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SIAMO INNOCENTI: Twitter and the Performative Practices of the ‘Real’ Amanda Knox
Citation
Clifford, K, SIAMO INNOCENTI: Twitter and the Performative Practices of the Real' Amanda Knox, Transmedia Crime Stories: The Trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito in the Globalised Media Sphere, Springer, L Gies and M Bortoluzzi (ed), United Kingdom, pp. 89-110. ISBN 978-1-137-59003-9 (2016) [Research Book Chapter]
Copyright Statement
Copyright 2016 The Editors and The Authors
DOI: doi:10.1057/978-1-137-59004-6_5
Abstract
On 11 February 2014, Amanda Knox posted a black-and-white ‘selfie’ on
Twitter with the declaration SIAMO INNOCENTI (‘We Are Innocent’),
handwritten on a placard held in front of her (Knox 2014a). Two weeks earlier,
an Italian appeals court had reinstated guilty verdicts against her and former
boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, for the 2007 murder of British university
student, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy. The image was one of the few
posted by Knox following her arrival onto Twitter several months earlier. Till
then, she had posted a photograph of a Christmas tree to celebrate the holiday
season and another of herself and close friend, Madison Paxton, holding
a ‘Welcome Home Ryan!’ sign in reference to the release of Ryan Ferguson,
who had spent ten years in prison for a murder he did not commit. By comparison,
the SIAMO INNOCENTI image (allegedly taken by Paxton, a photographer
in her own right) offered something potentially more complex and
decisive: a stripped-down version of Knox as celebritised criminal identity,
bare-faced and solemn. It was a direct and arguably deliberate contrast to the
popularised image of the sex-crazed femme fatale ‘Foxy Knoxy’, which had
circulated throughout much of the British and Italian press, following Knox’s
arrest for Kercher’s murder. It was also an image that Knox would later use as
the focal point for her personal website, amandaknox.com.
Item Details
Item Type: | Research Book Chapter |
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Keywords: | Amanda Knox, Twitter, identity construction, celebrity-criminality |
Research Division: | Language, Communication and Culture |
Research Group: | Communication and media studies |
Research Field: | Media studies |
Objective Division: | Culture and Society |
Objective Group: | Communication |
Objective Field: | The media |
UTAS Author: | Clifford, K (Dr Katrina Clifford) |
ID Code: | 113114 |
Year Published: | 2016 |
Deposited By: | School of Social Sciences |
Deposited On: | 2016-12-13 |
Last Modified: | 2017-12-14 |
Downloads: | 0 |
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