SIAMO INNOCENTI: Twitter and the performative practices of the 'real’ Amanda Knox

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.