Crime and the Media

This article explores emerging intersections between the consumption of mediated popular culture and the real and imagined topographies within which those representations are framed. Through an examination of the ‘televisual tourism’ centred around the successful TV series Breaking Bad, we scrutinise the multiple modes of sensorial and embodied travel experience enjoyed by fans of the show as they consume their way around the show’s sites, scenes and tastes in the city of Albuquerque. This exploitation of media textuality through fan tourism is, we suggest, centred upon a carefully managed commodification of crime, criminality and transgression.

Different ways of doing politics, particularly the distinction between majoritarian and consensus democracy, help account for differences in national appetites for punishment, as a comparison of two child-on-child homicides from the 1990s—the Bulger case in England and the Redergård case in Norway – shows. In England, pressed to act by emotive, condemnatory press coverage in a highly competitive media market, all politicians had incentives to politicize the case. The Labour Party used the Bulger case to indicate its new and tougher approach to law and order and to make the party more electable in the face of rising public concern about crime. Simplistic tabloid rhetoric went largely unchallenged, and the public’s press-fueled fears about crime were legitimated by traditionally left-leaning politicians intent to distance themselves from the expertise of traditional elites. The consensual nature of Norwegian politics decreased incentives to politicize the Redergård homicide in the same way.

Spurred by the advent of the Internet and the camera phone, in the early 21st century street fighting met the information superhighway. Today, one of the key vehicles accelerating this turn are Facebook fight pages: user-generated content aggregation pages that publicly host footage of street fights, and other forms of bare-knuckle violence on the popular social networking site. Drawing on observational data collected from five popular fight pages, and survey data from 205 fight page users, this article explores the different forms of bareknuckle violence hosted on these online domains and their users' motivations for viewing it. Through doing so, it examines eleven distinct modes of spectating bareknuckle violence on fight pages: entertainment, consumptive deviance, righteous justice, amusement, self-affirmation, nostalgia, boredom alleviation, intrigue, self-defence training, and risk awareness. Additionally, I argue that to understand these modes of spectating bareknuckle violence, we have to address the codes of masculinity that underlie not only much of the violence hosted on fight pages, but also spectators' readings of these events.

Drawing on an affective framework, this qualitative content analysis of the immediate public responses on Twitter in the hours following Jian Ghomeshi’s not guilty verdict (n = 3943 tweets) reveals two key discourses of public opinion. Twitter users depicted the criminal justice system (CJS) as having worked and/or failed, and these intensifying divisions were highly gendered. Members of the public pitted notions of the “rational male” against the “emotional female”, and these debates heavily supported or opposed a patriarchal legal rationality. This study sheds light on the ways in which adversarial justice systems reproduce adversarial discourses on crime, and overlook the problems entangled in misleading applications of rationality to sexual consent. The wide circulation of blame to all parties involved in this case leads us to the conclusion that the CJS, in its current punitive form, does not instil a sense of confidence in the public. With a shifted focus on the healing and dignity of everyone involved in sexual assault cases, we recommend Restorative and Transformative approaches to justice as alternative measures to respond to sexual assault.

Utilizing data from news media accounts, this study investigates 11 incidents of averted school rampage threats that involved female perpetrators as conspirators or co-conspirators in plots to attack their schools. While the vast majority of both attempted and completed school rampage attacks have been committed by boys and men, there are in fact cases that have involved females. In this study, we provide descriptive information about the largely unstudied phenomenon of school rampage threats involving females and analyze how the multifaceted role of gender impacts these events in terms of their level of threat, group dynamics, and relative lack of news coverage.

From 2003 until 2012 the Australian media closely followed child sex offender Dennis Ferguson as he appeared in and was expelled from numerous local communities. Unattractive, alone, and obstinately unwilling to acknowledge his crimes, Ferguson conformed to dominant representations elsewhere of the stranger paedophile that demands ongoing governmental intervention. This article closely examines media and political discourses in which Ferguson has operated as a metonymic focal point for public considerations of child sex offending in Australia across the last decade, defined in relation to various conceptions of safe, responsible community. It considers public debates about how best to respond to the release of such offenders and the significance of Ferguson to the development of new Australian law and policy applying to sex offenders as an exceptional population, including extended supervision and continuing detention orders, and post-release institutions. As such, the article argues for close attention paid to the figures which garner media and political attention and around whom new policy approaches are developed, including their limiting effects for addressing problems such as child sexual abuse.

Using five popular rape victimisation cases which occurred during COVID-19 lockdown in Nigeria, this paper shows how the mastery of routines of rape victims by sexual predators enhanced the success of rape victimisation. Elements of routine activity theory such as motivated offender, attractive targets and absence of capable guardianship is used to analyse each case to signpost and underscore the importance and centrality of active capable guardianship to dislodge and neutralise rape offend-ers' routine mastery around attractive targets. The paper recommends mounting capable guardianship to checking growing menace of rape in Nigeria. Attractive target should eliminate risky routines and poisonous relationship which could enhance their chances of sexual violation.

Digital technologies, such as mobile phones and the internet, provide new opportunities for Human Rights Defenders to mobilise people, coordinate activities, uncover and document abuses, publish find- ings, and engage new audiences. However, with these new opportunities come new risks as well. This chapter examines the right to and need for private digital communication as part of freedom of expression in the context of carrying out human rights work. Drawing on their experiences at Tactical Technology Collective, an international non-government organisation, the authors argue that the most effective means to address the digital privacy needs of people who are defending human rights is to provide a range of support − including awareness raising media, how-to toolkits, and hands-on training − that assist Human Rights Defenders to identify and then address digital risks by changing behaviours in ways most appropriate to their local context.

This article examines the kinds of criminological knowledge and information that were considered in the press during the Hesse election campaign in 2007/2008, in which youth crime played a major role. The present study investigates the integration of information about the possible causes of youth crime into press articles, and examines to which extent information about these causes and motives for engaging in youth crime were considered by the press to be significant in the explanation of youth crime. The other aim of this study is to uncover which types of criminal policy and pedagogy had been reported about, and which of those measures had been regarded as meaningful. To this end, results of a content analysis of articles from two German daily newspapers—the Bild and the Süddeutsche Zeitung—are presented and compared. The differences between the two newspapers and their method of news construction are highlighted. The paper clarifies central concepts and discusses previous researc...

Pierwsza w Polsce monografia poświęcona problematyce populizmu penalnego. Opisuje przejawy coraz silniejszego uwikłania polityki kryminalnej w grę polityczną. Proponuje zarazem spojrzenie na populizm penalny jako efekt uboczny sprzężenia zwrotnego pomiędzy systemem politycznym i medialnym. W dobie postępującej mediatyzacji polityki oraz zacierania się granic między informacją a rozrywką populizm penalny stał się poręcznym narzędziem marketingu politycznego. Rezultatem jego wykorzystania są dziesiątki wątpliwej jakości zmian w prawie karnym podejmowanych w odpowiedzi na sztucznie wykreowane zagrożenia.
Ze względu na interdyscyplinarny charakter publikacja może zainteresować zarówno prawników, jak i przedstawicieli nauk społecznych. Wykorzystując dorobek nauk penalnych, socjologii prawa, nauki o komunikowaniu i politologii, autorka poddaje jakościowej analizie empirycznej problem tworzenia prawa karnego dla doraźnych politycznych korzyści. Śledząc przebieg dwóch nagłośnionych medialnie inicjatyw ustawodawczych przez pryzmat wypowiedzi polityków i dziennikarzy, demaskuje ich oportunizm i bezrefleksyjność oraz ukazuje samonapędzający się mechanizm potęgowania strachu i represji. 


"Populizm penalny, który w ostatnich latach opanował tzw. klasę polityczną i media w Polsce, uważany jest za podstawową przyczynę procesu gwałtownego „psucia prawa karnego”, jaki zapoczątkowany został wkrótce po wejściu w życie kodyfikacji karnej z 1997 roku. Niniejsza publikacja stanowi pierwsze w literaturze polskiej monograficzne i kompleksowe opracowanie tej problematyki. Jej szczególnie wartościową cechą jest interdyscyplinarny charakter, łączący analizę z zakresu socjologii prawa i kryminologii z analizą politologiczną i medioznawczą. W tym sensie książka adresowana jest do bardzo szerokiego grona odbiorców, którzy często mają jedynie fragmentaryczną wiedzę i znajomość literatury dotyczącej tej kwestii. Książka przekazuje niejako w pigułce obraz funkcjonowania dzisiejszych polityków i współczesnych mediów. Codzienna obserwacja zjawisk związanych z populizmem penalnym może oczywiście budzić sprzeciw, złość, oburzenie, natychmiastową chęć sprostowania itp., dostarcza jednak niejako „rozcieńczonego” obrazu tego problemu. Dopiero kompleksowe przedstawienie zagadnienia przez pryzmat wypowiedzi polityków i mediów, prezentowane w skondensowanej formie, uświadamia całą grozę sytuacji. Czytając dwa ostatnie rozdziały pracy, można zdać sobie sprawę z degrengolady, jakiej doznał w Polsce w ostatnich latach publiczny dyskurs na temat przestępstwa, przestępczości, przestępcy i polityki kontroli tych zjawisk." [Z recenzji prof. dr. hab. Krzysztofa Krajewskiego]

This paper builds a case for more defensible assessments of informed public opinion on crime control and penal policy. Mass-mediated portrayals of what the public want and ubiquitous self-selected opinion polls serve as common surrogates for informed public opinion. These highly suspect assessments have gained a level of credence in policy debates that is difficult to justify. Innovations like the Deliberative Poll show promise in facilitating what has been called 'public judgment'—a more reliable and refined state of informed public opinion. Less ambitious remedial proposals, including the public education programmes advocated by some experts and recently embraced by the Home Office, are insufficiently bold to make a significant and lasting impact on public knowledge and attitudes.

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

The ongoing public fascination with Jack the Ripper is all about genre, setting, and the lack of a third act. But the recognisable shape of the character as perceived in modern film, fiction, popular history and tourism was initially created during the media frenzy of 1888. The press understood the Whitechapel killings were a genre piece from the start – The Times immediately making a connection with De Quincey’s essay on murder and Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841), a short story in which two women are brutally murdered by a razor-wielding ape in Paris. Similarly, the Daily Telegraph, in an editorial following a report on the inquest of Elizabeth Stride, lamenting a lack of obvious motive upon which the government might act (their example being Burking in Edinburgh and London and the subsequent Anatomy Act), ended up hinting at werewolves:

we are thus left to weave the merest figments of fancy, and to form unpleasant visions of roving lunatics distraught with homicidal mania or bloodthirsty lust; of abandoned desperadoes wreaking their thirst for slaughter on forlorn and hopeless women, the wretchedest and most pitiable of their sex, to satisfy some inscrutably foul and crapulous vendetta; or, finally, we may dream of monsters, or ogres, and chimeras in the shape of wretched beings who catch from each awful story the contagion of senseless crime, and, out of a horrid imitativeness, repeat the abominable acts which they have seen described.

Walter Dew even recalled that, ‘People allowed their imagination to run riot. There was talk of black magic and vampires...’

ON THE NARRATOLOGY OF JACK THE RIPPER FROM 1888 TO DATE - From: The 19th Century Underworld (Pen & Sword, 2018)

This paper provides an overview of the theory of the Spiral of Silence, including the underlying premise of personal need for opinion congruence and social conformity upon which it is based, and the extensive body of related research which exists amongst a multitude of academic disciplines regarding the theory. Connections and comparisons are made between the existing data and analysis amongst these various fields of research in order to better understand the relevance and validity of the theory, especially as it relates to the impacts the spiral phenomenon can have upon a society within a political context. Additional attention is paid towards the role of the media in perpetrating spirals of silence, as well as the implications such spiral effects can have upon and within mediated communication systems themselves in a society.

This book provides a cutting-edge introduction to Internet-facilitated crime-watching and examines how social media have shifted the landscape for producing, distributing, and consuming footage of crime. In this thought-provoking work, Mark Wood examines the phenomenon of antisocial media: participatory online domains where footage of crime is aggregated, sympathetically curated, and consumed for entertainment. Focusing on Facebook pages dedicated to hosting footage of street fights, brawls, and other forms of bareknuckle violence, Wood demonstrates that to properly grapple with antisocial media, we must address not only their content, but also their software. In doing so, this study goes a long way to addressing the fundamental question: how have social media changed the way we consume crime?

Synthesizing criminology, media theory, software studies, and digital sociology, Antisocial Media is media criminology for the Facebook age. It is essential reading for students and scholars interested in social media, cultural criminology, and the crime-media interface.

Femicides are topics frequently covered by the media, and journalists use different frames when reporting on such lethal acts of violence against women. This chapter addresses the media coverage and framing in German online press articles of two femicides with victims of Romanian ethnicity. The research presented used as methodology thematic content analysis, along with media framing analysis. In the chapter, the results of this study are discussed, that is, the characteristics of media coverage and content related to the killings of the two Romanian women in the German press are analysed, the main frames used by the media in their reporting on the femicides are pointed out, and the extent to which journalists use in their narratives techniques of blaming the victims is examined. Moreover, the chapter investigates whether the media report the crimes against women as singular facts or address them in the broader context of social problems, and contribute, in this way, to the increase of public awareness and social responsibility towards them.

This article deals with current re-dramatizations of crime and popular criminologies. It analyses key elements of the popular criminological imaginaries underpinning a recent and highly successful film— Catch Me If You Can—in order to tease out the discursive, mythical and fabulist techniques by which it communicates particular imaginations of crime. Additionally, the article offers some conceptual and analytical anchors for interpreting filmwork so that other popular representations might be more easily situated within criminological analysis. We argue that popular media portrayals of crime are highly effective in sustaining particular conceptions of the interaction between crime and wider social conditions, and we explore four layers of discursive work through which this film communicates the causes and consequences of criminal behaviour

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

The Aalborg Project may be interpreted as a metaphor of modern politics, modern administration and planning, and of modernity itself. The basic idea of the project was comprehensive, coherent, and innovative, and it was based on rational and democratic argument. During implementation, however, when idea met reality, the play of Machiavellian princes, Nietzschean will to power, and Foucauldian rationality-as-rationalization resulted in the fragmentation of the project.

At the same time that case studies are widely used and have produced canonical texts, it may be observed that the case study as a methodology is generally held in low regard, or is simply ignored, within the academy. For example, only 2 of the 30 top-ranked U.S. graduate programs in political science require a dedicated graduate course in case study or qualitative methods, and a full third of these programs do not even offer such a course. In contrast, all of the top 30 programs offer courses in quantitative methods and almost all of them require training in such methods, often several courses. In identifying this paradox of the case study’s wide use and low regard, Gerring rightly remarks that the case study survives in a “curious methodological limbo,” and that the reason is that the method is poorly understood. In what follows, we will try to resolve Gerring’s paradox and help case study research gain wider use and acceptance.

This article makes a case for the value of science fiction to criminologists through examining the popular Japanese cyber-punk anime series Psycho-Pass. Through portraying a surveillance society of pre-crime and algorithmic policing, Psycho-Pass raises important questions about the datafication of crime and its role in facilitating increasingly invasive and ubiquitous forms of social control. Psycho-Pass, I argue, encourages us to question a society of algorithmic tyranny: a society where the overwhelming majority of classifications are driven by algorithms, and where crime has been reduced to a data object and 'measureable type'. I conclude my case for incorporating the technological imagination of science fiction into the criminological imagination through identifying three key resources the genre may offer criminologists: archaeological, pedagogical, and capacity building for reflexive governance.

What the concept of public means today? We seek to contribute to this debatesearching for a third-way of appraisal: the public is neither a simple audience constitutedby media consumers nor just a rational-critical agency of a Public Sphere. Weargue the concept should also be seen in at the light of a publicness principle, beyond acritic and manipulative publicity.In accordance, the public may be regarded as the result of the social activities madeby individuals sharing symbolic representations and common emotions in publicness.Seen with lower-case, the concept is a set of subjectivities who look publicly for a feelingof belonging. So, in this perspective, the public is still a fundamental notion to sociallife although in a different manner in comparison to 18th century Public Sphere’s Public.He means above all the social textures and configurations where successive layers ofsocial experience are built up. The public is, thus, acknowledged with the casual andspontaneous public communities disseminated through society carrying out processes ofcommunication that use media to obtain a worldwide relevance.

The Murdered Sweetheart Ballads constituted a large and unusually coherent genre within the vernacular song traditions of English-speaking communities . This 'discursive' catalogue covers the 60 songs originally published in England as broadsides or chapbooks, and, where relevant, their derivatives in singing tradition. The material potentially enables significant investigation of the interplay between context, content and form over three centuries of publication and performance.

One of the hallmarks of the Tunisian uprising that ousted President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011 was its broad base of support. To the surprise of many Middle East experts who had previously regarded co-opted and quiescent middle classes as the bedrock of stability for authoritarian regimes in the region, the Tunisian revolution rode on the back of a broad coalition of social forces that united an alienated intellectual elite with the
rural poor and urban middle classes in opposition to the regime. It is a widely shared assumption that this joining of disparate forces would not have been possible without modern communication technologies and social media. But it is less clear exactly how such social media interacted with other contextual factors to bring about a national protest movement of sufficient proportions to topple an extremely entrenched authoritarian regime. Drawing on evidence from the popular protests in Tunisia between December 2010 and January 2011, expert interviews with Tunisian bloggers, and a web survey conducted
among Tunisian Facebook users, this paper argues that social media (1) allowed a “digital elite” to form personal networks and circumvent the national media blackout by brokering information for outside mainstream media; (2) helped to overcome the “free rider” problem of collective action by reporting the magnitude of protest events; and (3) facilitated the formation of a national collective identity which was supportive of protest action and transcended geographical and socio-economic disparities by providing a shared, mobilizing
element of emotional grievance.

This paper aims to answer how has the illegal drug trade changed with the rise of Dark web illicit markets. In order to do so, this paper is divided into four chapters which critically analyse a number of factors that influenced the change and gives a broad look on how it has changed. Each chapter will emphasize on factors such as anonymity, hidden and hard to track cryptocurrencies, accessibility and structure. As it can be further noted, a focus on drugs will be made in combination with
an in depth analysis on the actual methods being used during the process. It will further
examine the virtual structures of illicit drug markets on the Dark Web and compare them to
the network structures of traditional black markets (ground). The purpose behind examining
these two different types of illicit structures is to understand the evolution of illicit markets in
combination with the core similarities and differences as well as possible interactions
between the two. The idea behind the production and use of hard to track cryptocurrency will
be analyzed in combination with illicit product accessibility and the influence anonymity has
had on the market.
This paper argues that technological innovations such as encryption, cryptocurrencies and
browsing are key factors that influence the change and transition of drug markets into the
digital world. Having to grant an access to a catalog of illicit substances, option to order
online whist having the product delivered to your door and all of this anonymously has attract
a wide range of audience in recent years. The newly developed and ongoing dark web drug
markets has greatly influenced both the decision of the buyer as well as the seller to replace
the old market structure with a more secure and innovative one.

Casos de investigação criminal com grande destaque mediático potenciam focos de tensão entre os media e os agentes judiciários. A conversão do potencial dramático do exercício da função judicial em dramas mediáticos contribui para a amplificação da noção de uma justiça lenta, débil e ineficaz na sua função de identificar e castigar os trangressores. Além disso, os media podem exercer funções concorrentes do exercício de justiça em moldes de uma justiça meta-popular, assente no imediatismo, dramatismo e apelo à emoção. A partir do caso recente do desaparecimento de Madeleine McCann, analisamos os discursos e representações veiculados na imprensa portuguesa acerca da investigação criminal, procurando perspectivar o impacto da cobertura mediática na construção da percepção pública de culpabilidade ou de inocentação de um indivíduo.

Extrajudicial killing (EJK) is a relatively recent concept located at the intersection of human rights, criminology and the sociology of law. It is defined as state-killing outside of the formal legal system of a state without due process of law. As a residual category it relies heavily on the definition of what a 'state' is and thus a theory of the state. A key feature of EJK is a denial of state involvement in killing necessitated by EJK's constituting state crime in which the state violates its own self-defined rules for operation. The specific focus of this study is how state 'frames' are used in speeches and political communication to promote state-killing while denying any state connection to that killing. EJK is seen to occur in coordinated waves of violence (cycles of violence) that resemble the trajectory of infectious diseases in epidemics that are influenced by the frames put forth by the state and watchdog institutions in 'cycles of moral reaction'. This case study focuses on EJK in the Philippines which has played a key defining role in EJK internationally, specifically on police encounter shootings and death squad killings during the 'War on Drugs' that began in 2016.

In this paper we argue that the use of the communicative theory of Jürgen Habermas in planning theory is problematic because it hampers an understanding of how power shapes planning. We posit an alternative approach based on the power analytics of Michel Foucault which focuses on ‘what is actually done’, as opposed to Habermas’s focus on ‘what should be done’. We discuss how the Foucauldian stance problematises planning, asking difficult questions about the treatment of legitimacy, rationality, knowledge and spatiality. We conclude that Foucault offers a type of analytic planning theory which offers better prospects than does Habermas for those interested in understanding and bringing about democratic social change through planning.

This Article analyzes the War on Drugs as a social phenomenon. It argues that such an analysis, which rejects the assumption that collective, institutionalized behavior is generally rational, can help us understand key aspects of why we continue to marginalize disadvantaged individuals. If the War on Drugs is a war and wars are won or lost, there is no question we lost. Whatever drug-related evil that war sought to eradicate, whether drug consumption, trafficking, or addiction, the data clearly shows that "drugs won." Along the way, we nonetheless persisted-and largely still do. We filled prisons, lost lives, and shattered hopes and dreams. Those we hurt the most were already marginalized. To state that we lost is unhelpful and insufficient. Of course, we did. And we can draw obvious lessons that medicine and psychology work better than carceral institutions and that no one benefits from marginalizing already marginalized and often sick individuals. If the War on Drugs never worked, more salient questions are to be asked about why we fought it. This Article posits that the War on Drugs is not about drugs, crime, or addiction: it is about us. It is about why we cede to fear, anxiety, and irrationality. It is about why we stigmatize and hurt the most vulnerable. Like other irrational and counterproductive policies, the War on Drugs is not an anomaly. It bears close resemblance to other wars we fought (and fight) against the disempowered: witches, gays, Muslims, and others.

L’articolo affronta il tema della fascinazione indotta dal crimine da un punto di vista culturale ponendo l’attenzione su due aspetti: la dimensione emotiva che la caratterizza e il ruolo che essa assume nella società contemporanea. Dal punto di vista delle emozioni, si ipotizza che il “sublime” costituisca l’esperienza emotiva da porre al centro del processo di fascinazione e si propone un’analisi che traccia un parallelismo tra i concetti di “sublime” (Burke), “awe” (Haidt & Keltner) e “perturbante” (Freud). Per quanto riguarda il ruolo assunto dalla fascinazione indotta dal crimine e dal sublime nella società contemporanea, si propone una riflessione intorno ai concetti di godimento, mercificazione e di effervescenza collettiva, ispirata al pensiero di Lacan e di Maffesoli.

The development of the Internet and related communication technologies has had a transformative effect upon social, political, economic, and cultural life. It has also facilitated the emergence of a wide range of crimes that take shape in the spaces of virtual communication. These offenses include technology-oriented crimes such as hacking and the distribution of malicious software; property-oriented crimes such as media piracy, theft, and fraud; and interpersonal offenses such as stalking, harassment, and sexual abuse. In many instances, these crimes serve to entrench and exacerbate existing patterns of victimization, vulnerability, and inequality, along lines of difference related to gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age, and income. The anonymized and globally distributed nature of the Internet creates huge challenges for crime prevention, detection, and prosecution of online offenses.

In 2014, an orchestrated campaign of online abuse known as Gamergate
overtook the global video game industry, calling unprecedented attention
to the scope of gendered harassment on social media. Using Gamergate as
an example, this paper argues that explanations of online abuse that focus
on its cultural or technological dimensions fail to capture the mediating role
of online platforms in rationalizing harassment and reputational damage.
The concept of technological rationality pulls into focus the shared logics
that shape platform design and administration as well as practices of online abuse. Proposed solutions to online abuse that fail to address technological rationality will ultimately leave in place the sociotechnical arrangements that make such abuse possible and impactful.