It's not all R@p!s+$, M!rd3r3r$ and Ki!!3r$: true crime activism on TikTok

The current avid fascination with true crime sits uneasily in a society still newly attuned to issues of systemic violence and misogyny brought to light by the Me Too movement. Against a backdrop of civil activism, true crime conventions are being reworked by female creators who seek to challenge the genre’s longstanding ethical issues. In ‘mainstream’ long-form documentaries like Amazon Prime Video’s Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer (Wood 2020) or Starz’s Confronting a Serial Killer (Berlinger 2021), the centralisation of female voices in front of and behind the camera offers the true crime genre a new raison d’être by focusing narratives on victims’ lives and on the systemic failures that made those victims vulnerable to violent crime. Alongside these revisions offered in traditional media, social media platforms such as YouTube have also provided spaces for amateur content creators to rework true crime narratives, sometimes in combination with popular subgenres such as the makeup tutorial, in a manner that resonates with and broadens access to the genre for their younger audiences (Hobbs and Hoffman, 2022).

More recently, an even more informal style of true crime is quickly gaining popularity and influence among the genre’s younger fans. #truecrimetiktok currently has over 4.1 billion views on the social media platform TikTok, making it a sizable part of the ever-growing networks of true crime consumption. In this chapter, we position TikTok as an arena in which women content creators, many of whom have had both personal experiences with crime and negative encounters with the more mainstream - and commercial - side of the true crime genre, can criticise not only the exploitation of victims specifically within the genre, but also the legal and social systems that enable gender-based violence. In highlighting creators who challenge the problematic aspects of existing true crime content, promote lesser known cases, advocate for their personal stories, or engage with issues surrounding wider cultural movements such as Me Too and Black Lives Matter, we recognise the important ways in which the platform can empower TikTokers to undertake forms of responsive, action-oriented activism. In the following work, we provide a detailed analysis of the feeds from an array of content creators, including those who seek to be ‘influencers’ within the wider true crime community, those fighting for information about missing loved ones, or those working from within the justice system to enact change. In reading their activities as forms of digital activism, we offer the optimistic view that TikTok has the potential to exist as a subversive space within wider true crime networks.