Don't f**k with true crime fans in the narrative

Jones, Bethan 2026. Don't f**k with true crime fans in the narrative. Meyers, E. A., Froula, A., Horeck, T. and Lenos, M., eds. Televising True Crime in the Digital Age, London, UK: Routledge, pp. 157-174. (10.4324/9781003475781-13)

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Abstract

True crime has always fascinated the public, from the Whitechapel murders in 1800s London to the Gabby Petito missing person's case. Books, documentaries, docu-dramas, and podcasts have proliferated with audiences' appetite for true crime content apparently unsated. This growth in true crime content has converged with the expansion of participatory culture and user-generated content afforded by web 2.0, enabling viewers to engage in practices of citizen investigation, websleuthing, and forensic fandom. As discussion, theories, and investigations take place on social media, however, they have also made their way into true crime documentaries themselves. Rather than simply being the audience for this content, viewers are now also the subject. Undertaking a content analysis of true crime documentaries which discuss investigations by members of the public, I trace the evolution of the viewer-as-subject and examine the ways in which true crime fans are depicted on-screen. I argue that the position of active viewers has devolved from the celebratory to the condemnatory, reflecting attitudes toward fans and fandom seen during and prior to research on fandom beginning in the early 1990s, and that there are ethical issues to consider not only in depicting victims of crime but in those fans and viewers who investigate them. I suggest that there is a level of hypocrisy at play in discussions of forensic fandom in more recent true crime documentaries, and questions of ethics which surround the production and consumption of the genre need to also be considered when the consumer becomes the produced.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Journalism, Media and Culture
Publisher:	Routledge
ISBN:	9781003475781
Last Modified:	16 Jun 2026 11:18
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/187585

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