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Researchers are investigating whether "Facebook Murder" exists.

Researcher Dr. Elizabeth Yardley and her team want to examine whether homicides involving social networking sites are distinctive enough to be labeled as "Facebook Murder". Yardley and her team also want to see how the ways in which murderers had used social networking sites in the homicides they had committed.

Researchers said they have not yet identified collectively unique or unusual traits in homicides involving social media.

"Victims knew their killers in most cases, and the crimes echoed what we already know about this type of crime," Yardley, co-author of the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice article, said in a news release. "Social networking sites like Facebook have become part and parcel of our everyday lives and it's important to stress that there is nothing inherently bad about them. Facebook is no more to blame for these homicides than a knife is to blame for a stabbing--it's the intentions of the people using these tools that we need to focus upon."

"This article sets out to establish whether, and to what extent, homicides involving social networking sites (SNSs) are unique and to identify the ways in which perpetrators of homicide have used SNSs in their crimes. It does so by identifying and analyzing relevant cases of homicide from around the world and comparing the characteristics of these cases with the general literature on homicide. We argue that the cases in our sample are largely typical of homicide in general and identify six ways in which homicide perpetrators have used SNSs - as reactors, informers, antagonists, predators, fantasists and imposters," researcher wrote in the study.

The findings are published in the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice.