156: [Dr. Kelli Boling + Dr. Danielle Slakoff] Helping Those Harmed

What Came Next

Broken Cycle Media

Education, Society & Culture, Self-improvement, True Crime, Documentary

4.4 • 627 Ratings

🗓️ 26 December 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Content Warning: domestic violence, murder, and missing persons.

Dr. Kelli Boling and Dr. Danielle Slakoff join us today to discuss their impactful research about the creation and consumption of true crime media. They both bring years of experience and expertise to their work in hopes of inspiring true crime to be a more equitable healing space for victims and co-victims. The Broken Cycle Media team has long admired their work and is honored they would join us to talk about their research discoveries and how we can all work to improve the genre for those at the center of crime.

Dr. Kelli Boling: https://kelliboling.com/

Dr. Danielle Slakoff: https://daniellecslakoff.weebly.com/

Sources:

Boling, Kelli S.. ““It’s that ‘There but for the Grace of God Go I’ Piece of It”: Domestic Violence Survivors in True Crime Podcast Audiences.” Mass Communication and Society 26 (2022): 991 - 1013. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/%E2%80%9CIt%E2%80%99s-that-%E2%80%98There-but-for-the-Grace-of-God-Go-I%E2%80%99-of-Boling/f938790522bc62fa985351bc951e3ce0e3ded9ac

Boling, Kelli S. “True Crime Podcasting: Journalism, Justice or Entertainment?” Radio Journal:International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, Intellect, 1 Oct. 2019, intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/rjao_00003_1#cited

Boling, K. S., & Hull, K. (2018). Undisclosed Information—Serial Is My Favorite Murder: Examining Motivations in the True Crime Podcast Audience. Journal of Radio & Audio Media, 25(1), 92–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529.2017.1370714

Boling, K. S., & Slakoff, D. C. (2025). “What an invasion, an immense invasion”: Examining the adverse effects of true crime media on co-victims. Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590251371618

Slakoff, Danielle C., and Kelli S. Boling. 2025. “‘Media Pressure Is What Makes Law Enforcement Move’: Insights from Co-Victims About the Positive Impacts of True Crime Media Attention.” Mass Communication and Society, August, 1–17. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15205436.2025.2549719

Slakoff, D.C., Boling, K.S. & Tadros, E. “I just couldn’t cope with it, you know? I just couldn’t believe that she was gone”: The Portrayal of Co-victims’ Grief in True Crime Podcasts about Missing (but Presumed Killed) Women. J Fam Viol 39, 303–313 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-022-00471-w

Slakoff, D. C., & Brennan, P. K. (2017). The Differential Representation of Latina and Black Female Victims in Front-Page News Stories: A Qualitative Document Analysis. Feminist Criminology, 14(4), 488-516. https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085117747031 (Original work published 2019)

“True Crime Obsession: Sleuths, Streamers, and Serial Killers.” YouTube, Vice News, www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsO_iynpH1E

For a list of additional resources and related non-profit organizations, please visit http://www.somethingwaswrong.com/resources

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Thank you to Storyworth and Wondry's scamfluencers for sponsoring this episode.
0:05.9	What came next is intended for mature audiences only.
0:10.6	Episodes discuss topics that can be triggering, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, animal abuse, suicide, and murder.
0:19.9	I am not a therapist, nor am I a doctor. If you're in need
0:23.9	of support, please visit Something Was Wrong.com forward slash resources for a list of non-profit
0:30.1	organizations that can help. Opinions expressed by my guests on the show are their own and do not
0:36.5	necessarily represent the views of myself
0:38.8	or Broken Cycle Media. Resources and source material are linked in the episode notes. Thank you
0:45.5	so much for listening. Dr. Kelly Bowling and Dr. Danielle Slakoff join us today to discuss their impactful research about the creation and consumption of true crime media.
1:21.9	They both bring years of experience and expertise to their work in hopes of inspiring true crime to be a more equitable,
1:29.8	healing space for victims and co-victims. The Broken Cycle Media team has long admired their work
1:36.5	and is honored they would join us to talk about their discoveries and how we can all
1:41.8	work to improve the genre for those at the center of crime.
1:49.2	My name is Dr. Danielle Slakeoff.
1:51.8	I'm an associate professor of criminal justice at California State University, Sacramento, also called Sacramento State.
1:59.4	I teach a lot of different things in the department, but generally I teach about media and crime, domestic violence, women's issues in the criminal justice system. And lately I've been teaching a class on contemporary criminal justice issues. And I'm really lucky because I get to do research in those same areas. I've done
2:19.6	predominantly research on media and crime as well as domestic violence. I am Dr. Kelly Bowling.
2:26.8	I am an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Lincoln in the College of Journalism
2:32.3	and Mass Communications. I am technically in the ad PR faculty
2:37.6	group, but I teach a large lecture titled Social Justice Human Rights in the Media, which intersects
2:44.2	nicely with my research. I am a critical cultural scholar, and so I tend to look at the lived reality of media audiences. So traditionally
2:54.8	women, women of color, victims of domestic violence, how these women are depicted in the media
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Broken Cycle Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Broken Cycle Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.