The Mediated Portrayal of Intimate Partner Violence in True Crime Podcasts: Strangulation, Isolation, Threats of Violence, and Coercive Control

Abstract

In this directed qualitative content analysis of four season-long true crime podcasts, the researcher examined how different types of intimate partner violence (IPV) were portrayed. Across the podcasts, controlling behaviors, emotional abuse, and coercive control were commonly depicted. Physical violence was not the most common form of abuse depicted, but it was presented in sensationalistic ways—with a pointed focus on strangulation and bruising. Overall, the podcasts provided a much more realistic portrayal of IPV at the individual level than traditional news sources, yet did not go far enough in describing the societal conditions that permit abuse.

‘My Favourite Genre Is Missing People’: Exploring How Listeners Experience True Crime Podcasts in Australia

“…Feminist scholars have critiqued true crime's tendency to provide in-depth psychological explorations of the mind and motivations of perpetrators with limited emphasis on women victims, who become the proxy for audiences to enjoy the affective experience of getting 'inside the killer's mind' (Murley 2019: 219). Although recent research into representations of domestic violence in TCPs has shown that long-form podcasts focus on recognising the role of context and male entitlement in domestic violence (Slakoff 2022), participants' desire for psychology and motivations suggests the potential continuation of these patterns and the importance of systematically exploring violence against women narratives in Australian TCPs.…”

“…This subversive potential has also been noted by Murley (2019), who argues in her analysis of four first-person female true crime memoirs that these texts can explore trauma and the misogyny of violence against women while simultaneously critiquing the exploitation embedded in the genre. Additionally, Slakoff's (2022) analysis of the portrayal of domestic violence in long-form TCPs found that the podcasts recognised the role of context and male entitlement in domestic violence. Moreover, others have recognised TCPs as informal justice mechanisms that utilise the efforts of hosts, listeners and family members to seek justice in response to the formal justice system's longstanding failures in addressing and recognising violence against women (Pâquet 2021).…”