Abstract
Millions of people listen to true crime podcasts on a daily basis, but what explains their popularity? This project investigates the fact/fiction dichotomy in English-language true crime podcasts and analyses the role of poetic devices in suspending disbelief among their audiences. While previous research has examined the use of such devices in crime fiction, less attention has been given to their use in true crime podcasts, despite the genre's soaring popularity and its unique aural delivery. The project will apply computational methods from distant listening to an extensive dataset of true crime podcasts to assess whether true crime fiction makes heavier use of fictionality-signalling devices than other non-fiction genres, despite its focus on factuality. A comparative approach will be adopted, contrasting true crime podcasts with crime fiction novels and other (e.g. journalistic) podcast genres. In doing so, the project aims to verify the hypothesis that the specific poetics of the true crime podcast are able to enhance a sense of drama and suspense in their narratives by using techniques commonly associated with fiction. This, in turn, can increase the listener's willingness to suspend disbelief and accept the story as true. This macroscopic view of the contemporary true crime podcast will be supplemented with insights from Thing Theory to assess the role of inanimate objects in the genre's poetics (such as murder weapons or police files).
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