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Transmedia Crime Stories pp 17–45Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

What’s in a Name? The UK Newspapers’ Fabrication and Commodification of Foxy Knoxy

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture ((PSCMC))

Abstract

This chapter analyses how, immediately after the arrest of Amanda Knox, the UK’s national press transformed the American student into ‘Foxy Knoxy’, the duplicitous, psychologically disturbed femme fatale who orchestrated and participated in the sexually motivated murder of her flatmate, Meredith Kercher. This case exemplifies what happens when UK reporting restrictions do not apply, leaving journalists free to employ imaginative practices to create the global infotainment spectacle that ‘Foxy Knoxy’ became and to ignore her legal right to a presumption of innocence. It is also the first example of journalists mining suspects’ social media sites and re-contextualising their text and images to provide ‘evidential’ sources of a guilty persona.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, City, University of London, London, UK

    Atalanta Goulandris & Eugene McLaughlin

Authors
  1. Atalanta Goulandris
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  2. Eugene McLaughlin
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Media and Communication, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

    Lieve Gies

  2. University of Udine, Montelupo Fidrentino, Italy

    Maria Bortoluzzi

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© 2016 The Author(s)

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Goulandris, A., McLaughlin, E. (2016). What’s in a Name? The UK Newspapers’ Fabrication and Commodification of Foxy Knoxy. In: Gies, L., Bortoluzzi, M. (eds) Transmedia Crime Stories. Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59004-6_2

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