Crime, Media, Culture

• Digitizing rape culture: Online sexual violence and the power of the digital photograph

  Dodge, A., 2015-09-11 19:07:38 PM

  The damaging effects, for both the victims and perpetrators, of photographing sexual assault should be self-evident. However, in the cases of Rehtaeh Parsons, Jane Doe and Audrie Pott, photographs of sexual violence seem to have been taken and digitally disseminated without regard for the possible consequences. Thus, these cases pose disturbing questions about the ways that sexual violence is normalized and legitimized in western culture and the ways that new media is implicated in this process. These cases demonstrate how the ubiquity and permanence of digital photographs create new concerns for victims of sexual violence and new questions regarding the interpretive matrix of photographs. Using Judith Butler’s theory on photography, torture and framing, I argue that these cases are an example of what Butler refers to as the digitalization of evil. Through this framework, I will discuss the ways that new media exacerbates experiences of sexual violence and examine issues surrounding the interpretation of photographs of sexual violence.
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• Justice, politics and the social usefulness of news

  Konkes, C., Lester, L., 2015-09-11 19:07:38 PM

  In 2009 in Hobart, Australia, a 12-year-old ward of the state was advertised in a metropolitan newspaper as an 18-year-old prostitute. The decision to prosecute only one of the 100-plus men alleged to have paid her for sex made national headlines and gave rise to allegations of a conspiracy involving the highest levels of government and the judiciary. It also resulted in reform of the state’s laws relating to the ‘mistake as to age’ defence. This paper examines news coverage of the institutional responses to this criminal matter in order to theoretically understand the relationship between contemporary journalistic representations of crime and politicised controversy about social problems such as child sexual exploitation. Drawing on an analysis of problem framing in news coverage and interviews with journalists and their sources, it investigates how the news value of the story was identified and seeks to identify the point at which news coverage tipped beyond social usefulness towards public outrage and conspiracy.
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• Fighting crime, battling injustice: The world of real-life superheroes

  Fishwick, E., Mak, H., 2015-09-11 19:07:38 PM

  This article explores the motivations, actions and experiences of real-life superheroes, those individuals who adopt a superhero persona inspired by both comic books and films, to engage in a range of activities that involve, amongst others, fighting crime, providing community support and battling injustice. Drawing on 13 in-depth interviews with individuals from different countries, as well as an ethnographic content analysis of online material, this innovative research explores the merging of the fictional and the real, the virtual and the terrestrial in the lives of interviewees. The article also enriches our understanding of the ‘carnival of crime’ and ‘edgework’ by arguing that risk, pleasure, excitement and transgression can also be found in a carnival of ‘doing good’ as well as in ‘wrongdoing’.
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• Bridging or fostering social distance? An analysis of penal spectator comments on Canadian penal history museums

  Ferguson, M., Piche, J., Walby, K., 2015-09-11 19:07:38 PM

  Penal history museums are among the sites where cultural meanings about prisoners and imprisonment are developed, communicated, and consumed. Little research has explored what visitors take from these encounters. Drawing on literature concerning new media communication and Brown’s (2009) work on penal spectatorship, we analyze visitor comments about their sojourns into Canadian penal history sites found on TripAdvisor, a global travel website. We delve into the diverse stories that tourists share about their encounters with representations of incarceration, which we have found address the following themes: the performance of on-site actors; perceived authenticity of experiences and emotions; the convenience of visiting museums; attitudes about imprisonment; and views of penal history. Our research suggests that visits to penal history museums in Canada seldom translate into humanizing conceptions of the criminalized and views that challenge punitiveness among visitors, at least online. We also highlight how new media communications shape the actions of penal history museum workers in ways that tend to reinforce memorialization practices that foster social distance between authors and recipients of punishment.
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• Paul Nizan: Conspiracy and the contemplation of crime

  Ruggiero, V., 2015-09-11 19:07:38 PM

  Paul Nizan (1905–1940) is also known in France as the ‘impossible communist’, for his long-term allegiance to the Party and the abrupt cancellation of his membership, in the late 1930s, following the Nazi–Soviet pact. This paper discusses a number of his writings, focusing particularly on his best known novel, The Conspiracy, where a revolutionary cell plans illegal political action. Conflict, nihilism, suicide and betrayal are among the topics stemming from the novel, which will be examined from a criminological perspective. The analysis will primarily address ‘cultural’ aspects of crime and refer to notions such as ‘thrill’ and ‘seductions of crime’ among others. These notions, it will be argued, require some revision in the face of the imagined or actual criminality described in the novel.
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• The search for finality: Serial killing, the narration of sexual injury, and the promise of consolation

  McDonald, D., 2015-09-11 19:07:38 PM

  This article explores the search for finality that arises in response to crime. Its focus is not simply upon how this search for finality functions, but on both the centrality of narrative within this and the question of consolation that arises when such cases officially remain unresolved. Examined by reference to one particular case – specifically, the deaths of five males in the South Australian city of Adelaide between 1979 and 1983 – the article explores the central role of cultural anxieties or phobias that often underpin infamous or iconic crimes. It examines the way in which the narrative of this case reveals particular anxieties associated with homosexuality and paedophilia as a means through which to investigate the complex way in which consolation is ultimately left wanting in spite of the presence of a narrative of culpability. In its entirety, the article attends to the enduring manner in which anxieties associated with sexual difference persist, and the haunting spectre that arises as a result of an unrealised search for finality.
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• Coming to terms with social media monitoring: Uptake and early assessment

  Trottier, D., 2015-09-11 19:07:38 PM

  Police and other investigative agencies face new challenges and opportunities with the growth of social media platforms. They can now access several categories of technologies that monitor social media and analyse their content. Social media monitoring is being trialled in a global context, and European Union member states in particular are contemplating the extent to which police should adapt to these investigative technologies. This exploratory research draws on a series of interviews to identify the grounds for establishment, set-up and on-going investment costs, and amount of staff required for social media monitoring. It also considers how technological affordances like automated data processing and interoperability are tempered by localised institutional and legal contexts.
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• The Heartbleed bug: Insecurity repackaged, rebranded and resold

  Banks, J., 2015-09-11 19:07:38 PM

  The emergence of a post-industrial information economy shaped by and around networked communication technology has presented new opportunities for identity theft. In particular, the accidental leakage or deliberate harvesting of information, via either hacking or social engineering, is an omnipresent threat to a large number of commercial organisations and state agencies who manage digital databases and sociotechnical forms of data. Throughout the twenty-first century the global media have reported on a series of data breaches, fuelling anxiety among the public concerning the safety and security of their personal and financial data. With concern outpacing reliable information, a reassurance gap has emerged between the public’s expectations and the state’s ability to provide safety and security online. This disparity presents a significant opportunity for a commercial computer crime control industry that has sought to position itself as being able to offer consumer citizens the antidotes for such ills. This paper considers how neoliberal discourses of cybercrime control are packaged, branded and sold, through an examination of the social construction of the Heartbleed bug. It demonstrates how security company Codenomicon masterfully communicated the vulnerability, the product of a simple coding error, through its name, a logo and an accompanying website, in turn shaping news coverage across the mainstream media and beyond.
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