True crime is a lucrative genre, topping ratings and spawning online communities. But despite its popularity — and its ability to highlight cases that need attention — the production of true crime has a dark side, often adding to the trauma experienced by victims’ loved ones.
University of Nebraska-Lincoln scholar Kelli Boling published new research highlighting the impacts of true crime media on the family and friends of crime victims. Through in-depth interviews with 20 co-victims — all of whom experienced their loved ones’ stories told through true crime media — Boling and co-author Danielle Slakoff of California State University, Sacramento, found that co-victims often have to wrestle with a dichotomy between feeling an immense loss of privacy amid grief and wanting the media’s help to keep a criminal case in the public eye in the pursuit of justice.
“There’s a horrible intrusiveness that’s never going to go away and often, it’s going to be covered for the rest of their lives,” Boling said. “On the flip side, being available to media helps them find leads in certain cases, especially in missing person cases. It keeps people talking about the cases and sometimes helps them change the narrative and correct inaccuracies.”
The qualitative research, published as two articles in Mass Communication and Society and Crime Media Culture
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