Are True Crime Podcasts Feminist?

What a Content Analysis of the Most-Listened-To True Crime Podcasts Tells Us

Kathleen Rodgers

ABSTRACT 

This chapter examines the ways that true crime podcasts present gender-based violence, whether these depictions diverge from previous forms of mass media representations, and whether it can be argued that true crime podcasts advance an intersectional feminist agenda with respect to gender-based violence. To answer these questions, a content analysis of the five most-listened-to female-hosted true crime podcasts examines the topics and groups of people that are most represented, how gender-based violence specifically is represented, and whether or not the interactivity provided by the podcast medium is important in influencing representations of gender-based violence in these podcasts. The analysis reveals that true crime podcasts have failed to present a vision of gender-based violence that profoundly challenges the dominant cultural images of gender-based violence. The analysis also reveals that, like other forms of media, true crime podcasts persist in distorting many important dynamics of gender-based violence and in this sense, fail to present gender-based violence in ways that challenge prevailing stereotypes and myths about women and violence. However, there are also indications, in both the podcasts examined and the broader podcasting field, that feminist public discourses are shaping representations of women and violence in important ways.


True Crime and Women

Edition 1st Edition

First Published 2024

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003405054-7/true-crime-podcasts-feminist-kathleen-rodgers