‘Man I’m all torn up inside’: Analyzing audience responses to Making a Murderer

Despite the preoccupation with media depictions of crime and criminal justice, few studies have employed qualitative methodologies to investigate how audience members engage with, react to, and interpret media content. This analysis of Reddit forums dedicated to the 2015 Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer reveals the wide range of responses to the series and demonstrates the value of looking to user-generated content on social media platforms to understand how we think and feel about crime-related matters. I argue that Reddit users’ reactions to the series are consistent with existing research outlining the complexity of the public’s views regarding criminal justice policy and these responses are intelligible when we consider the broader socio-political context in which the series was released. Particularly important, in my view, are individuals’ affective responses – including empathy, confusion, heartbreak, anger, frustration, fear, and helplessness – and the ways these emotions are linked with beliefs about the efficacy of the criminal justice system and the purposes of punishment. Consequently, this article buttresses recent calls to consider the entire spectrum of human emotions and to investigate the ways these emotions are related to our multifaceted beliefs about crime and criminal justice.