True Crime Podcasts on Spotify: How Hosts Handle Dark Stories
摘要
This chapter details a comparative case study analysis of three selected True Crime podcasts available on Spotify. Casefiles is a true crime podcast with a male host based in Australia, Rotten Mango is a true crime podcast with a South Korean female and a Chinese male co-host based in the USA, and True Crime and Cocktails is a hybrid podcast with two female Canadian co-hosts. A mixed methods approach was used to gather quantitative and qualitative data on these three podcasts to narratively compare and analyse them in terms of: the hosts as internet personalities, the stories covered, the episodic story formats, and how the hosts handle sensitive content. The results show that while there are some similarities in the narrative arcs, the storytelling style, level of engagement with the audience, and wider social impacts are varied. Some podcast hosts note their contributions towards organisations or encourage the public to take specific actions such as becoming qualified in specific sectors for increased social justice. From an ethical perspective, the hosts provide content trigger warnings but largely focus on entertaining the audience rather than taking a more ethical victim-centric approach to their storytelling.