“F*cking politeness” and “staying sexy” while doing it: intimacy, interactivity and the feminist politics of true crime podcasts

Abstract

ABSTRACT Podcasts possess the unique affordance of “hyper-intimacy” that allows listeners to tap into personal experiences and emotional connections. Intersecting with social media spaces, these connections provide for the formation of online communities that encourage listeners to engage in discursive politics and to view their own experiences as part of a feminist politics. Piggybacking on the “Serial Effect”, the true crime podcast, My Favorite Murder, became a cult sensation while connecting individual listeners to an online community of Facebook groups, twitter accounts and subreddits. In this paper I examine how, through a series of memes, jokes, stories and mantras, these MFM-focused online spaces have transformed an online podcast community into a subcultural space that advances discourses about challenging women’s fear of violence and victimization. Examining how the issue of violent crime against women is being understood and developed. I draw on the concept of discursive politics as well as the emerging literature on the potential of podcasting.