‘What Netflix has done is make it … less of a guilty pleasure’: Constructing female audiences in industry discourse on true crime television

Holmes, Su (2016) ‘What Netflix has done is make it … less of a guilty pleasure’: Constructing female audiences in industry discourse on true crime television. Participations: online Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. (In Press)

Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)

Abstract

There has long since existed the perception that women are the main audience for true crime. Although detailed empirical evidence exploring this relationship is limited, there is a large amount of popular, industrial and academic discourse on this issue, making the ways in which female audiences for true crime are talked about of interest in its right. This article explores the ways in which the female audience for true crime television (UK) is discursively constructed in data from industry interviews (n=11). In examining how the industrial and cultural value of true crime in the era of subscription video on demand (SVOD) is contrasted with the genre in the ‘past’, the article argues that conceptualisations of the contemporary true crime audience are enmeshed within a legitimising process that pivots on a devalued female viewer and broadcast television’s historical imbrication within discourses of feminisation and domesticity. The case study of true crime thus offers unique insight into the ‘meaning-making’ around television as a medium at a time of significant cultural, technological and industrial change, and the ways in which this process is gendered.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	female audience,discourse,true crime tv,gender,cultural value,sdg 16 - peace, justice and strong institutions ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/peace_justice_and_strong_institutions
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Media, Language and Communication Studies
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Media Equality Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Film, Television and Media Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Gender and Its Intersections
Related URLs:	https://www.participations.org/
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	17 Nov 2025 16:30
Last Modified:	17 Nov 2025 16:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/101043
DOI:

Actions (login required)

View Item