A “Chosen” Hope with a “Gingerbread” Outcome: Democratization of (Media) Power in Buffy The Vampire Slayer as a Metaphor of Online Abuse on High-Profile Criminal Cases

In the early days of social media, social networking platforms were viewed as an abolition of all barriers, a democratization of information and content creation against the establishment’s gate-keeping. However, a decade after their wide adoption by the public, the scenario seems completelydifferent: now that social networks have been used to meddle with international politics, to spread hate and conspiracy theories and to harass others, many wonder whether the hopes behind the democratization of online content creation were too optimistic. Using two different episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)—Season Seven’s “Chosen” and Season Three’s “Gingerbread”—as a starting point, this article will showcase the imagined and one of the real outcomes of the democratization of social media content creation with regards to the discussion of high-profile criminal cases online, with a particular focus on crimes against children and related conspiracies.