Harnessing media as a site of change: locating public engagement with stories about violence against women in Australia

ABSTRACT

Australian violence prevention policies have highlighted that media representations reinforce and challenge the public’s understanding of violence against women. Current primary prevention strategies have attempted to harness the media’s influence by focusing on improving the quality of news reportage and the working practice of professional journalists. These strategies focus explicitly on news media as the site of public engagement. However, violence against women is depicted and discussed in various popular media sites in Australia. This article seeks to explore changes in the modes and locations of contemporary media representations of violence against women. Drawing from a case study of Australian true crime podcasts, this article demonstrates how alternative media resources have become powerful new sites of public engagement with information and stories about violence against women. This paper argues that primary prevention strategies must accommodate these changing domains of understanding.

KEYWORDS:

• News media
• primary prevention
• true crime
• true crime podcasts
• violence against women
• violence against women media

Introduction

Media representations shape community understandings of violence against women (VAW) (Carlisle et al., 2022; Flood & Pease, 2012; Hawley et al., 2018; Karageorgos et al., 2023). While this influence is recognised internationally, media depictions of VAW in Australia have been particularly influential. Over the past decade, dedicated news media coverage of VAW, particularly high-profile cases, has been instrumental in the implementation of formal violence responses, including royal commissions, legislative changes to affirmative consent and the criminalisation of coercive control (Hawley et al., 2018; Seear & Fraser, 2022). It has also set the backdrop for changes in community attitudes towards VAW (Coumarelos et al., 2023). Concomitantly, negative and limited coverage of violence perpetrated against Indigenous women has sustained public indifference towards victims while erasing their stories (Cripps, 2021).

As such, Australia’s primary prevention efforts have identified news media as a site for change. Current primary prevention strategies have attempted to harness the media’s influence over public perceptions by focusing on improving the quality of news reportage and the working practice of professional journalists (Our Watch, 2019). While the emphasis on news media is clearly beneficial, this approach is predicated on several assumptions. Specifically, that news media is the primary resource where the public consumes stories of VAW and to ensure media coverage is evidence-based, contextualised and respectful, interventions like guidelines, training and regulation should be targeted at professional journalists. Despite this, VAW is being depicted and discussed in various popular media sites, including online subcultural spaces, films, television and podcasts. As such, this article explores whether prevention strategies apply to this contemporary media landscape.

To do so, it begins by outlining the role of media in Australia’s approach to primary prevention and the role of social media and popular culture in shaping the public’s engagement with VAW. Then, drawing from a case study of Australian true crime podcasts (TCPs), which brings together current research into true crime and journalism in addition to examples of popular Australian TCPs, this article examines whether these resources align with or are reflected in Australia’s primary prevention strategies. Firstly, it highlights that despite the focus on news media in primary prevention, TCPs have proliferated in Australia and become powerful new sites frequented by the public to engage with information and stories about VAW. It then explores how the stylistic and technical characteristics that solidify TCPs as important public resources on VAW aren’t easily captured in the current approach to prevention. Particularly as TCPs’ affective styles of storytelling can subvert best practice guidelines on sensationalising violence while their longer formats can align with best practice guidelines on contextualising violence.

Finally, this article draws from examples of popular Australian TCPs to demonstrate that while prevention strategies target journalists, TCPs are created by varied stakeholders like police, crime enthusiasts and advocates. Because of this, I argue that podcasts can align with best practice guidelines by prioritising the voices of victims-survivors and those whose stories are excluded from mainstream media. However, as law enforcement-focused TCPs are prominent, they also have the potential to subvert best practice standards by positioning police as ‘expert’ voices on VAW. Therefore, this paper concludes that primary prevention strategies must better accommodate the changing domains of understanding for VAW. If unaddressed, Australia’s efforts to harness the media as a prevention setting (Our Watch, 2021) and understand the full scope and nature of media depictions of VAW will be undermined.

News media and primary prevention strategies

In Australia, national and state violence prevention policies have highlighted that media representations reinforce and challenge the public’s understanding of VAW (Council of Australian Governments, 2019; Domestic Violence Victoria, 2015; Our Watch, 2019). The National plan to end violence against women and children 2022–2032 (Department of Social Services, 2022) identified the media as the site for preventative action, and Our Watch’s (2021) Change the story: A shared framework for the primary prevention of violence against women in Australia identifies the media as an integral part of the gendered drivers and reinforcing factors of violence. The framework also recognises news media as a setting and sector for action because news media can potentially promote and challenge the norms that sustain violence by condoning or misrepresenting VAW (Our Watch, 2021). Therefore, a core component of Australia’s approach to harnessing media for prevention has focused on how VAW is depicted in news media. For example, to address the media’s role in preventing violence, Our Watch recommends promoting ‘safe and appropriate media reporting of violence against women’ rather than sensationalistic reportage that condones violence (Our Watch, 2021, p. 72).

Strategies focused on the news media industry and its professionals have been implemented and recommended to meet this aim (Department of Social Services, 2022; Our Watch, 2021). One component of this strategy is the implementation of guidelines outlining ‘safe and appropriate’ reporting and rewarding best practice. For example, Our Watch’s (2019) national news reporting guidelines recommend prioritising the safety of survivors, naming violence, using active language to name the perpetrator, using a respectful tone and images, avoiding the sensationalisation of violence, acknowledging the role of gender inequality, drawing from VAW experts, sharing service options and providing context for the narrative (Our Watch, 2019). This national resource is complemented by a range of state-focused and territory-focused guidelines (Brown et al., 2021), including guidelines for reporting on Aboriginal people’s experiences of family violence (Kalinya, 2017) and reporting on sexual harassment (Our Watch, 2022). These guidelines are also reinforced by the Our Watch Awards (administered by The Walkley Foundation), which reward excellence in reporting on VAW and violence against children (The Walkley Foundation, 2023). Comprehensive reviews of successful approaches to embedding primary prevention in media affirm this approach of emphasising, monitoring and rewarding high-quality reporting (Sutherland et al., 2017).

The second core strategy for improving ‘safe and appropriate’ reporting is training journalists on reporting the gendered drivers of violence (Our Watch, 2021). Sutherland et al.’s (2017) synthesis of successful approaches to embedding primary prevention in Australian media notes that successful strategies combine reporting training for journalism students, practising journalists, community organisations and survivors (Sutherland et al., 2017). In their work on the effect of training programs for reporting VAW, Easteal et al. (2022) found that journalists who participated in the programs improved their use of social contextualisation, myth challenging, domestic violence resources and information about how to seek help in their writing. As such, the researchers recommended that accreditation incentives be offered to media employers to ensure more journalists benefit from this training (Easteal et al., 2022).

The third pillar of the current strategy is empowering professional bodies and statutory agencies to enforce the reporting standards outlined in the guidelines. Our Watch’s (2021, p. 95) recent strategy report recommends ‘strengthening [the] ability of [the] Australian Press Council and the Australian Communications and Media Authority to support the use of current guidelines and manage breaches’. It also recommended developing a specific practice standard on VAW reporting to complement the Statement of General Principles set out by the Australian Press Council (Our Watch, 2021) and creating guidelines for the potential application of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) Code of Ethics to VAW reporting (Our Watch, 2021). These recommendations reflect the role of professional bodies in regulating the standards of media depictions of VAW.

These interventions have had a positive effect. For example, Easteal et al.’s (2022) research on the effects of journalist training showed that training improved the quality of media reporting and the consistency of news coverage. Additionally, empirical research into the reporting of VAW has suggested that Australian news media coverage of VAW has improved (Karageorgos et al., 2023; Sutherland et al., 2017). However, the most recent Change the story report has identified the need for better awareness of best practice guidelines throughout the sector (Our Watch, 2021). While this approach is targeted, it also focuses on mainstream news media and journalists. Primary prevention research and policy has recommended that contemporary guidelines reflect the role of social media in the professional practice of journalists, and alternative media sources, such as podcasts, are briefly mentioned in Our Watch’s latest Change the story report (Sutherland et al., 2017); however, these strategies predominantly imagine the sites where the public are engaging with VAW on specific terms. The recommendations for regulation, guidelines, codes of ethics and training are tailored towards the mainstream print, broadcast and television news industry and professional journalists. In this strategy, news media outputs and journalists are presumed to be the primary formats for and authors of stories and information about VAW for the Australian public.

Shifting domains of understanding: social media and popular culture

However, VAW is routinely depicted in contemporary forums, which differ from mainstream news media. Additionally, the Australian public tie their ideas about what constitutes domestic violence to depictions in disparate mediums, from television to social media (Carlisle et al., 2022). One example of a shift in the domain of understanding for VAW that has been extensively explored is online activism. Survivors have used subcultural spaces like Instagram, Twitter and Reddit to document their experiences of violence and harassment, particularly in the aftermath of the #MeToo social movement (Loney-Howes, 2020; Salter, 2013; Vitis & Gilmour, 2017). The global use of this hashtag and related hashtags demonstrated that online spaces play a key role in constituting and contesting dominant narratives of VAW. For example, Loney-Howes (2020) research on online rape activism has highlighted that therapeutic online spaces emerged in the #MeToo movement where the public could challenge dominant violence narratives by sharing their own experiences. Additionally, research into the personal acknowledgment of coercive sexual experiences has found that survivors’ perceptions of their experiences were validated through the #MeToo movement because seeing online disclosures meant they learned they were not alone (Glos, 2019).

Research into online disclosure highlights that the mode of storytelling and where it occurs are important in shifting dominant narratives. For example, Loney-Howes (2020, p. 67) notes that online disclosures from survivors created ‘a new rape script that challenges the normative discourses regulating the ways rape, and its associated trauma, is and is not unspeakable’. These narratives could reach local and global audiences because the networked convergences between social media platforms allowed easy dissemination (Salter, 2013). Moreover, this direct-to-public approach undermined the authoritative position of journalists, law enforcement, social workers, legal actors and non-government organisations as ‘experts’ who have traditionally communicated survivor stories to the public (Loney-Howes, 2020).

Importantly, these changes resulted in converging and diverging narratives on VAW circulating between online discourses and legacy news media. For example, Seear and Fraser’s (2022) work on the coverage of #MeToo in mainstream Australian news opinion pieces found that while dominant #MeToo discourses focused on providing an account of survivors’ everyday experiences of violence, opinion pieces focused on violence and harassment perpetuated by high-profile individuals working in exceptional institutions. Additionally, while this shows a divergence between online and news discourses, narrative dynamics that shape the inclusion and exclusion of news media stories were also reproduced in #MeToo online discourses. For example, despite being framed as an invitation for all women to share their experiences, online discourses in the aftermath of #MeToo reproduced dynamics embedded in news media by prioritising the voices of middle-class, white, heterosexual women (Ison, 2019; Kagal et al., 2019; Ryan, 2019).

These findings of continuity and, specifically, discontinuity between online discourses and news reportage show that the public engages with varied VAW discourses via different mediums. This is supported by research into the community’s understanding of domestic violence in Australia. When describing their understanding of domestic violence, young people reference news media, popular culture and social media depictions (Carlisle et al., 2022). Also, empirical research into news media representations of domestic violence highlights how focusing exclusively on news media and excluding online discourses and popular culture media products is limited (Karageorgos et al., 2023). Despite this, there remains limited recognition of the contemporary media where the public seeks information about VAW outside of mainstream news and how the proposed policy, regulatory and legislative actions relate to them.

One primary example of a media form that has both ascended in popularity and routinely depicts real stories of VAW in Australia are TCPs. Australian TCPs are popular and prolific and routinely focus on real cases of VAW. Importantly, they also sit at the nexus between non-fiction and fiction narratives and have emerged as a new site for popular criminology because they prioritise affective audience experiences (Yardley et al., 2018). These podcasts are regularly produced by mainstream Australian media outlets, criminal legal agencies, crime enthusiasts and freelance journalists; however, they are not specifically accounted for among Australian prevention strategies.

Focusing prevention: the rise of TCPs as a platform for stories of violence against women

Despite current prevention strategies focusing on news reporting, TCPs saturate the Australian media landscape. The number of Australians who downloaded a podcast increased from 908,000 in 2014–2015 to 1.6 million in 2018–2019 (Australian Communications and Media Authority, 2019). The Australian Digital News Report representative survey of Australian consumers indicates that the number of Australians who listen to podcasts has increased, and this rise is pronounced for younger cohorts (Park et al., 2022). For example, 33% of Australians listened to a podcast in the last month, compared to 55% of gen Z and 54% of gen Y (Park et al., 2022). This builds on similar findings from the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (2020) nationally representative consumer survey, which found that 20% of Australian adults listened to a podcast in the previous seven days; the proportion was higher in the younger cohort. This rise in podcast listenership is complemented by the rise in Australian TCPs.

From 2005 to 2018, there were 1,152 unique TCPs internationally (Sherrill, 2020). Currently, there are approximately 154 Australian TCPs. Australian TCPs are produced by mainstream news organisations, born digital outlets, freelance journalists, police and community true crime enthusiasts. Major media organisations have swiftly incorporated TCPs into their range of offerings. For example, News Corp – through its various mastheads – has produced several TCPs and, after the popularity of The Teacher’s Pet, created True Crime Australia, a stand-alone website across its metropolitan mastheads that incorporates all its TCPs (News Corp Australia, 2018; Pash, 2019; Schwarz, 2019). Additionally, ABC and Nine Entertainment have produced popular podcasts like the Unravel series, Wrong Skin, Phoebe’s Fall and The Sure Thing. In the Australian podcast market, TCPs are highly favoured by listeners: consumer reviews have consistently ranked Australian independent TCP Casefile as the most popular podcast, and four of the top 20 podcasts are national and international TCPs (Triton Digital, 2023).

In addition to the public’s general interest in true crime, this increase in popularity is driven by several changes to the production and distribution of digital media. Poell et al. (2022, p. 1) note that the entrenchment of digital platforms as a site of news consumption has meant that born digital and legacy news organisations have had to orient production and dissemination around the logic of digital platforms, which they refer to as the ‘platformization of journalism’. Consequently, journalists are increasingly required to produce cross-platform news content because ‘platforms compel news organizations and individual journalists to create content ready-made for the forms and formats that dominate the contemporary digital landscape’ (Poell et al., 2022, p. 9). In response to these pressures, Twitter feeds, TikTok videos and podcasts have become part of mainstream journalists’ output.

Additionally, the pressure to raise revenue following the decline of print advertising has influenced the incorporation of TCPs in both legacy and born-digital news organisations (Poell et al., 2022). News organisations have had to pivot to subscription models and place content behind paywalls and offer subscribers distinct benefits (Poell et al., 2022). In Australia, TCPs have become new revenue streams. For example, News Corp originally included TCPs as features of paid subscriptions but recently launched a true crime digital subscription service on Apple Podcasts called ‘Crime X+’. Crime X+ consolidates their TCPs, offering listeners access to exclusive and ad-free podcasts for $5.99 per month. This decision has been described as an opportunity to diversify paid media products to grow revenue by ‘tapping into a specific audience need and desire for this content’ (News Corp Australia, 2022, para. 10) and funnel TCP listeners who are not News Corp news consumers towards News Corp mastheads (News Corp Australia, 2022). Consequently, TCPs have become embedded in the news media landscape, blurring the already tenuous boundary between true crime, investigative journalism and news reporting.

While major media outlets have produced several popular TCPs, low barriers to production and distribution have meant that independent and amateur podcasting has proliferated (Markman, 2012; Schlütz & Hedder, 2021). Additionally, long-tail distribution markets and the fact that TCPs remain largely free to consumers in an increasingly paywalled media environment¹ has allowed niche podcasts with small but dedicated audiences to succeed (Schlütz & Hedder, 2021). These conditions have meant that independent and crime enthusiast podcasts are commonplace. For example, in Australia, a significant portion of TCPs are independently produced. One of the most popular Australian podcasts – regardless of genre – is the independent TCP Casefile, produced by a true crime enthusiast. The success of Casefile demonstrates the potential for new sites to emerge outside the established media apparatuses in ways that cater to the public’s interest and subvert the dominant position of established journalists. Additionally, the success of Casefile will encourage other true crime enthusiasts and community members to produce their own podcasts, growing the TCP marketplace even further.

Importantly, these TCPs are dominated by a focus on VAW. Podcasts discuss various topics, including serial killings, cold cases, organised crime, state crime, domestic violence, sexual violence, wrongful convictions and incarceration. However, as with the broader true crime genre, VAW is a dominant subject (Vitis, 2021). In 2018, The Teacher’s Pet focused on the intimate partner homicide of Lynette Dawson; it has been one of Australia’s most successful TCPs (ABC, 2018). Moreover, in 2020, 61% of Casefile podcasts and 44% of Australian True Crime² podcasts focused on cases or accounts featuring the rape, murder or disappearance of women and girls (Vitis, 2021). The emphasis on VAW in TCPs is reflected in the views of Australian listeners, who have indicated a preference for stories focused on serial killers, missing persons, stranger homicide and, importantly, intimate partner homicide (Vitis & Ryan, 2021). When given a choice between podcasts, listeners gravitate towards podcasts focused on domestic and family violence perpetrated against women (Vitis, 2022). These industry dynamics have created the conditions for podcasts to become key outlets for crime entertainment focused on VAW. Further, their popularity will likely continue to encourage mainstream organisations, enthusiasts and criminal legal actors to produce more TCPs, further growing the number of media resources focused on VAW that sit outside news coverage.

Best practice guidelines and true crime podcast storytelling: authenticity, affect and participation

As noted, the Our Watch (2019) guidelines identify standards for the content and style of news reporting. In particular, section four recommends journalists ‘keep the tone respectful and appropriate’ (Our Watch, 2019, p. 5) and advises that violence should not be sensationalised, nor should overly dramatic language, unnecessary details or inappropriate references be utilised. The guidelines are underpinned by the expectation that stories presented to the public are evidence based, contextualised, respectful and do not make a spectacle of violence. These standards for tone and style raise important questions about whether these resources can be used to inform the new modes of storytelling used to communicate VAW to the public, like TCPs. As an amalgamation of the true crime genre and modern podcasting, TCPs blend fiction and non-fiction and aim to generate intimate and powerful feelings in the audience; they include casual conjecture and share detailed primate information about victims and crimes for the listener to speculate upon. The following section explores how these distinct modes of storytelling have both solidified TCPs as popular resources for the public while reflecting on whether they align with current guidelines.

As a genre, true crime refers to stories focused on cases or events involving crime, harm, criminalisation and the criminal legal system that are ‘shaped by the teller and imbued with [their] values and beliefs’ (Murley, 2008, p. 6). True crime traverses journalism, non-fiction, crime fiction and testimony narratives of modern social media (Punnett, 2018) in ways distinct from news reporting. As an extension of this genre, TCPs are popular because their allusions to authenticity and their length, portability, intimacy and attention to emotion and listener participation engage audiences in ways that are uniquely affecting. As will be demonstrated, these qualities have resulted in the Australian public recognising them as sites for entertainment, information and justice.

True crime’s enduring popularity can be attributed, in part, to its reliance on ‘authenticity’ or its cultivation of a sense of insight into the realities of crime and policing that are usually hidden from the public. Before podcasting, true crime texts presented themselves as ‘real’ through authenticating techniques like sharing information that would not be publishable in mainstream outlets, like autopsy and crime scene images (Browder, 2006; LaChance & Kaplan, 2019, p. 2). Authenticating devices in podcasts include interviews and discussions with people working in the criminal legal sector, victims and their families, and criminalised people, and the narration of intimate details of crimes and victims’ lives. Australian TCPs continue the genre’s commitment to cultivating a sense of ‘realness’ by promising audiences ‘behind the scenes’ information about police investigations. These devices work to portray TCPs as accurate resources. This is evidenced in listener research showing that audiences favour podcasts that present stories they perceive as ‘authentic’ (Boling, 2022, p. 13) and listen to learn about how evidence is gathered and how police solve crimes (Vitis & Ryan, 2021).

In addition to constituting a sense of authenticity, the technical affordances of TCPs create intimate listening experiences (Rae et al., 2019). Podcasts generate a sense of intimacy because they ‘speak directly and personally to listeners through their earbuds’ (McCracken, 2017, p. 1; Swiatek, 2018). This is enhanced by the absence of visual markers, which forces listeners to imagine the people and places within the story (Boling, 2019), forging links between imagined and current worlds (Herrity, 2020, p. 31). Intimacy is also facilitated by their portability, which allows listening while completing secondary tasks (Perks & Turner, 2019). For example, Australian listeners report playing podcasts when they drive, relax, cook, work and exercise (Vitis & Ryan, 2021). This enhances the sense of intimacy between the story and the listener because a podcast can become a background to everyday life.

This intimacy is coupled with engaging narrative styles that make listening an affective experience. As noted above, TCPs focus on confronting material like serial killings, violence and disappearances, but they also use serialised narratives and episodic cliffhangers to produce ‘imaginative engagement’, or an absence through which listeners yearn for more while speculating on what happened in a case (Haugtvedt, 2017). Additionally, their informal style allows for relaxed conversational exchanges between hosts; this allows hosts to provide personal conjecture on cases, unbound by the traditional restrictions of mainstream news reporting. For example, Horeck’s (2019) examination of the popular American TCP, My Favorite Murder notes that the hosts eschewed researching cases in favour of focusing on their personal and emotional reactions. The effect of these interconnecting affordances has been affirmed by listeners who gravitate towards TCPs because they find them compelling and exciting (Vitis & Ryan, 2021). When presented with a choice between podcasts, listeners select a podcast they feel would provide them with emotive experiences, such as excitement, intrigue and horror (Vitis, 2022).

Moreover, one of the most engaging features of TCPs is that it allows listeners to take on the subjectivity of a co-investigator (Haugtvedt, 2017; Vitis, 2022). TCPs, particularly those featuring unsolved cases, disappearances and wrongful convictions (which are common), focus on the host exploring the case while the listener is placed in the position of co-investigator (Horeck, 2019; Vitis, 2021). When listening, the audience is ‘asked to adopt the juror perspective’ (Bruzzi, 2016, p. 274) and reflect and interrogate the story being discussed. These participatory dynamics have been identified as a core appeal for audiences who listen to TCPs to learn about crime and participate in the story (Vitis & Ryan, 2021). For example, research with Australian listeners found that they selected a podcast because it might allow them to figure out the details of the case (Vitis, 2022).

Their varied lengths are also important in constituting TCPs as an influential outlet, particularly for depicting VAW. In their analysis of Australian newspaper representations of domestic violence, Karageorgos et al. (2023) attribute the high level of individualising frames to constraints on news coverage like legal requirements, editorial pressures, word limits and deadlines. In comparison, podcasts allow producers to speak at length on any given topic in various formats. For example, deep-dive podcasts (Sherrill, 2020) discuss, narrate and investigate one case or issue over multiple episodes (Dowling & Miller, 2019, p. 180); short form podcasts narrate specific cases in single 30–60-minute episodes; and testimony podcasts focus on the testimony of people with lived experience of crime and the criminal legal system (Russell & Rae, 2020). Consequently, they can provide a detailed discussion of specific cases or issues and engage the public for longer. This has been evidenced in Slakoff’s (2021) analysis of the depiction of domestic violence in four long-form TCPs. Slakoff found that these podcasts depicted the abuser’s proprietary behaviours, which was possible, in part, due to the time available in longer format podcasts. Slakoff (2021, p. 17) noted that the podcasts ‘described one man’s abuse toward individual women, and in a way that provided much more detail than traditional media sources’.

These affecting, participatory and intimate qualities are also evidenced in the connections listeners make between TCPs and justice outcomes. While true crime as a genre has always evoked the notion of ‘seeking justice’, in the aftermath of acquittals and convictions linked to podcasts like Serial and The Teacher’s Pet, podcasts have been more explicitly recognised as mechanisms of instrumental and symbolic justice (Pâquet, 2021). Regarding instrumental justice, Australian research into listener perceptions demonstrated that listeners gravitate towards podcasts based on whether the podcast could contribute to a case or provide justice to victims of crime (Vitis, 2022). Listeners also connect TCPs with expressive justice. As noted, TCPs are replete with stories of VAW, and the genre itself has been historically exploitative and voyeuristic. Despite this, listeners indicate that respect for victims is a key ethical concern. Australian survey research with listeners found that all respondents felt it important that podcasts treat victims respectfully (Vitis & Ryan, 2021). This was also evident in Boling’s (2022, p. 13) qualitative research with American listeners, which found that respect for victims was paramount. Regardless of the varied nature of TCPs, this research highlights how the public has come to connect TCPs with justice-seeking and view their roles as ethical witnesses (Vitis, 2022).

These stylistic characteristics and listener perspectives indicate that podcasts could be influential public resources. However, their formats and styles show a complex relationship with best practice guidelines for VAW in the media. Current guidelines recommend respectful and appropriate reporting rather than sensationalism; however, TCPs prioritise affect, intrigue and speculation, and audiences desire this. However, the guidelines also recommend contextual accounts that highlight the gendered drivers of violence, and research into long form podcasts has shown better contextualisation of domestic violence cases compared to mainstream media due to podcasts’ length and flexibility (Slakoff, 2021). This demonstrates how a medium with different industry and formatting constraints to news media and which is not beholden to the requirements of news reporting is not easily captured in the current approach to prevention.

Targeting interventions: the varied voices of true crime podcasts

The current prevention strategy is predicated on assumptions that professional journalists connected with industry organisations and familiar with national and local guidelines are authoring VAW narratives. This is evident in the three-pronged approach, which includes developing best practice guidelines for professional journalists, promoting best practice training for journalists and promoting regulation through professional bodies and statutory agencies. For regulation, the Change the story framework suggests empowering the Australian Press Council and the Australian Communications and Media Authority to manage breaches of the Our Watch guidelines and explore the application of the MEAA Code of Ethics to VAW reporting. Taking the latter recommendation as an example, the MEAA Code of Ethics (which covers honesty, fairness, independence and respect) only applies to MEAA journalist members, not media outlets or programs. This code outlines that member journalists commit to educating themselves about ethics and applying the code based on their understanding of it (MEAA, 2023). The approach imagines the site of public understanding being constituted by professional journalists who are industry members familiar with industry standards.

Beyond journalists

However, Australian TCPs both deviate from, complicate and align with these imaginings, particularly because the technical, genre and publication dynamics underpinning the proliferation of TCPs have changed who is creating media narratives of VAW. As noted, podcasts have been produced by born digital and independent media outlets and journalists. Amateur and industry podcasts have also emerged due to the minimal costs of production and dissemination (Markman, 2012; Schlütz & Hedder, 2021). This is evident in the fact that in Australia, police, victims, families, true crime enthusiasts and people with lived experience of crime and the legal system have all made or significantly contributed to TCPs.

Beyond the low barriers to entry, the prominence of true crime enthusiasts as hosts of TCPs is also shaped by what Horeck (2019) refers to as the ‘culture of amateurism’, a modern media culture characterised by the devaluing of expert knowledge and the celebration of non-expertise. As Horeck (2019, p. 28) notes about the American podcast My Favorite Murder, ‘MFM can be considered an especially striking example of how, in neoliberal affective regimes, expertise is sidelined as “affect trumps knowledge”’. These dynamics are evident when considering the creators of prominent Australian TCPs. Currently, the four most popular³ Australian TCPs are Casefile, True Crime Conversations, I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin and Life and Crimes with Andrew Rule. Only two are produced and hosted by journalists with expertise in crime (Life and Crimes and True Crime Conversations), and Casefile and I Catch Killers are produced by an anonymous true crime enthusiast and a former police officer, respectively. Drawing upon these four examples, true crime podcasters who are not journalists are unlikely to have received best practice training, hold professional media organisation memberships or adhere to their codes of ethics.

In addition, current best-practice guidelines recommend the respectful inclusion of expert voices to address the historical prioritisation of criminal legal actors in media accounts of VAW. For example, Our Watch (2019) guidelines advise journalists to utilise experts for comment and avoid using police and the judiciary as sources. Similarly, the Media changing the story: Media guidelines for the reporting of domestic, family, and sexual violence in the Northern Territory (Brown et al., 2021) recommend that media professionals elevate victim–survivor voices, seek their permission and restrict engagement with organisations that are unconnected to the case and that lack expertise in VAW. Again, journalists are presumed to decide which sources to include and exclude in the public discourse.

Police

As an extension of the true crime genre, TCPs provide new avenues for law enforcement to elevate their perspectives and positions in the media landscape. Current and former police officers and police agencies host, create and contribute to the Australian TCP market. For example, one of the popular Australian podcasts, I Catch Killers, is hosted by a former homicide detective. It focuses on his professional experiences and the expertise of other detectives, forensic experts and lawyers. Another popular TCP, Life and Crimes with Andrew Rule, hosted by a journalist, focuses on accounts from criminal legal actors. The long-standing podcast Narelle Fraser Interviews focuses on a former Victorian police officer, while Real Crime: Australian Detectives focuses on the professional experiences of Australian detectives. Similarly, Ron Iddles: The Good Cop is based on the professional history of a former detective. In line with Ferrell et al.’s (2011) argument that crime media spirals back upon itself, influencing that which it attempts to depict, the NSW Police Force has participated in Inside the NSW Police Force, hosted by writer and journalist Adam Shand and focusing on homicide, domestic violence and sexual crimes cold cases (Shand, 2020).

Importantly, these police podcasts are advertised in valorising terms that position police, particularly detectives, as local heroes. For example, the Ron Iddles podcast is described in the following terms:

One of the best homicide detectives Australia has ever seen. With a 99% conviction rate, Ron has put more murderers behind bars than any other homicide detective in Australia and now he is sharing the secrets that helped him solve the unsolvable. (Iddles, 2019, para. 1)

Similarly, Inside the NSW Police Force promises that listeners will ‘gain unique insight into the lives of the brave women and men who serve and protect our communities’ (Shand, 2020, para. 2), and Real Crime: Australian Detectives is framed as offering listeners access to ‘a step-by-step insider’s account of how the crimes were solved and the impact that these investigations had on the officers involved’ (Shand, 2022, para. 1). The cases in these podcasts are also framed in highly sensationalist terms. For example, News Corp’s Police Tape is described as a podcast about ‘Real police. Real cases. Extraordinary insights’ (The Daily Telegraph, 2019, para. 1), while others are described as ‘most challenging murder cases’ (Iddles, 2019, para. 1) and ‘the iconic, true crime cases’ (Shand, 2022, para. 1). The promise of sensational content is also shored up by claims that the listener will be a co-investigator who is positioned ‘right in the middle of the action’ (Shand, 2020, para. 1) and invited to ‘step behind the police tape with the detectives who investigated some of Australia’s most compelling crimes’ (The Daily Telegraph, 2019, para. 1).

True crime has been historically suffused with ordering narratives that valorise police or reformist narratives that commit to maintaining the criminal legal system (Vitis, 2022). Additionally, because true crime has always published sensational images and details not publishable in mainstream media outlets, police voices have been a fundamental feature of the genre. As such, it is unsurprising that police have found a place within Australian TCPs. However, because police agencies and former police can record a podcast with relative ease, the proliferation of TCPs does not necessarily work towards supplanting the hierarchy of knowledge that positions criminal legal actors as ‘experts’ on violence but provides an avenue for them to recentre their voices. This can subvert best practices guidelines and the presumption of who should be targeted for prevention efforts.

Activists, survivors and current and former incarcerated people

However, flexible and informal formats and strong editorial control have meant the medium has also been used to generate counterpublics that challenge dominant media narratives (Vrikki & Malik, 2019). Podcasts have benefitted journalists, survivors and advocates by subverting the politics of knowledge that have excluded key voices and perspectives from news media. For example, in writing about Indigenous investigative journalism, Nolan et al. (2022) note that the personal style of true crime podcasting has been used to better centre First Nations voices and accounts of crime and the criminal legal system in ways that are ‘challenging established norms and hierarchies of the journalism profession that have contributed to such marginalisation’ (Nolan et al., 2022, p. 78). Moreover, Jorgensen’s (2021) research with Australian independent podcasters has found, podcasters use this medium because it allows them to subvert the narratives that dominate mainstream media discourse and exercise their creativity without the constraints of generating revenue.

Similar points have been made about testimony and the true crime genre. Feminist media researchers have highlighted how first-person true crime memoirs of women have enabled survivors to directly communicate their experiences to the wider public and develop new narratives (Murley, 2019). The potential for podcasts to allow survivors to share their stories is also evident in the prominence of testimony podcasts that do not follow traditional true crime formats of narrating criminal cases but involve people with lived experiences of domestic and family violence and carceral systems sharing their insights. A key example is the Walkley Our Watch award winning podcast Tender, Roia Atmar’s first-person account of leaving an abusive relationship that was described by the foundation as a powerful account that provided listeners with a ‘deeper, more nuanced understanding about gendered violence and what it is really like to be a survivor’ (Our Watch, 2022, para. 6). Similarly, the Walkley-nominated podcast BIRDS EYE VIEW, which was made by women incarcerated in the Darwin Correctional Centre and focused on their memories of and reflections on prison (BIRDS EYE VIEW, 2021). Also, The Messenger, a podcast that focused on the direct testimonies of refugees on Manus Island, provided listeners with a ‘truthful account of life in a prison camp’ (Rae et al., 2019, p. 1046). Together, these dynamics of inclusion and exclusion indicate a complex array of voices mediating VAW for the public. TCPs are re-establishing law enforcement as the authoritative voice in crime media while also providing a platform to elevate the voices of survivors and people whose perspectives on crime, harm and the criminal legal system have been excluded from mainstream media discourse.

Conclusion

Australia’s primary prevention strategies name news media as a site for change and influence. However, how VAW is being depicted to the public has changed dramatically in the past decade. Drawing from a case study of Australian TCPs, this article highlights how the mediated sites of understanding for VAW and how these stories are being communicated are shifting. Observations within this article demonstrate that the dynamics of contemporary mediums, like TCPs, can both align with and depart from the current assumptions, standards and strategies embedded within Australia’s approach to primary prevention. Their intimate, informal and affective styles can subvert best practice guidelines on sensationalising violence; however, their longer formats can also provide opportunities to better contextualise stories of VAW. Also, this article highlights that targeting guidelines, training and regulation at professional journalists to improve media discourse doesn’t reflect the current context where popular resources like TCPs are created by varied stakeholders including police, crime enthusiasts and activists.

At present, no single authoritative media resource or industry professional presents stories of VAW to the public. Rather, as demonstrated above, there is a flow of converging and diverging discourses circulated across different mediums, in a range of formats and by a range of authors including journalists, police, crime enthusiasts, advocates and survivors (Carlisle et al., 2022). Researchers examining news media narratives and mapping attitudes towards VAW note that Australian research must explore how a wide variety of media sources from film, television and social media platforms shape the narratives of VAW and affect the public’s perceptions (Carlisle et al., 2022; Karageorgos et al., 2023). The prominence of TCPs focused on VAW in the Australian media landscape demonstrates the value of these recommendations.

Despite this, there is no systematic analysis of the content of Australian TCPs which covers independent, mainstream and institutional podcasts. As such, there is a need to create a comprehensive understanding of the narratives being portrayed in these contemporary resources and the practices of creators in generating these narratives. In line with previous Australian research examining news media representations of VAW (Karageorgos et al., 2023; Sutherland et al., 2017) and emerging research examining the depictions of domestic violence in TCPs (Slakoff, 2021), future research on TCPs should examine the extent and nature of violence covered, whose voices are elevated, and whether the representations align with best practice guidelines, specifically in relation to contextualisation, myths, and sensationalism. To reflect the complexity of the new media landscape, this research should include a wide variety of podcasts including those produced by news organisations, born digital outlets, freelance journalists, activists, police and community true crime enthusiasts. Secondly, this research should include qualitative interviews with Australian TCP creators to investigate their understanding of best practice guidelines and their approach to developing podcasts focused on VAW. This would contribute to better incorporating these new mediums into prevention strategies.

If we do not develop systematic research programs that investigate both representations of VAW in Australian TCPs and how they can be incorporated into current prevention strategies, the standards applied to mainstream news media and professional journalists will not be reflected in the popular and prolific mediums that depict real stories of VAW in Australia. Ultimately, undermining efforts to mobilise media as a key site for change. Concomitantly, without empirical investigation, there may be lost opportunities for understanding the potential of these contemporary resources as useful mediums for communicating information about VAW and challenging the hierarchies of knowledge that permeate news media.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 However, this is changing, as noted in relation to Crime X+ and Spotify.

2 Popular Australian TCP hosted by Meshel Laurie and Emily Webb.

3 As estimated by monthly downloads (Triton Digital, 2023).