480
Views
0
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Articles

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

ORCID Icon & ORCID Icon
Pages 130-146 | Received 18 Apr 2023, Accepted 09 Dec 2023, Published online: 17 Dec 2023

References

  • Ahmed, S. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
  • Archibald, M. M., R. C. Ambagtsheer, M. G. Casey, and M. Lawless. 2019. “Using Zoom Videoconferencing for Qualitative Data Collection: Perceptions and Experiences of Researchers and Participants.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 18 (1): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919874596.
  • Barnes, C. 2023. Deconstructing True Crime Literature. Cham: Springer Nature.
  • Bautista, J. R., and T. C. Lin. 2017. “Nurses’ Use of Mobile Instant Messaging Applications: A Uses and Gratifications Perspective.” International Journal of Nursing Practice 23 (5): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijn.12577.
  • Biressi, A. 2004. “Inside/Out: Private Trauma and Public Knowledge in True Crime Documentary.” Screen 45 (4): 401–412. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/45.4.401.
  • Boling, K. S., and K. Hull. 2018. “Undisclosed Information— Serial is My Favorite Murder: Examining Motivations in the True Crime Podcast Audience.” Journal of Radio & Audio Media 225 (1): 92–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529.2017.1370714.
  • Bondebjerg, I. 2014. “Documentary and Cognitive Theory: Narrative, Emotion and Memory.” Media and Communication 2 (1): 13–22. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v2i1.17.
  • Bruzzi, S. 2016. “Making a Genre: The Case of the Contemporary True Crime Documentary.” Law and Humanities 10 (2): 249–280. https://doi.org/10.1080/17521483.2016.1233741.
  • Buozis, M. 2017. “Giving Voice to the Accused: Serial and the Critical Potential of True Crime.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 14 (3): 254–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2017.1287410.
  • Butler, J. 2004. Precarious Life. The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York and London: Verso.
  • Butler, J., Z. Gambetti, and L. Sabsay. 2016. Vulnerability in Resistance. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Chan, C. D., and L. B. Farmer. 2017. “Making the Case for Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis with LGBTGEQ+ Persons and Communities.” Journal of LGBT Issues in Counseling 11 (4): 285–300. https://doi.org/10.1080/15538605.2017.1380558.
  • Chiricos, T. G., S. Eschholz, and M. Gertz. 1997. “Crime, News and Fear of Crime: Toward an Identification of Audience Effects.” Social Problems 44: 342–357. https://doi.org/10.2307/3097181.
  • Chung, M., G. J. Munno, and B. Moritz. 2015. “Triggering Participation: Exploring the Effects of Third-Person and Hostile Media Perceptions on Online Participation.” Computers in Human Behavior 53: 452–461. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.06.037.
  • Compton, A. T. 2019. “Young Men and Dead Girls: A Rhetorical Analysis of True Crime.” Master´s Thesis, University of Central Oklahoma. Shareok Advancing Oklahoma Scholarship, Research and Institutional Memory. https://hdl.handle.net/11244/325106.
  • Couldry, N. 2012. Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
  • Countryeconomy.com. 2022. https://countryeconomy.com.
  • Cruz, L. 2015, June 11. “The New True Crime: Telling Stories about Murder for the 21st Century.” The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/06/true-detective-serial-thejinx/393575/.
  • Davison, W. P. 1983. “The Third-Person Effect in Communication.” Public Opinion Quarterly 47 (1): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1086/268763.
  • Dolliver, M. J., J. L. Kenney, L. W. Reid, and A. Prohaska. 2018. “Examining the Relationship between Media Consumption, Fear of Crime, and Support for Controversial Criminal Justice Policies Using a Nationally Representative Sample.” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 34 (4): 399–420. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043986218787734.
  • Doob, A. N., and G. E. MacDonald. 1979. “Television Viewing and Fear of Victimization: Is the Relationship Causal?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 (2): 170–179. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.37.2.170.
  • Doughty, K. A. 2018. “Exploring the Existence of a “documentary effect”: Examination of True Crime Documentaries on Judgments of Evidence Manipulation and Perceptions of Police.” Master’s thesis, Arizona State University.
  • Eschholz, S. 1997. “The Media and Fear of Crime: A Survey of the Research.” University of Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy 9: 37–60.
  • Evans, B. 2020. “Screen Memories in True Crime Documentary: Trauma, Bodies, and Places in The Keepers (2017) and Casting JonBenet (2017).” In Places of Traumatic Memory, edited by A. L. Hubbell, N. Akagawa, S. Rojas-Lizana, and A. Pohlman, 263–283. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52056-4_13
  • Finlay, L. 2011. Phenomenology for Therapists: Researching the Lived World. Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119975144.
  • Fishman, M., and G. Cavender. 1998. Entertaining Crime: Television Reality Programs. New York: Routledge.
  • Gerbner, G., and L. Gross. 1976. “Living with Television: The Violence Profile.” Journal of Communication 26 (2): 172–199. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1976.tb01397.x.
  • Guest, G., K. MacQueen, and E. Namey. 2012. Applied Thematic Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483384436
  • Guest, G., E. Namey, and K. McKenna. 2017. “How Many Focus Groups are Enough? Building an Evidence Base for Nonprobability Sample Sizes.” Field Methods 29 (1): 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X16639015.
  • Gunther, A. C., R. M. Perloff, and Y. Tsfati. 2007. “Public Opinion and the Third-Person Effect.” In The Sage Handbook of Public Opinion, edited by W. Donsbach and M. Traugott, 184–191. Thousands Oak, CA: Sage.
  • Hennink, M. M., B. N. Kaiser, and M. B. Weber. 2019. “What Influences Saturation? Estimating Sample Sizes in Focus Group Research.” Qualitative Health Research 29 (10): 1483–1496. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732318821692.
  • Hernandez, M. A. 2019. “True Injustice: Cultures of Violence and Stories of Resistance in the New True Crime.” IdeaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Humboldt State University 3 (13): 77–89.
  • Horeck, T. 2014. “‘A Film That Will Rock You to Your Core’: Emotion and Affect in Dear Zachary and the Real Crime Documentary.” Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal 10 (2): 151–167. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659014540293.
  • Horeck, T. 2019. Justice on Demand: True Crime in the Digital Streaming Area. Detroit: Wayne University Press.
  • Hyvönen, M., M. Karlsson, and M. Eriksson. 2020. “The Politics of True Crime: Vulnerability and Documentaries on Murder in Swedish Public Service Radio’s P3 Documentary.” In Vulnerability in Scandinavian Art Culture, edited by A. M. Dancus, M. Hyvönen, and M. Karlsson, 291–314. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Jones, B. 2022. “Websleuthing, Participatory Culture and the Ethics of True Crime Content.” Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics 19 (3–4): 52–59.
  • Kaader, M. 2019. Crime and Behavior. An Introduction to Criminal and Forensic Psychology. Singapore: World Scientific.
  • Katz, E., J. G. Blumler, and M. Gurevitch. 1974. “Utilization of Mass Communication by the Individual.” In The Uses of Mass Communications: Current Perspectives on Gratifications Research, edited by J. G. Blumler and E. Katz, 19–31. Beverly Hills: Sage.
  • Kenney, M. 2021. “That’s News to Me: A Content Analysis of the Portrayal of Perpetrators of Mass Murder in Media Communications.” PhD Thesis, Elizabethtown College. https://jayscholar.etown.edu/terms_of_use.html.
  • Kite, J., and P. Phongsavan. 2017. “Insights for Conducting Real-Time Focus Groups Online Using a Web Conferencing Service.” F1000Research 6: 1–13. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.10427.2.
  • LaChance, D., and P. Kaplan. 2020. “Criminal Justice in the Middlebrow Imagination: The Punitive Dimensions of Making a Murderer.” Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal 16 (1): 81–96. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659019835249.
  • Larke-Walsh, G. S. 2020. “Injustice Narratives in a Post-truth Society: Emotional Discourses and Social Purpose in Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four.” Studies in Documentary Film 15 (1): 89–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1725996.
  • Latora, M. M. 2020. “Netflix and Kill: A Framing and Uses and Gratifications Comparative Analysis of Serial Killer Representations in the Media.” Master’s Thesis, Illinois State University.
  • Liska, A. E., and W. Baccaglini. 1990. “Feeling Safe by Comparison: Crime in the Newspaper.” Social Problems 37 (3): 360–374. https://doi.org/10.2307/800748.
  • Maher, S., and S. Cake. 2023. “Innovation in True Crime: Generic Transformation in Documentary Series.” Studies in Australasian Cinema 17 (1–2): 95–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/17503175.2023.2224617.
  • McCabe, R. 2021. “Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes and Affective Responses to the True Crime Documentary.” Studies in Documentary Film 16 (1): 38–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2021.1874236.
  • Mccabe, R. 2022. “Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes and Affective Responses to the True Crime Documentary.” Studies in Documentary Film 16 (1): 38–54. http://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2021.1874236.
  • Meeks, T. L. 2021. “Media History of True Crime: The Genre is the Message.” Master’s Thesis, Idaho State University. ProQuest. https://www.proquest.com/openview/a8e15d752b4b05ee0dfe71deb7951f92/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y.
  • Miller, R. M., C. D. Chan, and L. B. Farmer. 2018. “Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: A Contemporary Qualitative Approach.” Counselor Education and Supervision 57 (4): 240–254. https://doi.org/10.1002/ceas.12114.
  • Murley, J. 2008. The Rise of True Crime: 20th-Century Murder and American Popular Culture. Westport, CT: Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
  • Pietkiewicz, I., and J. A. Smith. 2014. “A Practical Guide to Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis in Qualitative Research Psychology.” Psychological Journal 20: 7–14. https://doi.org/10.14691/CPPJ.20.1.7.
  • Portwood-Stacer, L. 2012. “Media Refusal and Conspicuous non-Consumption: The Performative and Political Dimensions of Facebook Abstention.” New Media & Society 15 (7): 1041–1057. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444812465139.
  • Punnett, I. C. 2018. Toward a Theory of True Crime Narratives. A Textual Analysis. New York and Oxon: Routledge.
  • Richard, B., S. A. Sivo, M. Orlowski, R. C. Ford, J. Murphy, D. N. Boote, and E. L. Witta. 2021. “Qualitative Research via Focus Groups: Will Going Online Affect the Diversity of Your Findings?” Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 62 (1): 32–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/1938965520967769.
  • Rickard, D. 2023a. “Truth or Doubt: Questioning Legal Outcomes in True-Crime Documentaries.” Law and Humanities 17 (1): 60–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/17521483.2022.2148385.
  • Rickard, D. 2023b. The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence. Vol. 30. NYU Press.
  • Roche, S. P., J. T. Pickett, and M. Gertz. 2016. “The Scary World of Online News? Internet News Exposure and Public Attitudes toward Crime and Justice.” Journal of Quantitative Criminology 32 (2): 215–236. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-015-9261-x.
  • Rubin, A. M. 2002. “The Uses-and-Gratifications Perspective of Media Effects.” In Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, edited by J. Bryant and D. Zillmann, 525–548. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  • Sacco, V. 1995. “Media Constructions of Crime.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 539 (1): 141–154. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716295539001011.
  • Sandoval, L. E. 2018. “Socio-economics Characteristics and Spatial Persistence of Homicides in Colombia, 2000-2010.” Estudios de Economía 45 (1): 51–77. http://hdl.handle.net/10419/194260.
  • Seltzer, M. 2013. True Crimes. Observations on Violence and Modernity. New York: Routledge.
  • Shi, L. 2021. “A Neglected Population: Media Consumption, Perceived Risk, and Fear of Crime among International Students.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 36 (5–6): NP2482–NP2505.
  • Shi, L., Y. Lu, and J. T. Pickett. 2020. “The Public Salience of Crime, 1960–2014: Age-period-cohort and time-series analyses.” Criminology; An interdisciplinary Journal 58 (3): 568–593. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12248.
  • Skogan, W., and M. Maxfield. 1981. Coping with Crime. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
  • Soto-Sanfiel, M. T., and D. F. Montoya-Bermúdez. 2023. “Consumption of True Crimes and Perceived Vulnerability: Does the Cultural Context Matter?” International Communication Gazette 85 (7): 560–579. https://doi.org/10.1177/17480485221131474.
  • Stebbins, R. A. 2001. Exploratory Research in the Social Sciences. Sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412984249.
  • Stoneman, E., and J. Packer. 2021. “Reel Cruelty: Voyeurism and Extra-Juridical Punishment in True-Crime Documentaries.” Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal 17 (3): 401–419. https://doi-org.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/10.1177/1741659020953596
  • Sun, Y., Z. Pan, and L. Shen. 2008. “Understanding the Third-Person Perception: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Communication 58 (2): 280–300. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.00385.x.
  • Syvertsen, T. 2017. Media Resistance. Protest, Dislike, Abstention. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Thomas, D. R. 2006. “A General Inductive Approach for Analyzing Qualitative Evaluation Data.” American Journal of Evaluation 27 (2): 237–246. https://doi.org/10.1177/1098214005283748.
  • Traylor, C. M. 2019. “Serialized Killing: Usability and User Experience in the True Crime Genre.” Master’s Thesis, Ball State University.
  • Unnever, J. D., and F. T. Cullen. 2010. “The Social Sources of Americans’ Punitiveness: A Test of Three Competing Models.” Criminology; An interdisciplinary Journal 48 (1): 99–129. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2010.00181.x.
  • Villegas-Simon, I., and M. T. Soto-Sanfiel. 2021a. “Adaptation of Scripted Television Formats: Factors and Mechanisms of Cultural Identity in a Global World.” International Journal of Communication 15: 17.
  • Villegas-Simon, I., and M. T. Soto-Sanfiel. 2021b. “Similarities in Adaptations of Scripted Television Formats: The Global and the Local in Transnational Television Culture.” Poetics 86: 101524.
  • Vitis, L. 2023. “My Favourite Genre is Missing People': Exploring How Listeners Experience True Crime Podcasts in Australia.” International Journal for Crime, Justice & Social Democracy 12 (2): 97–110. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8547-3402.
  • Vitis, L., and V. Ryan. 2023. “True Crime Podcasts in Australia: Examining Listening Patterns and Listener Perceptions.” Journal of Radio and Audio Media 30 (1): 291–314. https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529.2021.1974446.
  • Walters, E. 2021. “Netflix Originals: The Evolution of True Crime Television.” The Velvet Light Trap (88): 25–37. http://doi.org/10.7560/VLT8803.
  • Washak, J. R. 2018. “Fatally Female: A Study of the Treatment of Women in True Crime Narratives.” Master's Thesis, Rhode Island College. https://digitalcommons.ric.edu/etd/259.
  • Woodstock, L. 2014. “Media Resistance: Opportunities for Practice Theory and New Media.” International Journal of Communication 8: 1983–2001. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/2415/1186.
  • Wright, H. 2020. “Ethics and True Crime: Setting a Standard for the Genre.” Book Publishing Final Research Paper 51. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/eng_bookpubpaper/51.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.