In a new research project, Laura Beth Nielsen interrogates the stories true crime podcasters tell about law and justice.
While the last three decades have seen significant declines in the violent crime rate in the United States, Americans’ appetite for true crime stories isn’t slowing down. While TV and movies have long been central to the genre, true crime podcasts have recently renewed its popularity. According to the Pew Research Center, about a third of American podcast listeners say they regularly listen to true crime podcasts; Pew’s research also finds that true crime is also the most common topic among top ranked podcasts in 2022, making the genre a dominant presence in the podcasting world.
While there are popular, award-winning podcasts which focus on a journalist’s first-hand investigation of a crime—such as Serial, the highly influential crime-focused podcast series hosted by Sarah Koenig—many true crime podcasters have a very different approach. It’s common for hosts of true crime podcasts, who position themselves as amateurs with little expertise, to speculate about crimes with their cohosts and audiences. Rather than doing their own investigating, they often use publicly available sources—like Wikipedia, books, or documentaries—to gather information to support their hypothesizing. Many of these podcasts have a lighthearted or sardonic tone; they universally seek to entertain listeners.
While this lighthearted and entertaining approach to the genre is very popular, it has also had its share of critics, and true crime podcasts have long been derided as low-brow entertainment at best and exploitative at worst. As widespread as discourse about these podcasts is, there is little empirical research which has sought to understand these podcasts in a more nuanced way.
Laura Beth Nielsen’s new research project aims to fill this gap in research by contributing a more complex understanding of how true crime podcasts create narratives about crime and justice. Nielsen is a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation and is the Board of Lady Managers of the Columbian Exposition Chair at Northwestern University, where she is also a Professor of Sociology. Drawing on her long career of cutting-edge research on legal consciousness, Nielsen’s project uses a technique called thematic content analysis to systemically examine a sample of episodes taken from five of the most popular true crime podcasts of 2022.
The research explores how true crime podcast hosts deploy personal voice, legal commentary, moral judgement, and emotion to make sense of crime, punishment, and legal authority. It will culminate in the publication of three papers. One paper will focus on the use of expertise in true crime podcasts, with particular interest in the role police “intuition,” forensic science, and insights from family members play in shaping podcast narratives of crimes. Another paper will explore storytelling as a community-building and information-ordering tool used by true crime podcasters in their work. A final paper will explore the role of emotions like fear, anger, curiosity, and anxiety in creating compelling true crime narratives; this paper will also consider how podcasters balance ethical concerns surrounding responsible reporting with the imperative to entertain their audiences.
Narratives help people understand the world and make sense of change and conflict. Public attitudes about criminal justice are changing, making true crime podcasts not just mere entertainment, but also a way in which listeners think about and make sense of criminality, justice, and the law. While Nielsen’s research focuses on true crime podcasts themselves and not on audience responses to podcasts, her investigation will lay the groundwork for further research into the various effects these podcasts have on their audiences. Nielsen’s approach to this foundational research is multi-faceted, and draws on scholarship in cultural sociology, media studies, and legal consciousness. By focusing on podcasts—a newcomer to the age-old genre of true crime—the research expands conversations about how legal consciousness is developed culturally and draws attention to a form of media that is hugely influential on many people’s thinking about the law.