Netflix, Making a Murderer and Streaming Justice
摘要
This chapter uses Netflix’s Making a Murderer to interrogate how platformised media has transformed true crime into a hybrid of journalism, entertainment, advocacy, and cultural commentary. It argues that streaming platforms privilege audience engagement metrics and monetisation over considerations of trauma and justice. The Netflix series focuses on the potential wrongful convictions of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, providing the opportunity to examine the dynamics of streaming true crime. Making a Murderer provides a case study of how digital streaming has enabled the platformisation of justice. Netflix’s scale and strategy have been able to convert attention and empathy for the wrongfully convicted into value, but in doing so have shaped what counts as credible and compelling. The chapter explains how convergence and binge-watching cultures have intensified audience participation in true crime that must be considered fandom rather than sustained activism. As a result, a critique is provided surrounding the cultural and legal outcomes of wrongful conviction based on true crime, which, despite providing an impetus of visibility and debate, has delivered little relief for Avery or Dassey. The chapter advances a framework across representation, participation, accountability, and impact to distinguish viewership from advocacy and popularity from reform.