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Crime Gone Viral

Eyewitnessing in a Digital Age

Karen G. Weiss

$66.99

Paperback

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English
New York University Press
14 July 2026
Highlights crime eyewitnesses who use digital technologies to record, share, and watch crime online

In the digital age, crime and efforts to control crime have been transformed by the ability of ordinary citizens to ""witness"" crime remotely and intervene through smartphones and computer screens. Crime Gone Viral shines a spotlight on the digital witnesses who record, share and watch crime online to elucidate how their responses impact crime outcomes. With the ability to see crime for themselves and digitally intervene from afar, digital witnesses play outsized roles in social control as both capable guardians who help, and as incapable guardians who make matters worse. Digital witnesses also play important roles as storytellers who inform and shape public perceptions about crime and criminal justice.

By placing crime witnesses front and center, Weiss provides a bold and critical framework that challenges existing criminological research that assumes third parties deter crime by virtue of their presence and problematizes traditional ways of thinking about third party social control. Drawing from original survey data and providing examples of real-life criminal cases from both traditional news media and social media to illustrate and analyze digital responses to crime, Weiss identifies three digital witness types: Samaritans, Voyeurs, and Vigilantes. Together, these witness types form the basis of a theoretical framework meant to provide a more nuanced understanding of third-party participation in social control and punishment in the digital age. Ultimately, Crime Gone Viral provides a necessary and comprehensive understanding of crime in the 21st century aimed at developing a theoretical, empirical, and practical understanding of what it means to witness crime in a digital age.
By:  
Imprint:   New York University Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm, 
ISBN:   9781479822829
ISBN 10:   1479822825
Series:   Justice, Inequality, and the Digital World
Pages:   232
Publication Date:  
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Further / Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Karen G. Weiss is Professor of Criminology in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at West Virginia University. She is the author of Party School: Crime, Campus and Community.

Reviews for Crime Gone Viral: Eyewitnessing in a Digital Age

""Crime Gone Viral provides a much-needed framework for evaluating how digital technologies impact victims, offenders, and witnesses. Karen Weiss navigates this landscape through a brilliant typology of digital witnesses: the Samaritan, the Voyeur, and the Vigilante. This triad encourages us to critique digital responses to crime and to recognize that we are all witnesses to, and responsible for, the behaviors we encounter in digital spaces. When interwoven with case studies of violence and trauma, grief and justice, Weiss encourages the reader to confront the guardianship of witnessing crime in our contemporary media environment. For anyone interested in the intersection of technology, justice, and the changing nature of the public sphere, Crime Gone Viral is an essential map of our shared roles as witnesses and the need for robust responses in the digital world. This is essential reading for anyone wanting to ensure that digital spaces become a forum for authentic justice rather than viral trauma. In an era where witnessing is immediate, networked, and permanent, Weiss challenges us to rethink what it means to see, and to respond, in a digital society."" - Gregory Stratton, co-author of Digital Criminology: Crime and Justice in Digital Society


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