A commentary on the potential impact of online communities and crime-related media on the criminal justice system: ‘do you know more? … join the investigation’
Andrew Childs, Amanda Lee Robertson, Jacqueline Fuller · Current Issues in Criminal Justice · 2019
Criminological research in the media-crime nexus must critically engage with online communities focussed on influencing criminal justice outcomes. This commentary highlights the increasing diversification of such online communities and draws on the only Australian example of a media-led online wrongful conviction campaign – the Exposed Facebook group – to explore new developments in this space. This Australian example is so new that it has not yet been the subject of rigorous empirical criminological enquiry. As such, we pre-empt some of the potential impacts on the operation of the criminal justice system to generate critical thought on the issue and argue the need for further research to explore such impacts.