In today's media landscape, the consumer has a wide variety of choices. One salient genre that has grown in popularity over the past decade is true crime. A genre that previous research has shown is popular with the female audiences. As the media can play a very important role in women's lives, both consciously and subconsciously, this is a phenomenon worth investigating. By analyzing the primary audience and trying to understand how they themselves perceive, use and discuss true crime, we can create a clearer picture of how true crime meets different kinds of needs of the female individual. As true crime is a genre that depicts real crimes and in many cases serious crimes committed against women, it is an interesting element in a mediatized world where new research is flourishing to create an understanding of how both common and unusual phenomena are constantly appearing on streaming services, social media, in podcast formats and other media-based forums. Using a qualitative methodological approach, we conducted a user study based on the empirical findings of six in-depth interviews with women who themselves have a keen interest in true crime. The analysis is also based on a deep dive into previous research on the phenomenon of women's interest in true crime, morbid curiosity and a theoretical framework consisting mainly of uses and gratification but also underpinned by morbid curiosity. For the analysis, a thematic analysis scheme was used in order to explore whether there are more factors that create the interest of the female true crime audience than what has been shown in previous research. The participating female true crime users described how they use true crime as a mental preparation and survival strategy. It also became clear how these women use true crime as a form of therapy to process their own experiences they either had to go through themselves or things that have happened around them. What also became clear was the complexity regarding the morbid curiosity and fascination for the perpetrator and the crime was paralleled by a reverence and compassion for the victim while they identified with the story on different levels. This user study aims to provide a broader understanding of true crime audiences as a phenomenon in the media world, partly to understand the purpose of users, but also to be able to reflect these factors in order to raise awareness among media producers of various kinds in order to meet the needs of the market.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how crime victims are portrayed in the true crime genre, specifically podcasts, in order to find out what opportunities the receivers have for meaning making regarding victims. The study analyzes a total of four podcast episodes produced by P3 Dokumentär and Jakten på mördaren which are two very large podcasts in Sweden based on listeners. The theoretical framework consists of the framing theory and victimology. It is a qualitative study based on a rhetorical model which consists of various tools and concepts, such as context, forms of appellations and figure of speech. The results showed that the victims are portrayed based on their personality and appearance. Two of the episodes had a more detailed description overall about the victim, while the other two episodes focused more on the murderer and how the crime unfolded. The essay concludes that all the episodes consist of appellations, such as ethos and pathos to convince the audience, gain their trust and reach their emotions. There were different kinds of framing in all the episodes, and it told us a lot about how the producer of the episode wanted to portray the victim. We established some linguistic patterns that connected to previous studies made for similar purposes. Some linguistic patterns were that the victims often were portrayed innocent and as an underdog regardless how the story of the crime went. The details about the murder, the crime scene and the victim were ingoing and very figuratively described.

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Diese Magisterarbeit befasst sich mit dem True Crime Subgenre der Kriminalliteratur. Ausgehend von der fünfteiligen Z-Romanreihe, bestehend aus Zerschunden, Zersetzt, Zerbrochen, Zerrissen und Zerteilt, von Prof. Dr. Michael Tsokos und Andreas Gößling, wird eine narratologische Untersuchung mit Schwerpunkt auf Figurenkonstellation, Szenerie und Spannungsaufbau durchgeführt. Ziel der Arbeit ist es, die Vielfalt der True Crime Literatur am ausgewählten Beispiel darzustellen und von anderen Subgenres der Kriminalliteratur abzugrenzen.

Podcast is an unregulated form of media that has grown in popularity over the past decade. Especially in the true crime genre. This type of podcast has attracted people's interest, but also criticism regarding the use of other people's suffering to create content. The purpose of this essay is to highlight how criticism towards true crime podcasts and documentary films is expressed and whether there is any difference depending on the type of media portraying the various criminal cases using discourse analysis as theory and method. The essay depicts two cases, the Engla case and the Arboga murders. With the help of three articles about each case, I have analyzed the discourse surrounding the producers' use of legal cases and the possible consequences this has on the victim's relatives. The criticism usually stems from the fact that the relatives have not been informed or given consent to a production about the murder of their relatives. The study concludes that the documentaries do not do anything wrong in using, for example, recordings from trials in their productions as it is a public document. However, some producers and publishers choose to take down episodes where relatives have been critical of them, while others leave the production available for everyone to see and listen to. In the essay, however, you get to see what it can look like when the relatives are informed and involved in various productions about their relatives. Then they get to tell about their experience and set the narrative around the case.