Explaining aversion to true crime documentaries: why do audiences refuse to watch them?

ABSTRACT

Despite the widespread fascination with media content, scholarly attention often overlooks aversion, refusal, or resistance to it. This qualitative study explores the rejection of True Crime documentaries (TCD) by examining viewers in Colombia and Singapore, identifying reasons for refusal and exploring perceived effects. Results show that emotional distress is a common factor explaining refusal to TCDs. Notably, differences emerge between the two samples: Singaporean participants dislike TCDs due to a cultural disconnect tied to their low murder rate, and they lack precise notions about TCD effects. In contrast, Colombians cite the need to escape everyday violence and avoid glorifying criminals. These findings suggest that cultural context, including murder rates, influences viewers' aversion to TCDs, underscoring the importance for TV managers to consider localization in global content distribution decisions.

KEYWORDS:

• True crimes
• media refusal
• media resistance
• third person effect
• cross-cultural reception

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

M.T. Soto-Sanfiel

María T. Soto-Sanfiel. PhD in Audiovisual Communication. Associate Professor at the Department of Communications and New Media and Principal Researcher at the Centre for Trusted Internet and Community, both at the National University of Singapore.

Diego F. Montoya-Bermúdez

Diego F. Montoya-Bermúdez. PhD in Audiovisual Communication and Advertising from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Director of the Department of Communication and Language and member of the research group in Communication and Languages at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Cali.