Part of an emergent wave of urgently needed new media research, Crime, Justice and Social Media promises to serve as a foundational primer on the relationship between online media environments and technosocial criminality. In his unwavering analysis of how gender inequalities and asymmetries structure online harms and transgressions, Michael Salter illuminates the powerful contradictions, tensions, and amplifications of harm in social media, while remaining faithful to the complex emancipatory potential of new modes of feminist online contestation, resistance, and justice-seeking pursuits.
Michelle Brown, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Tennessee, USA, and co-editor of Crime, Media, Culture
This book uses case studies of online abuse and focus group data taken from research with young people in Australia to develop a set of cogent arguments that propose such abuse intersects with established patterns of inequality, but also to show how social media has emancipatory potential, and is challenging conventional ways of understanding crime and injustice. Advocating for a critical theory of online abuse using contemporary empirical examples, the book offers particularly useful insights for scholars and students interested in the role of social media in the commission of crimes as well as in justice-seeking initiatives.
Greg Martin, Associate Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, University of Sydney, Australia
Online abuse involves new media affordances alongside systemic patterns of discrimination. By examining coordinated harassment campaigns in relation to a broader media culture, Dr. Salter provides a nuanced and convincing account of weaponised visibility. This timely book is recommended for students, researchers and practitioners who are coming to terms with these issues.
Daniel Trottier, Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands
This lively, thought provoking book greatly enlarges our understanding of online abuse across various social media platforms. Its lucid combination of critical theory, analytical insight, and interdisciplinary sensibility make it indispensable reading for anyone seeking to know more about this vital aspect of contemporary culture. In particular, its attention to the gendered dynamics and politics of abuse make it a timely, bold and innovative statement of criminology at its very best.
Eamonn Carrabine, Professor of Sociology, University of Essex, UK, and co-editor of Crime, Media, Culture
Mapping out the complex relationships between technological design, crime and gender representsone of the many challenges facing criminologists concerned with social media. An engaging and timely book, Michael Salter's outstanding Crime, Justice and Social Media delves into these and other issues with nuance and finesse. Deftly synthesizing media theory, gender and critical theory, Salter's book offers a compelling and much-needed account of the factors that drive social media facilitated abuse and harassment.... Incisive in its analysis and impressive in its interdisiciplinarity, Crime, Justice and Social Media provides a sophisticated account of online abuse, humiliation and justice-seeking initiatives and is an excellent addition to Routledge's New Directions in Critical Criminology series. It is a must-read for criminologists concerned with new media, online abuse and technologically facilitated sexual violence, and an important contribution to the still-nascent criminological literature on social media.
Mark Wood, University of Melbourne, Crime Media Culture
