#TrueCrime: Digital Culture, Ethics and True Crime Audiences

This collection offers the first book-length study of user-generated, social media-based true crime content. In recent years, the true crime community has morphed from consumers to producers, using social networking sites such as Instagram, Reddit, YouTube and TikTok as platforms to discuss, share and create true crime-related materials. In the popular press, the ethical pitfalls of the low-threshold styles of content creation that typify social media true crime have made headlines, yet social media can offer true crime consumers and producers alternative avenues of expression that are both individually empowering and potentially genre-changing. In essence, the same low thresholds that allow for conjecture and conspiracy also afford fans space for critique and analysis, while the vast range of user-generated materials that will be the focus of this collection provides consumers with opportunities to find content that aligns with their personal, political and cultural preferences.

The book will consider the large and varied true crime community, outlining their at times contradictory needs and desires, from those who wish to partake in acts of sleuthing and fannish behaviours, to those who seek spaces to articulate otherwise marginalised opinions and challenge what they perceive to be problematic practices. In exploring social media true crime rather than the long-form, professional productions that have so far been the focus of academic literature on the subject, this book will inevitably be able to speak of a wider set of voices, including the important perspectives being offered by survivors of crime or family members of victims. In doing so, the work will challenge the often-limiting nature of the true crime genre and its tendency to focus on White, female victims.

Specifically, the authors in this collection consider an assortment of textual outputs, ranging from YouTube unboxing videos, alternate reality games on TikTok, the comment sections of shock websites and the activities of true crime influencers. Furthermore, the scholars within this work deal with a range of themes that are at the centre of the wider true crime discourse, including issues surrounding representation, ethics and audience reception.

This book will appeal to those researching the true crime genre, fan practices, contemporary social media usage and the ethics of screened representation.