In this special issue, the guest editors bring together a selection of papers, which offer new insight into academic research on the representation of organised crime in different media outlets. This volume touches upon different criminal organisations and activities, taking into account genres and media where criminal actors and their public antagonists are discursively displayed. The guest editors’ original idea was to take explicitly into account, on the one hand, the multifaceted and evolving nature of crime groups and, on the other, the meaning-making processes that represent them through the media. Contrary to the discourse surrounding the subculture of criminals, the focus here is on the global public debate about organised crime syndicates and the social response to their wide array of criminal activities.