8
Wrongful Conviction, Pop Culture,
and Achieving Justice in the Digital Age
Greg Stratton
Introduction
The massive cultural and critical success of Serial (Koenig & Snyder,
2014) and Making a Murderer (Demos & Ricciardi, 2015) emphasised
how receptive audiences are to the true crime genre of entertainment.
Using a 12-episode podcast, Serial investigated the 1999 murder of Hae
Min Lee, and the subsequent conviction and potential innocence of
Adnan Syed. After it was released in October 2014, Serial became one of
the most popular podcasts of all time (Dredge, 2014), topping podcast
charts for over three months (iTunesCharts.net, 2015) and with five million downloads, faster than any podcast in the medium’s decade-long
history (Pew, 2012). Making a Murderer, a ten-part documentary series
offered on the video-streaming site Netflix, covered the wrongful convictions of Steven Avery and his nephew for a separate murder. Like Serial,
Making a Murderer would be almost immediately recognised for its
G. Stratton (*)
RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
e-mail: gregory.stratton@rmit.edu.au
© The Author(s) 2019
D. Akrivos, A. K. Antoniou (eds.), Crime, Deviance and Popular Culture, Palgrave
Studies in Crime, Media and Culture, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04912-6_8
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impact with estimates considering the series had attracted approximately
19 million viewers per episode within the first 35 days of release (Lynch,
2016).
By distributing these stories including podcasts (Serial) and online
video streaming (Making a Murderer), the producers of these series were
able to embrace transformative effects of digital technologies that have
shifted the media landscape by altering audience’s consumption and
engagement with content. Both Making a Murderer and Serial demonstrate how digital platforms enable the exploration of miscarriages of justice with greater nuance, intimacy, and depth in a way that evidently
engages audiences. As two exemplars in the shift in content during the
digital age, both follow in the tradition of delivering narratives of wrongful conviction (Stratton, 2015) but approach their embrace of new platforms and formats in different ways. The platforms are integral to the
manner in which audiences were able to consume, re-consume, adapt,
and respond to the narratives. Key to this was the participatory practices
audiences engaged with in response to the perceived injustices within
these narratives (Deuze, Bruns, & Neuberger, 2007). A wealth of social
media activity, online community discussions, and other mediated discourse arose in response to these sources, which in the digital environment, saw traditional media and pop culture absorb, redefine, and
re-engage with the key artefacts enveloped within the narratives.
Making a Murderer, both as a documentary and phenomenon, was
unique in contrast to documentaries in the pre-digital era. As a ten-part,
ten-hour documentary, it was released on the online movie subscription
service Netflix allowing viewers to access content with an immediacy that
only digital content can provide. Moreover, the platform allowed for a
depth of analysis and journalistic endeavour that most documentaries are
unable to achieve. In doing so, it disrupted the traditions of crime journalism by representing a great variety of viewpoints, in particular the
voice of the accused, with more depth than previously available rather
than subjugating others by telling their stories for them (Doane,
Mccormick, & Sorce, 2017, p. 120). In response to the documentary, the
audiences moved into the online space embracing the ‘collective intelligence’ of the fan community and a range of fan behaviours focused on
investigating the case. Digital technologies created the opportunities for
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these audiences to commit to online ‘participatory practices’ supporting
the claims of wrongful convictions via social media (Twitter and
Facebook) or sites like Reddit (e.g. reddit.com/r/makingamurderer)
(Deuze et al., 2007). Reflective of the participatory culture that digital
technology affords, the creators and audiences of Making a Murderer and
Serial offer a range of opportunities in attempting to expose wrongful
convictions and miscarriages of justice.
This chapter aims to explore how digital media converge with narratives of wrongful conviction to develop responses to Serial and Making a
Murderer. By examining the impact of these documentaries through
existing concepts like public narrative (Peelo, 2006), and signal crime
(Innes, 2004a, 2004b), the analysis highlights that the emerging, novel
opportunities offered by digital platforms allowed for the development of
a narrative of wrongful conviction unlike the narratives presented in the
past (Stratton, 2015). The chapter advocates that the combination of narratives of wrongful conviction and the omnipresence of digital platforms
offer disruptive effects in which audiences can consume, re-consume,
adapt, and respond to criminal justice issues. By focusing on the relationships between content, audience, and perceptions of justice, a clearer
understanding of how notions of justice are discussed in contemporary
popular culture can be explored.
Wrongful Convictions and Media
Where most true crime journalism tends to focus on the specifics of criminality, crime, and victimisation, the focus is altered with errors of justice
like wrongful conviction. When a wrongful conviction is central to a
narrative, the focus shifts to the ‘human error and chance’ (Medwed,
2006, p. 339) that results in the conviction and punishment of individuals for crimes they did not commit (Stratton, 2012). Leo (2005) recognised the importance of media influence on wrongful conviction, noting
that examination and narrativisation of true crime errors open the ‘story
of law in action’ to the general public. The narrativisation of wrongful
conviction into a documentary and podcast series also subverts and
engages with traditional concepts of newsworthiness to engage with
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­ opular culture in a manner that is different to other crime–media relap
tionships. Where the news media has predominately focused on selling
news (Beckett & Sasson, 2000), and as a consequence is often subject to
issues of selectivity rather than representativeness (Peelo, 2005, p. 26),
documentaries are developed to resonate with the general public rather
than provide accurate reflections of society.
The presentation of such narratives has benefited many claims of
wrongful conviction, be they from audience responses to Bob Dylan’s
song The Hurricane through to Errol Morris’ documentary The Thin Blue
Line (1988). Importantly, the narratives seen in modern wrongful conviction documentaries achieve what traditional investigative journalism
often cannot. These documentaries not only ‘reflect social life and organize shared public concerns’ but also are ‘transportive’ often exhibiting
political power with the ‘potential to mobilise [their] audience—driving
them from awareness to empathy to action’ (Fuhs, 2018, p. 194). They
achieve this by giving voice to the accused that is often void in many
other narratives. In doing so, these narratives disrupt the traditional discourses of power and institutional truth that have commonly been
accepted in the reporting of true crime to empower the voices of the
subjugated, imprisoned, and oppressed (Buozis, 2017, p. 255). Where
media representations of crime, both factual and fictional, have in the
past relied on the narratives that are accepted by the criminal justice system, the true crime genre’s exploration of wrongful conviction expands
and questions these realities.
High-profile cases of wrongful conviction produce a new way of
understanding the development of public narratives through a case study
examination of the print media coverage (Stratton, 2015). ‘Narratives of
wrongful conviction’ necessitate meaningful shifts in media reporting of
the case as the focus of the public interest shifts from the victim to the
criminal justice system errors (Stratton, 2015). These narratives place the
biographies of criminals and the accused as a point of ‘resistance’ (Buozis,
2017, p. 255) to countervail the norms of public narratives surrounding
crime and justice. In identifying the deficiencies in public knowledge surrounding wrongful conviction, high-profile cases can explore new public
narratives and reveal how to challenge the norm by highlighting the discourse surrounding injustices (Stratton, 2015).
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By exploring Serial and Making a Murderer as challengers to accepted
public understandings of crime and exploring public responses to these
media allow for the impact of narratives of wrongful conviction to be
identified. In order to analyse these sources, this chapter examined the
online communities and traditional media responses to the release of
Serial and Making a Murderer. For this chapter, the key to navigating
the public response was the online communities that emerged in
response to the original sources. Web forums including Reddit and
social media sites like Twitter and Facebook provided insight into the
public response. In addition to these responses, the manner in which
traditional media responds to both the original sources and the public
engagement with the materials offers further insight into the cultural
impact of these narratives of wrongful conviction. As a point of analysis, both the online communities and traditional media have also provided opportunity for these audiences to engage in participatory
practices supporting their perceptions of justice. The sources were
examined for meaning through textual analysis allowing for the investigation and articulation of meaning in the audience response and interpretations of it in public discourse (Fairclough, 2003). This approach
encouraged an analysis that the assumptions of both cases, representations of social events, and the modalities of truth as perceived by the
audience (Fairclough, 2003).
While fictional accounts of wrongful conviction have developed along
familiar themes that encourage the audience to question ‘whodunit’,
reports of actual wrongful conviction can influence the public’s perception of the criminal justice system. By ‘presenting conflictual news narratives framed around contests and contentions’ (Barak, 2007, p. 105),
claims of innocence are often framed as contestations of the criminal
justice system’s boundaries rather than reinforcements of them. Narratives
of wrongful conviction stand as a demonstration of the fallibility of the
judicial system, frame the innocent as victims, and encourage public
attention or action in response to the injustice (Ettema & Glasser, 1988,
p. 13). For the audience of Serial, the presentation of such a narrative
allowed for engagement with a real murder mystery that would change
the lives of those involved in the case.
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Serial
Debuting in October 2014, Serial investigated the 1999 murder of Hae
Min Lee in Baltimore. A podcast developed by National Public Radio
(NPR), Serial evoked the traditional radio serial by presenting a 12-­episode
narrative detailing the events surrounding the high school student’s death
and the subsequent conviction of Adnan Syed. Episodes were posted
weekly on a Thursday and distributed across numerous digital channels
including RSS feed, websites, iTunes, SoundCloud, and YouTube (Berry,
2015). The diversity of channels through which audiences could access
the content saw different practices emerge. Berry (2015) notes that a
significant proportion of the audience had begun listening to the series
after the final episode had been uploaded, where others had organised
‘listening parties’ in line with weekly releases, suggesting the series had
heralded an era of ‘appointment listening’ or downloading.
The success of Serial created a cultural phenomenon attracting the
news media which, in turn, highlighted the issues central to Syed’s conviction and Lee’s death. Central to Serial’s success was a familiar range of
newsworthy elements (such as risk, individualism, violence, and sex)
(Jewkes, 2004, pp. 35–62) that elicit public attention and warrant further media focus. These newsworthiness elements were highlighted
through the comprehensive narrative constructed by Sarah Koenig. Aside
from the considerable interest raised by the violent crime, a key to this
newsworthiness is the process of simplification as Koenig directed listeners through complicated legal processes, witness evidence, and elements
of mystery. In doing so, Koenig engaged the audience with the potential
injustices of the case. However, by presenting simplified and directed narratives, audiences potentially retain an oversimplified view on specific
facts and legal processes (Jewkes, 2004). The danger of oversimplification
of complex legal matters can result in superficial understandings of the
case leading to bias, prejudices, and dangerous stereotypes being labelled
towards key figures involved in the crime and investigation (Jewkes,
2004).
The popularity of the podcast also saw in the celebrity of the case by
gaining a prominent position in popular culture. The popularity of the
podcast evoked interest in entertainment media with weekly ‘reviews’
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developed by blogs on Slate, Salon, The AV Club and others (e.g.
Chaudry, 2014). The AV Club (Eakin, 2014) released a podcast about
the podcast, while television shows including The Daily Show and Saturday
Night Live (Saturday Night Live, 2014) found humour in some elements
of the podcast’s success. Furthermore, as a consequence of a heightened
‘newsworthiness’, those involved in the case became somewhat minor
celebrities further blurring the line between pop culture and the search
for justice. The identification of these actors within popular culture
focused news media highlights the preference for the consumption of the
narrative rather than an ideological attachment to seeking any notion of
justice.
A further consideration in the audiences’ perception of the narrative
presented in Serial was the expansive media environment that offered
new and innovative opportunities for the manner in which crime is represented for public consumption. One example of such an opportunity
was a Reddit community (https://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast) that
evolved in response to the podcast. With over 40,000 members and at its
peak attracting 700,000 views a month (Dean, 2014), contributors to the
Reddit community retrieved and shared content surrounding the case
while also posting their insights, thoughts, suggestions, and hypotheses
on developments in the podcast’s narrative. The content within the community reflected the mystery of the narrative of wrongful conviction and
with many attempting to solve the mystery.
Platforms like Reddit offer decentralised, interactive opportunities for
audiences to co- and re-produce alternative narratives, explanations of
crime, or identify injustices. For those media producers seeking social
change as a consequence of distributing content, social media facilitates a
key distinction between passive audiences and the potential for an
engaged public. The response on social media to Serial demonstrates how
media acts as a framing device that establishes accounts of the same event
from different perspectives. In offering competing interpretations of the
murder of Hae Min Lee, the framing established by Serial was consolidated and appropriated through social media. It was here where the audience was provided with the opportunity to strip the formal decisions of
the criminal justice system of its legitimacy, question its findings, and
potentially act on those concerns. By engaging co-production in this
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form, the audience offers themselves as contributors who authenticate
and legitimise particular versions of injustice and innocence. These contributions represent the potential for agency that rests through concentrated media efforts rather than the explicit activism that is often suggested
about such activity.
Making a Murderer
In 2015 the ten-part, ten-hour documentary Making a Murderer was
released on the online movie subscription service Netflix. The documentary focused on the potential wrongful conviction of Steven Avery and
his nephew, Brendan Dassey, who were both convicted for the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. Unique to
Avery’s case are the circumstances that see him claiming to be a victim of
a wrongful conviction after having already been a victim of a wrongful
conviction for which he served 18 years for a sexual assault he did not
commit. Much like Serial, Making a Murderer resists the public narrative
of Avery and Dassey’s convictions by presenting their perspective on the
events surrounding Halbach’s death, the investigation in response, and
the legal processes that led to their convictions. To present these perspectives, the documentary offered extended interviews with key members of
Avery and Dassey’s families, legal teams, and the prosecution, clips of
local news, and courtroom footage. Importantly, all of this was done in
the absence of a narrator, forming a stylistic choice by the directors which
emphasised and elicited feelings of uncertainty for the audience (Marsh,
2016).
Distinguishing Making a Murderer from other documentaries was the
online platform that it was released through, allowing for viewers to
access content with immediacy that only digital content is able to provide. By providing viewers with access to the entirety of the series to be
accessed at their own choice, Netflix demonstrates the changing nature of
content creation, distribution, and reception that the digital age offers
consumers of media. While the true extent of audience reach has been
difficult to ascertain as a result of Netflix’s reluctance to share viewership
records, estimates highlighted the immediate impact of the series suggest-
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ing it had attracted approximately 19 million viewers per episode within
the first 35 days of release (Lynch, 2016). The response, like Serial, moved
beyond standard audience reception. Viewers of the series launched justice campaigns devoted to achieving presidential pardons for Avery and
Dassey. Key defence lawyers, Jerome Buting and Dean Strang, became
the focus of meme campaigns and celebrity status amongst viewers, with
both benefiting in the audience response to the documentary by being
rewarded with global speaking tours and book contracts as a result of
their roles in the case. A nefarious side was also present with suggestions
of fan-vigilantism, with prosecutor Ken Kratz reporting he had received
death threats within a week of the documentary’s release (Marsh, 2016).
Fans had also found the Yelp listing for his new legal practice and organised a response to leave low ratings and reviews to subvert Kratz’s career
(Marsh, 2016).
Reddit and social media also became hives of fan participation and
research. Through these forums, information surrounding central characters in the documentary were discovered and distributed within the network. Some like fan theories and investigations of case materials attempted
to construct new evidence as to the perpetrator of the crime. Fans congregated online in spaces such as Reddit (/r/makingamurderer) to construct
intricate timelines of events, analyse evidence, and explore potential theories that would assist both convicted men. These fan-researchers also
initiated a successful campaign to fundraise to purchase copies of the trial
transcripts and case materials and publish them online for public access
(Stevenaverycase.org, 2018). These files include not only trial documents
but police interview recordings, photos entered into evidence, appeal
documents, civil suit records, and documents from other related cases
which all allow for further engagement with the narrative of Making a
Murderer. Others scoured news sources examining readily available information that was now determined to have more currency to the ‘celebrification’ of the case and those involved. For example, Redditors discovered
that after the convictions of Avery and Dassey, Ken Kratz had been at the
centre of a sexting scandal, forcing him to leave his public office (Marsh,
2016).
On reflection of the cultural impact of both Serial and Making a
Murderer, two pertinent questions emerge in the relationship between
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digital technologies and crime narratives. The first emerges in relation to
fan-production and investigation in response to these narratives, the central concern being whether anything meaningful can be achieved in the
intersection between fans’ relationships with technology and the narrative. The second relates specifically to wrongful convictions and what
factors may provide unique opportunities for creating fan engagement
through digital platforms. Both questions are important too as the opportunities offered by digital platforms allow for the development of a narrative of wrongful conviction (Stratton, 2015) that differs from narratives
presented in the past and responses to other true crime documentaries.
The success of Serial and Making a Murderer demonstrates the disruptive
effects in which audiences can consume, re-consume, adapt, and respond
to criminal justice issues. From the initial content distributed by creators,
relationships emerge between the audience and the case that raise questions as to how notions of justice are discussed in contemporary popular
culture.
F an-Production, Websleuthing, and Wrongful
Conviction
Fan-production and audience engagement with both Serial and Making
a Murderer have come to define their relevance within popular culture.
As already highlighted, significant in this engagement were the online
communities that audiences formed surrounding both series. Central to
these communities were the Reddit forums (/r/makingamurderer and r/
serialpodcast), but other significant groups and discussions were also
found on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Moreover, the fan and audience response was so intense, that the successful Undisclosed podcast
(http://undisclosed-podcast.com/) began its exploration of potential
wrongful convictions by revisiting the issues surrounding Syed’s conviction. The engagement exhibited a convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006,
2014), d
­ igitally connecting fans with content with a greater immediacy,
which allows for reinterpretations of the producer/consumer
relationship.
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In the digital era, the heightened connection between content and
audiences has resulted in the prosumption (Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010),
whereby audiences are no longer passive receptors of media content and
are allowed opportunities to explore and respond to content. Key to this
changing relationship between audiences and content producers are the
lowering of costs of content production, access to information, and the
ubiquity of digital technology (Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010). By disrupting
this relationship, audiences have been exposed to voice and agency offered
through the production of the user-generated content. In doing so, audiences have embraced higher levels of agency in relation to the cultural
artefacts they consume, lessening the conceptual distance between the
‘real’ experience and that of the traditionally passive consumer (Powell,
Stratton, & Cameron, 2018).
In an era of digital criminology, a side effect of the shift towards prosumption can be seen in the emergence of ‘websleuthing’ (Yardley, Lynes,
Wilson, & Kelly, 2016), which particularly defines the audience’s response
to both Syed’s and Avery’s convictions. An advent made possible by digital technologies, websleuthing occurs when ‘producer, consumer and
subject’ intersect with crime (Yardley et al., 2016, p. 82). In the case of
the wrongful conviction narratives discussed in this chapter, websleuthing focuses not only on the crime but also on the criminal justice and
legal systems’ response to the crime. Websleuthing is enabled through the
opportunities offered by online technology which limit the obstacles of
access and distance in undertaking investigations related to crime and
justice. The practice also reflects the expanding ‘multi-dimensionality’ of
infotainment offered by true crime which is become increasingly embedded and defined within the norms of digital culture (Yardley et al., 2016).
Importantly, these investigations can have potential ‘real world, embodied consequences’ (Yardley et al., 2016, p. 82). In the case of wrongful
convictions, this potentially includes exonerating the innocent and identifying the actual offender.
It is in this interplay between producers and audiences that websleuthing surrounding Serial and Making a Murderer emerge. While independent and devoted investigation surrounding ‘popular’ crime and justice
has always existed, websleuthing is unique to the digital age in the manner that it brings together groups devoted to their interest in the case. As
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highlighted earlier, websleuths responded to Making a Murderer by presenting arguments, debates, and evidence that may help resolve the
debates around the convictions of Avery and Dassey. The community in
this sense moved beyond standard fandom process such as detailed analysis of the documentary to conduct independent research and demonstrate greater concern for the status of Avery and Dassey’s cases (Rodriguez,
2017). For example, Reddit users questioned prosecution arguments, key
forensic evidence, and timelines of events (Harkness, 2016). In order to
do so, community members scoured for evidence from the documentary,
statements in the media, and the trial, and explored the potentials for
new evidence using the tools available to them. According to Rodriguez
(2017), the presumption became integral to these communities to the
extent members had become unsure whether ‘known’ details about the
case were divulged during the documentary series or through the work of
websleuths in the community (Rodriguez, 2017). While much of the
sleuthing that continues to be produced within communities is done so
with the aims of contributing to the cause of solving the case, it is clear
that the community also splinters into conspiracy theories that lack evidence or research. Examples of this included theories linking the victim
to drug syndicates, that she is still alive, or that she was the victim of an
infamous serial killer (Harkness, 2016). It should also be noted that in
response to the documentaries not all fans’ online engagement is defined
by websleuthing. In an analysis of the Reddit Making a Murderer community (r/makingamurderer), Rodriguez (2017) found that although
websleuthing was apparent within the community, there was more to the
bonds which defined the community. Along with fan investigations, the
Reddit community also became a site for advocacy and sympathy towards
characters in the case, as well as apathy towards the criminal justice system (Rodriguez, 2017).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, similar themes of websleuthing were found in
the community responses to Serial. Like Making a Murderer, an almost
immediate formation of an online community emerged in response to
the narrative of wrongful conviction surrounding Syed. Through the use
of Twitter and Reddit, the online community at first shared their
­experience with the ‘snapshots’ of the story being told through weekly
episodes (Berry, 2015, p. 174). With the information provided in the
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episodes, fans engaged in negation and interpretation within online
forums providing material that would later be used in upcoming episodes
(McCracken, 2017). McCracken (2017) offers examples of data visualisation and analysis of key interview data from Syed’s case as an example
of where what was once official justice system data was then highlighted
through the podcast, analysed and discussed in online groups seeking to
investigate the case. Moreover, the diversity of material that emerged
from these communities continued to be investigated, developed, and
produced past the initial 12-episode podcast. The result was an active
websleuthing community that continued the narrative of wrongful conviction, and updates from the original content providers (Serial), podcasts from alternative producers (Undisclosed podcast), and the mainstream
media (Stanley, 2017).
Such behaviour demonstrates the further blurring of the producer/
audience relationship and highlights that the work of fans can influence
narratives of wrongful conviction. The unveiling of the narrative through
a drawn-out, weekly process meant that Serial was able to capitalise on
fan communities who were left ‘hanging’ for a resolution at the end of
each episode. With each episode promising an eventual revelation that
would connect all the evidence, the series encouraged a ‘forensic fandom’
(Mittell, 2015, p. 314). Key to this fandom are digital technologies,
which by nature enable collaborative engagements that are unencumbered by location and time, meaning that listeners who arrived to the
series after its release were able to participate in these fan activities.
For Rodriguez (2017), the websleuthing found in Reddit discussions
surrounding Avery and Dassey’s convictions establish Making a Murderer
as among the first that bridges understandings of fan studies and true
crime narratives. Where crime narratives were often relied upon to determine public sentiment and response to crime media, digital technologies
increase the agency and ownership of these media productions by providing options for websleuths to expand the ‘universe’ of the narrative.
Rather than be restricted to a true crime documentary’s editorial choices,
websleuths explore, create, and recount new content that complement
the content exposed by media producers. Through digital technologies,
fans are able to shift the nature of audience engagement with content,
exploring alternative narratives, and share and redistribute information
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to create a digital public in response to crime and justice issues. The publics created by websleuths involve multidirectional communication
between those conducting the sleuthing and the mainstream media
(Yardley et al., 2016). In doing so, the media legitimises the work of the
websleuths by continuing the narrative of wrongful conviction in the
public sphere, often further encouraging their involvement in the investigation. Publics informed by the prosumption of websleuthing demonstrate the disruption of traditional media power and ownership by
blurring of boundaries between creators and audiences, consumers and
producers (Comor, 2010). By embracing digital technology, there exist
greater opportunities for audiences to participate in accessing stories, presenting arguments, and sharing information (Jenkins & Deuze, 2008,
p. 6). Thus, when traditional news report on the progress of cases in true
crime documentaries like Serial and Making a Murderer, producers are no
longer the primary source available to present public narratives. While
this may seem a democratising effort, Jenkins and Deuze (2008, p. 6)
contend that traditional media companies also embrace the benefits of
digital platforms by merging, blurring, co-opting, and converging intellectual properties to claim ownership across platforms. In this way, the
traditional gatekeepers and agenda setters of media ownership retain control of the narratives that are broadcast and through which audiences can
respond.
While such communities seek justice for the perceived victims in narratives of wrongful conviction through the democratisation of websleuthing, they also can result in harm to victims and their families. Much of
this potential harm is reflected in the imbalance between the popular
culture surrounding true crime and the reality that is the nature of crime.
The result can be that victims, and their lives, are treated with the triviality common in forms of fandom rather than the respect and nuance that
is often displayed by criminal justice professionals and the traditional
media when handling such cases. A famous example of the impact fandom and websleuthing was reported in the mainstream media (Robinson,
2014), whereby a member claiming to be Hae Min Lee’s brother detailed
the impact of Serial Reddit forums on his family’s lives. He highlighted
the difference between fandom and the reality of ‘living’ within a narrative, claiming:
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TO ME ITS [sic] REAL LIFE. To you listeners, its another murder mystery, crime drama, another episode of CSI… You don’t know what we went
through. Especially to those who are demanding our family response and
having a meetup… you guys are disgusting. SHame on you. I pray that you
don’t have to go through what we went through and have your story blasted
to 5mil listeners. (brotherofhae)
If it is assumed that ‘brotherofhae’ is the brother of the victim at the
centre of the Serial narrative, there is a clear and adverse impact of the
podcast and its websleuthing phenomenon. The concerns of Hae’s brother
are demonstrative of how the agency imparted on the audience has
impacts beyond the notion of achieving justice for Syed. Part of the difficulty is that audiences granted the agency to participate in real conditions of justice advocacy may act more like fans responding to popular
culture moments rather than impacting the lives of real people. Here a
discrepancy between the ethics and skills of agency can be identified.
Where in response to popular culture audiences are conditioned to pursue narratives and artefacts with passion and vigour, in response to real-­
world justice issues advocates require skill in navigating the ethical terrain
on contentious issues. Justice advocacy requires individuals imparted
with agency to negotiate different interest groups (including victims) to
ensure a healthy outcome for all involved. On reflection, in the case of
Serial, the pop culture ethic of fan-like passion and vigour may be perceived as advocacy but without the nuance of ethical skills remains fandom promoting a narrative rather than achieving justice.
The move towards prosumption of true crime is a reflection of a
broader democratisation of content defined by accessibility to content
and means of distribution. Similar to citizen-journalists who report on
crimes that may otherwise remain unreported (Allan, 2013), websleuthing in response to true crime documentaries has the potential to uncover
evidence and add to the narrative of wrongful conviction. While the draw
of audiences to true crime plays some role in these phenomena, the
frameworks of digital networks provide an important factor that requires
further scrutiny in exploring the merits of the activities surrounding true
crime fandom.
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rongful Convictions, Media, and the Digital
W
Age: Is Justice Being Achieved?
Wrongful conviction differs from much of the standard crime and media
content that focuses by moving public narratives beyond crime and victimisation into explorations of ‘human error and chance’ (Medwed, 2006,
p. 339), mystery (Stratton, 2013), and doubt. When presented in the
format seen in Serial and Making a Murderer, these narratives reach a
level of heightened community interest, as discussed earlier. The narratives of wrongful conviction often differ from traditional crimes and concepts of newsworthiness. Many are left unresolved and remain merely
‘claims’ of wrongful conviction in front of authorities. In the absence of
legal recognition of an error, the concept of a ‘signal crime’ offers an
opportunity to understand how narratives of wrongful conviction are
privileged in achieving public responses in comparison to other compelling narratives. ‘Signal crimes’ (Innes, 2004a), which are viewed as a
reflection of the issues in society, flag to us what has happened, what may
follow, and how we should respond as a society to such issues.
In combination with narratives of wrongful convictions, signal crimes
are morphed into commodities that are sought by their audience for the
story’s ‘undecidability’. McCracken (2017, p. 55) has unlocked such content as a commodity, because people can find entry points to the cases
through their ‘non-conclusive openness’. McCracken (2017, p. 57)
argues that true crime content exposes this power, relying on the ‘undecidability’ of narratives and exploiting society’s desire to ‘engage in popular, democratic, and fair decisions about guilt and punishment of crimes’.
These desires are important in relation to wrongful conviction, as narratives of wrongful conviction often begin their life in the public’s imagination as narratives of crime that saw the guilty convicted for the crime they
committed (Stratton, 2013, 2015).
Where standard narratives of crime are often constructed on elements
of newsworthiness (Jewkes, 2004) that report the truth as it was presented by the criminal justice system, narratives of wrongful conviction
threaten these original stories with new knowledge and contexts surrounding the crime, victims, and offenders (Stratton, 2015). Importantly,
Wrongful Conviction, Pop Culture, and Achieving Justice…
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in the digital age, prosumption activities such as websleuthing engage
audiences that further emphasise the efforts to interpret texts and knowledge to construct narratives surrounding the truth (McCracken, 2017,
p. 57). What was once a passive audience now represents potential content creators who ‘amplify’ narratives of wrongful conviction and ‘seemingly endless’ paths towards additional information, opinion, and ideas.
The search for truth, when enabled by digital technologies, is less reliant
on primary sources such as the news media (or even true crime representations) to detail narratives of wrongful conviction. Instead, with the
communicative benefits of technology the voices of the previously voiceless now are given opportune platforms that allow for the advocates of the
wrongfully convicted to seek justice.
In response to true crime, the prosumption of audiences seeking information to exonerate the likes of Avery, Dassey, and Syed reflect Jenkins’
(2012) concept of fan activism. For Jenkins (2012, 1.8), fan activism
represents
forms of civic engagement and political participation that emerge from
within fan culture itself, often in response to the shared interests of fans,
often conducted through the infrastructure of existing fan practices and
relationships, and often framed through metaphors drawn from popular
and participatory culture.
Commonly, fan activism is considered to refer to fan-based lobbies to
‘save’ television shows, characters, or other elements of popular culture
such as petitioning a band to play a concert in a city (Cochran, 2012;
Earl & Kimport, 2009; Scardaville, 2005). More recently, scholars have
begun to recognise the mobilisation of fan networks concerning broader
activist causes (Dimitrov, 2008; Jenkins, 2012). For example, Jenkins
(2012) explores the activism of the Harry Potter Alliance, which is an
effort by a group of Harry Potter fans that advocates for a number of
humanitarian and human rights issues. The attachment of fans to various
idols or ideals offer symbols that activists can manipulate to encourage
participation in a cause. For fans of wrongful conviction–focused true
crime, the fan activism associated extends beyond documentaries as cultural artefacts into the production of ‘justice’.
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In the digital age, the use of social networking technologies highlights
how fan activism can influence public sentiment, which can in turn
exploit the vulnerability of criminal justice policymakers to public opinion. This is centrally important to the work of advocates of wrongful
conviction and the work of the innocence movement who aim to correct
errors in justice (Findley & Golden, 2014; Norris, 2017a). In this way,
the digital era expands on the opportunities available to the innocence
movement, particularly when their goals are supported by true crime narratives that assist their purpose. For example, the websleuthing and prosumption of materials by the audience in response Serial to what is
presented in the true crime–influenced key developments in Syed’s claims
of innocence. For example, the Innocence Project Clinic at the University
of Virginia School of Law has received public feedback on alternate scenarios and potential suspects (Gamerman, 2014).
Despite such activity, the podcast has not engaged with social activism
to the extent that has forced change or a response from the politicians,
officials, or the criminal justice system. Moreover, to this point, neither
Serial nor Making a Murderer, nor their associated fan-production, have
led to the exoneration of an innocent prisoner. However, for the innocence movement, the pop culture moments enjoyed by both series are
not without benefit. For Norris (2017b, p. 112), the presentation of
potential wrongful convictions and flaws in the criminal justice system
may impact public opinion towards the justice system and the potential
for error. Norris argues that by presenting compelling narratives to the
public, there have been shifts in public opinion towards significant justice
issues such as the death penalty and youth sentencing. Similarly, representations of error through popular culture encourage the public to view
the complexities of criminal justice and not the ‘neat resolutions’ found
in many fictional accounts of crime (Norris, 2017b).
In terms of influencing the justice system, media content like Serial
has never been the sole cause or solution for correcting injustices. Where
framing of injustices has been a common trope of traditional media platforms, the emergence of social media platforms has offered new potentials for audiences. Social media allows for the egalitarian option of
opinions to be voiced, meaning that all aspects of culture are open to
comment or debate. However, the consequence of the accessibility to
Wrongful Conviction, Pop Culture, and Achieving Justice…
195
cultural critique seems to be that adopting the agency of voice is considered by some as an adequate response rather than social action. The
absence of social action or reaction to criminal justice issues that are
detailed through media narratives offers an insight into both the nature
of popular culture and an understanding of narratives of wrongful
conviction.
Fan activist responses to true crime enable advocates to challenge the
sentiment that ‘justice does not lead, it follows’ by attempting to create
the condition required to achieve social and legal justice (Snyder &
Vinjamuri, 2004). In their fandom of Serial and Making a Murderer,
advocates contest the accepted findings of a conviction, instead proposing it as a narrative of wrongful conviction. Reddit discussions and
Twitter streams devoted to pronouncing injustice are done so in a manner attached to the popularity of the media content, the cultural cache of
the material, and exploit the public’s interest in the topic. The appropriation of true crime for social justice objectives demonstrates a level of
moral entrepreneurship that embraced social networks to mobilise a campaign challenging the institutional position. In similar settings, networks
are often embraced through a core of individuals who have strong attachment to a cause and who mobilise new and weakly linked individuals
into establishing or participating in a collective movement (Tarrow,
1998). These networks engage in behaviour that defines the movement
through collective performances and campaigns whereby individuals
unite to make collective claims (Tilly, 2004). In the case of these narratives of wrongful conviction, advocates seeking justice these claims are
established towards injustices or oversights within the criminal justice
system that led to the imprisonment of an innocent man.
Conclusion
The success of Serial and Making a Murderer with audiences is often discussed surrounding the digital disruption that has forced rapid changes
in the media industry. For audiences, the disruption extends beyond the
accessibility of content by influencing changes in the manner to which
audience respond and engage with content. Rather than the restrictive,
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passive nature of traditional media consumption, audiences are now
empowered with the tools of the digital era expanding the repertoires of
fandom. From updating Wikipedia pages to creating fan-generated content, there are many examples of the disruption and opportunities that
digital technologies have presented to the market and audiences (Ritzer
& Jurgenson, 2010). Importantly, content that was traditionally created
to be consumed can also be reworked, converted, supplemented, or
improved upon by the consumer to produce extensions of the original
(Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010). These provide an array of opportunities for
advocates of the wrongfully convicted and fans of true crime media, like
Serial and Making a Murderer.
For advocates of the wrongful conviction, the success of Serial and
Making a Murderer rests in the development of narratives of wrongful
conviction that enter the public sphere and the realm of personal significance to achieve a systemic response (Stratton, 2012). Part of the contention in this chapter is that wrongful convictions have become significant
events that attract media and public attention, much in the same way
that murders have become significant events that attract enormous media
coverage and public interest (Haggerty, 2009; Macdonald, 2013). The
distinction for the series discussed here is that they both subvert and
engage with traditional concepts of newsworthiness to engage with popular culture and can do so through digital technologies and the new forms
of consumption and fandom they afford.
Where the news media has predominately focused on selling news
(Beckett & Sasson, 2000) and, as a consequence, is often subject to issues
of selectivity and bias rather than representativeness (Peelo, 2005, p. 26),
true crime documentaries are developed to resonate with the general public rather than provide accurate reflections of society. As claimed e­ lsewhere,
for this reason miscarriages of justice such as those reflected in these documentaries can be deemed ‘signal crimes’ (Innes, 2004a) that are seen as
a reflection of the issues in society, flag to us the what has and can happen, and how as a society we should respond to such issues. Thus, we
tend not to critique such content for their bias, as entertainment, rather
than information, is often the primary goal of the creator.
Wrongful Conviction, Pop Culture, and Achieving Justice…
197
The allure of true crime in popular culture has always offered insights
into whodunit narrative. What digital technologies enable is the opportunity for audiences to actively explore and investigate the potential outcomes of these narratives. For example, much of the appeal of Serial rests
in the fact that the evidence remained inclusive, the ability to further
investigate seemingly stalled, and, as a consequence, a potential miscarriage of justice had taken place. In the past, documentaries have ended on
such questions, leaving audiences with questions of injustice and a perception that a response is required. However, in an age where digital
technologies enable prosumption, and activities such as websleuthing,
the mystery narratives of wrongful conviction leave audiences open to
explore how that injustice could be rectified. In response to narratives of
wrongful conviction, there is an implicit dialogue between audiences and
producer manifest through online communities and social media platforms. Serial and Making a Murderer exemplify how audiences are able to
extend the cultural relevance of media products by participating in the
production of new and original content. Moreover, these fan activities
allow for the general public’s concern and attachment to the issues in the
case to build and potentially achieve justice change.
Despite the optimism of what websleuthing and fan-production may
achieve, to this point the activities surrounding these series have yet to
resolve the mysteries or injustices upon which the original content is
focused. While passionate fandom and investigations were immediate in
their response to the release of these series, their efforts have yet to facilitate the release of Syed, Avery, or Dassey. Similarly, the attachment and
activity to the online communities and social media discussions surrounding Serial and Making a Murderer dissipated. Within months of the
final podcast upload or release on Netflix, discussions about both series
had evaporated from the popular culture discussion, suggesting any public response to justice was associated to the cultural milieu rather than
specific endeavours. This not only says that justice is unachievable, with
(to this point) significant legal appeals being proposed on behalf of all
three men, but also highlights the need to limit the hyperbole surrounding fan activities and understand more about the aims of those who commit to such activity.
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G. Stratton
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