Why Young Adults Consume Media Content About Serial Killers: Evidence from Russia

Crime, Media, Culture. 2025. Vol. 21. No. 3. P. 294–320.

Ekaterina Gulina, Daria Osokina, Lev Lubich, Oxana Mikhaylova

This article explores Russian young adults's motives for consuming media content related to serial killers. Based on a sociological perspective of consumption, the research integrates concepts such as consumerism and “new hedonism” postulated by Campbell with Giddens’s structuration theory and Goffman’s stigma theory. We argue that consumerists’ motivations and images of serial killers are products of modernity. A total of 26 semi-structured online interviews were conducted with young adults aged 18 to 35 years from 14 cities in Russia. We then performed a thematic qualitative analysis using the AtlasTI software. Our findings show that consumers of media content about serial killers have two main categories of motives: cognitive and emotional. Cognitive motives could be viewed through the lens of the need for ontological security, an attempt to study a potential threat. Emotional motives were associated with satisfying the consumerist need for constant emotional stimulation and pleasure. Future studies may focus on classifying audiences based on their motives for consuming serial-killer media content and examining correlations with consumption practices as well as the supply-side motives of producing this type of content.

Keywords: Russia, youth, media content, consumption motives, serial killers

Publication based on the results of: Life Choices: Factors and Mechanisms for Making Key Decisions at Different Life Stages (2024)