Key Takeaways

• A 2019 study titled "The Podcast Consumer 2019" found that women make up 73% of true-crime podcast listeners.
• The on-demand TV audience for "Making a Murderer," a true-crime Netflix series, was predominantly between the ages of 18-49.
• According to Nielsen, as of November 2020, the average household income of true-crime podcast listeners was $83,245, which was just above the average of $82,641 for all podcast listeners.
• Some have suggested that women listen to true crime in an effort to learn survival skills from it.

Introduction

Demographics

Gender

 

Source

 

• A University of Illinois study in 2010 found that "70% of Amazon reviews on true crime books are by women."
• According to the host of the true-crime podcast Sword and Scale, the majority of his audience (about 70%) are female.
• A 2019 study titled "The Podcast Consumer 2019" found that women make up 73% of true-crime podcast listeners.
• A survey of true-crime podcast listeners, specifically to “Crime Junkie” and "My Favorite Murder," found that 85% of listeners were female.
• Podcast listeners to "Wine and Crime" were 85% female.
• Attendees at CrimeCon, a true-crime convention held in the US, are 82% female.
• However, visitors to the website for the true-crime podcast Serial skew slightly more male, with 51.94% male and 48.06% female.  

Age

• According to the host of the true-crime podcast Sword and Scale, the majority of his audience is between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five. 
• The on-demand TV audience for "Making a Murderer," a true-crime Netflix series, was predominantly between the ages of 18-49.
• Visitors to the Serial Podcast website, a true-crime podcast by the New York Times, were mostly under the age of 45. 28.43% were between 25-34; 20.92% were between 18-24; and 18.68% were between 35-44.
• Based on Nielsen data, true crime is among the favorite podcast genres in the 18-34 age group.

Race

• Listeners of true crime are likely to be white.
• WBUR states: "But the majority of true crime is created by white women, consumed by white women, and about white, female victims."
• Brooke Hargrove, a true-crime podcaster and attendee of CrimeCon, states: "When I went to CrimeCon, an annual true crime fan convention hosted by cable TV channel Oxygen, a cursory glance around the room indicated the audience, at least for that event, was primarily white."
• In The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice, Lindsey Webb states: "While the gendered nature of true crime consumption is widely analyzed and discussed, scholars and commentators generally either entirely ignore the racial composition of true crime audiences or mention it in passing or anecdotally."

Education Level

• Listeners of true-crime podcasts “Crime Junkie” and “My Favorite Murder” are highly educated, "with 63% of “Crime Junkie” and 71% of “My Favorite Murder” listeners reported having graduated from some kind of post-secondary education (including Associates, Bachelors, and Graduate degree programs)."

Income

• According to Nielsen, as of November 2020, the average household income of true-crime podcast listeners was $83,245, which was just above the average of $82,641 for all podcast listeners.

 

Source

 

•  70% of listeners of true-crime podcasts “Crime Junkie” and "My Favorite Murder" make more than $50,000 per year.
• Attendees at CrimeCon, a US-based true-crime convention, have an average household income of $175,000 per year.

Relevance for Demographic

Why True Crime Appeals to Women

 

Source

 

• According to Melanie Haughton, lecturer in Psychology at the University of Derby, true crime may appeal to women specifically due to the romanticized nature of the perpetrators. She states: "There is a lot of romanticizing of these dark figures, like American serial killer Ted Bundy, who have committed awful acts, and women can be intrigued by the danger aspect. Victim-blaming language, implying that it’s the women’s fault, is rife in the media, which further romanticizes the perpetrators and pulls focus from the victims, making the lives of serial killers the main focus. For example, Ted Bundy was recently played by heartthrob Zac Efron, showing the extent to which people are attracted to, and romanticize, serial killers."
• Francesca Dorricott, a crime author, believes that the majority female audience is related to gender inequality. She states: "The largely female audience has a lot to do with gender inequality in society. Most women have been taught to restrain their actions, their thoughts, and sometimes even their imaginations. We can witness a solution to a stalking charge without ever being in danger ourselves, we can see a bad person put behind bars and feel relieved, we can explore our own behavior and thoughts without being judged."
• Julia Davis, editor of Crime magazine, states: "Women like to untangle things — they think a lot. I’m not saying men don’t, but they like to work things out, often think about things quite deeply and obviously there’s a big aspect of that in true crime, especially in unsolved, cold case type documentaries or podcasts. There’s a lot to think about."
•  Other reasons women may enjoy true crime more than men include that women are often more fearful of, and therefore more interested in, crime, and that women may find it easier to relate to the often female victims that true crime portrays.
• Some have suggested that women listen to true crime in an effort to learn survival skills from it.
• Liza Finlay, a psychotherapist in Toronto, states: "Women watch true crime so they don’t feel quite so alone. Their fear is validated and unsanitized. Women watch… so they can learn [to] arm themselves and thus protect themselves. Women watch to feel empowered."

Race and Racism

• True crime focuses on marketing to white women in part due to media bias towards covering stories where white women are the victims, as opposed to Black or Indigenous women. Stories focused on white women as the victim attract a lot of media attention and therefore are more likely to become the focus of a true-crime story.
• Experts utilize the term "Missing White Woman Syndrome" to describe the attention the US media in particular provides to white, female crime victims. This is not a new phenomenon, but, in the words of one expert "predates the founding of the United States." As such, true-crime stories can perpetrate racial inequality.
• According to Wesley Lowery, a Pulitzer-prize-winning Black author, the white-washing of the true-crime genre has, in effect, influenced what is even defined as a "crime," with a focus only on acts that hurt white people, specifically women. Further, Lowery argues, this white-washing has even gone so far as to influence public policy decisions, in ways that generally are more detrimental to Black people.
• Lauren Frederick, in her 2022 Butler University Honors Thesis, states: "This study applied content analysis to 10 randomly selected true crime podcast episodes from 2012-2021, which were inductively coded and analyzed using critical race theory and feminist theory. Findings indicate podcasters applied stereotypical tropes of race and gender to perpetrators and victims, which do not always reflect demographics in crime statistics... Furthermore, race was a salient feature in podcasts themselves focused on race or if race affected the case, but was otherwise invisible. The podcast sample also lacked representation of Black men, who make up a majority of victims and offenders in the U.S., as well as multiracial women, Latino men, AAPI, and Native Americans." As such, the author argues that true crime podcasts were, in general, doing little to address systemic racism in the justice system and, for the most part, entirely ignored the Black experience.
• However, it appears that recently, since the George Floyd murder and Black Lives Matter, some podcasters have been trying to address this whitewashing, and open the doors to discussions about systemic racism and inequalities in the criminal justice system.
• Some argue that True Crime is, in fact, a force of social change. Author Lindsey Webb states, in her study for The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice, that some believe "these stories raise cultural awareness of flaws in the criminal system, [and] true crime audiences are sometimes moved or called to action beyond the limits of the narrative, such as undertaking online investigations, working to change laws, or lobbying authorities to reconsider unsolved or mishandled cases. Some such work has led to renewed investigations, arrests, and even the exposure of wrongful convictions." However, the author refutes that notion, stating that the genre's focus on white-on-white crime and the links to danger narratives (historical accounts of racialized violence used to justify the oppression of a minority group) overrides the ability of the genre truly address racial inequities.
• Brooke Hargrove, a true-crime podcaster, states that the true-crime genre is, in general, very pro-law enforcement, which can be off-putting for marginalized people and People-of-Color.

Research Strategy