From ‘happy slapping’ to ‘Facebook murder’: networked media in violent crime
This book offers an analysis of three cases in which perpetrators confessed on social media to committing homicides: the murders of Jennifer Alfonso and Charles Taylor, and the Janzen familicide. The confessions included text-based content justifying the killings and, in two cases, images of the victims' dead bodies. The book also explores the role of networked media in violent crime from a criminological perspective and shows how networked media are being used in relation to homicide. In particular, it considers the phenomenon called ‘happy slapping’, which is essentially a crime enacted for the camera — a concept that has recently been termed ‘performance crime’ — and ‘Facebook murder’. This introductory chapter explains how the author was drawn to topic of media in homicide, discusses the foundations of her research, and provides an overview of the chapters that follow.