This 20-minute podcast episode was created as part of a group projects for my English “On Murder” module. The assignment was to unpack the relationship between murder and creating a narrative. We chose Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who, since her release from prison has been an active user of Instagram and TikTok. Her case has been heavily thematised on social media platforms, as well as her role in creating the narrative surrounding it.

With our podcast we wanted to critically analyse this modern representation of murder and how that has created a cult following consisting mostly of Gen Z. #Homicide is aimed towards a younger audience and had the overarching goal of encouraging critical thinking instead of mindless consuming of social media in relation to murder.

I was in charge of editing the podcast, and with that, the technical aspects of recording, the creation of an introduction, an advertisement, and music. I had some experience using GarageBand and felt confident going into this task. However, we had not anticipated that it would take us two recording sessions to create this podcast. Our first recording was six minutes too long, even after I edited it multiple times. I had tried to cut it down further but realised that this would worsen the quality of the podcast – not only because of odd cuts and incoherent sentences, but also because I could not cut out too much without losing a sense of the overarching narrative.

Going into the second recording, we had made some tough decisions about which information to keep, while trying not to lose too much of our in-depth research. The second recording was perfect for the 20-minute time frame. Having two recordings also gave me the possibility to mix the highlights of both recorded discussions to create a more thorough analysis of Gyspy’s case.

Another part of the podcast, which was solely my responsibility, was the introduction using different TikTok videos. The idea to start the podcast with someone mimicking the action of scrolling through social media to, not only, set the tone for the podcast and hook the listener, but also to provide some sparse background information on the case. If our podcast were to be a weekly one, as we were pretending it to be, this introduction would change with every case, combining the theme of social media with each murder. The order of the sound clips was important to me: they progress from light-hearted fun, into a creepy and suspenseful atmosphere, showing, on the one side, how unserious social media is, as comedy is interwoven with serious topics, but it also mimicked how quickly social media users can fall into ‘rabbit holes’. The last clip is Gypsy Rose introducing herself – a powerful moment after hearing other people speculate so much about her. In addition to the clips, I recorded a few sounds of a finger clicking on a phone to create the sense of scrolling. The introduction establishes the theme and gives our podcast this modern and unique twist.

One aspect that I felt very passionate about was the advertisement (which you can hear at minute 05:40). After taking inspiration from the podcast Serial, in which the sponsor ‘Mail Chimp’ became a big part of the listening experience, I thought it could enhance the authenticity of #Homicide. We wanted the advertisement to be slightly ironic to remind the listener that even though we are critically analysing this case and looking at media forms, the podcast itself was also just another medium that bought into the popularity surrounding Gypsy. I recorded a few different options, and we decided that the Facebook advertisement would fit in well, while still appearing authentic. During the editing process, we decided to place the advertisement right into the middle of the discussion, inspired by how in how a different podcast called Bear Brook the advertisements had been placed in the middle of the episodes and almost shocked us as listeners as they appeared without warning.

Creating this podcast was a challenging task, but it was a lovely time getting to work with my talented teammates, who did a fantastic job at researching and structuring the content.