Expanding upon Web Sleuths: The new wave of true crime media and its citizen detectives

该项目将通过对网络侦探这一现代现象的理论和经验探索，为扩大文化和关键犯罪学领域作出贡献。犯罪学家对网络侦探、公民侦探或扶手椅侦探的研究很少，因为这一事件最近才在学术界发生(Yardley等人，2018年)。随着越来越多的人从事低级侦探工作，满足了他们对真实犯罪信息娱乐的需求，韦氏侦探在社会中受到了高度辩论(Seltzer，2008)。以技术转变为标志，这些公民将他们的空闲时间花在在公开可获得的信息中探测身份不明的身体和失踪人员上(Stokes，2018)。他们的情报包括“搜索信息，上传文件、图像和视频，评论、辩论、推理、分析、识别嫌疑人，并试图与执法部门和其他与案件有关的组织和个人接触”(Yardley等人，2018：82)。对真实犯罪的迷恋可以追溯到17世纪，当时公开处决开始成为一种娱乐活动(特恩布尔，2010)。维多利亚时代的人也着迷于识别变态和区分他们的犯罪异常(Jermyn，2012)。然而，今天，新自由主义社会变革引发了一种特殊的发展，这似乎是一种百年传统(Yardley等人，2018年)。因为《魅力》现在包括观众的主动检测，在不同的社会政治背景下在数字世界中完成，这也是该项目倾向于调查的。

The project will contribute to the expanding area of cultural and critical criminology through a theoretical and empirical exploration of the modern phenomenon of web sleuths. Web sleuths, citizen detectives or armchair detectives, are little researched by criminologists, as the occurrence has only been recently composed amongst academia (Yardley et al, 2018). Websleuths are highly debated within society, as an increasing number of individuals engage in low-level detective work, feeding their need for True-crime infotainment (Seltzer, 2008). Marked by a technological shift, these citizens spend their free time focusing on detecting unidentified bodies and missing persons, amongst publicly available information (Stokes, 2018). Their intelligence includes 'searching for information, uploading documents, images, and videos, commenting, debating, theorising, analysing, identifying suspects, and attempting to engage with law enforcement and other organisations and individuals connected to the cases' (Yardley et al, 2018:82). The fascination with true crime dates to the seventeenth century when public executions began to feature as entertainment (Turnbull, 2010). Victorians were also fascinated with identifying deviants and distinguishing their criminal abnormalities (Jermyn, 2012). However today, neoliberal social change has trigged a particular development, in what appears otherwise, a century-old tradition (Yardley et al, 2018). As fascination now includes pro-active detection by audiences, completed in a digital world under a different social-political context, which is what the project tends to investigate.