdict decision and sentencing length. Women were more likely to find a defendant guilty than men, and jurors who share more liberal-leaning posts on Facebook were more likely to give a longer sentencing length. Results suggest that Facebook post-sharing could be a useful gauge of jurors’ attitudes.

KEYWORDS:

• voir dire
• juror selection
• Facebook
• rituximab
• social media
• rape myths

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.