Depp–Heard case: Mediatization, secondary victimization, and platform logics

Abstract

This article examines the Depp–Heard case as a paradigmatic instance of mediatized justice in the era of digital platforms, investigating the transformation of secondary victimization processes within a context shaped by algorithmic visibility and online polarization. Treating the 2022 defamation trial as a revelatory case study, the paper adopts a qualitative interpretive approach that combines analysis of audiovisual materials (the docuseries, livestreamed trial excerpts), social media content (memes, hashtags, reaction videos), and online comments, drawing on a netnographic perspective. The analysis shows how the overlap between the judicial court and the “social court” produced a platformized mode of credibility attribution, in which testimony is fragmented, decontextualized, and evaluated as public performance. Platform affordances and engagement-driven algorithmic logics amplify already sedimented misogynistic cultural repertoires, intensifying dynamics of delegitimation and epistemic injustice toward women who report violence. Credibility thus becomes a continuously renegotiated property, exposed to diffuse surveillance and embedded within attention-based economies. The case allows for the advancement of three theoretical implications: the platformization of secondary victimization, the radicalization of the performative dimension of credibility, and the intersection between gender order and economies of visibility. The article concludes that mediatized justice in the digital ecosystem does not merely extend the principle of trial publicity, but qualitatively transforms the conditions of public recognition, with significant cultural and regulatory implications for the protection of women who report violence.

Keywords: Mediatized justice, secondary victimization, platformized credibility, digital misogyny, algorithmic visibility.