6. The media and crime Flashcards
Why sociologists are interested in the relationship between media and crime?
- Representations of crime - How crime is portrayed in the media, and how accurately?
- Cause of crime – Does the media cause or increase crime?
- Fear of crime – Does the media make us more afraid of becoming a victim of crime?
- Moral panic – Does the media demonise and amplify the deviance of some social groups?
- Cybercrime – How far does the internet create new opportunities for crime?
- Representations of crime in the media - Newburn (2013)
Newburn (2013) – argues such coverage in the media is misleading because it conflicts what is collected through official statistics.
Newburn argues the media representation of crime is misleading because:
* Age fallacy – there is a disproportionate coverage in the media of older offenders when most offenders are young
* Exaggeration of police success – partly because many of the stories given to the media come from the police
* Exaggerate the risk of victimisation – especially women, white people and those of higher status backgrounds
* Over-representation of violent and sexual crimes – giving the they are more common than they really are
* The media overplay extraordinary crimes – Felson (1998) calls this the ‘dramatic fallacy’
* Crime reported as series of separate events – without examining the underlying causes of these events
- Representations of crime in the media - Surette and Greer and Reiner
Surette (2010) – suggests that there is what he calls a ‘backwards law’, with the media constructing images of crime and justice which are an opposite or backwards version of reality.
Greer and Reiner (2012) – suggests this backwards law is shown by media news and fiction misinterpreting the reality of crime in the following ways:
* Hugely over-representing and exaggerating sex, drug and serious violence-related crimes, such as sexual assault, murder or armed robbery, and by under-representing the risks of the most common offence of property crime
* Portraying property crime as far more serious and violent that most recorded offences, which are fairly routine, non-dramatic and typically no violence of threat to victims
* Over-exaggerating police effectiveness in clearing-up (solving) crimes.
* Exaggerating the risks of becoming victims faced by higher-status white people, older people, women and children
* Emphasizing individual incidents of crime, rather than providing any understanding or analysis of crime patterns or the causes of crime
- Representations of crime in the media - News Values
Cohen and Young note, news is not discovered but manufactured. A central aspect of the manufacture of the news is the notion of news value. These are the criteria by which journalists and editors decide whether a story is newsworthy enough to make it into the newspaper or news bulletin. Key news values influencing the selection of crime stories include:
*Immediacy – ‘breaking news’
*Dramatization – action and excitement
*Personalisation – human interest stories about individuals
*Higher-status – persons and ‘celebrities’
*Simplification – eliminating shades of grey
*Novelty or unexpectedness – a new angle
*Risk – victim-centred stories about vulnerability and fear
*Violence – especially visible and spectacular acts
*Spectacle and graphic images – events accompanied by footage
*Children – children as offenders or victims of crime
*Sex – crimes with a sexual dimension, women as victims, sexual deviance (especially involving famous people)
Agenda-setting
Describes the ability (of the new media) to influence the importance placed on the topics of the public agenda’. That is, if a news item is covered frequently and prominently, the audience will regard the issue as more important.
- The media as a cause of crime - Ways in which the Media might possibly cause crime:
-Imitation – by providing deviant role models, resulting in ‘copycat’ behaviour
-Arousal – e.g., through viewing violent or sexual imagery
-Desensitisation – e.g., through repeated viewing of violence – bobo doll experiment
-By transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques
-As a target for crime – e.g., theft of TVs
-By stimulating desires for affordable goods – e.g., through advertising
- The Media as a cause of crime - Creates new types of crime
Reiner (2012) – argues that the media may not only cause crime but help create new type of crime or offences e.g., internet trolling, cyberbullying
It can also change perceptions and sensitivities, leading to a fluctuation in apparent crimes. E.g., leads to a willingness of victims to report the offence
- The media as a cause of crime - Media and relative deprivation -
Media may indirectly encourage people to commit crime because the media set the ‘norms’ of an acceptable material lifestyle, helping to increase a sense of relative deprivation in people.
Left realists, such as Lea and Young – argue the media is accessible to everyone, even the poorest have access to media.
Media encourages material consumption and a standard of lifestyle that is not attainable for the poorest groups in society, creating a sense of relative deprivation and marginalisation, leading certain social groups to resort to crime to acquire such material goods and lifestyle
- The media as a cause of crime - Crime as a commodity
- Hayward and Young (2012) – argue that in a world saturated with digital images, the digital media has turned crime into a desirable commodity, and therefore images can cause crime.
- People use digital images to ‘buy into’ criminal behaviour because of their appeal – like ‘selfies’.
- Many crimes are no longer ‘caught’ on camera, but people deliberately ‘stage it’ for the camera – it has become a commodity where we consume crime for media effect (e.g., intentionally committing a crime so they can broadcast it on YouTube or Dark Web).
- Fear of crime - Does the media make us more afraid of being a victim of crime?
Concern that the media may be distorting the public’s impression of crime and causing an unrealistic fear of crime.
Gerbner et al – found that, in the USA, heavy users of TV had higher levels of fear of crime.
Schlesinger and Tumber (1992) – found a correlation between media consumption and fear of crime, with tabloid readers and heavy users of TV expressing great fear of becoming a victim, especially of physical attack and ‘mugging’.
However, existence of such fears may just mean, for example, those who are already afraid of going out at night watch more TV just because they stay in more.
- Fear of crime - Greer and Reiner
Note much ‘effects’ research on the media as a cause of crime or fear of crime ignores the meanings that viewers give to media violence. For example, they may give different meanings to violence in cartoons, horror movies, news bulletins etc.
This criticism reflects the interpretivist view that if we want to understand the possible effects of the media, we must look at the meanings people give to what they see and read
- Moral Panic - Does the media demonise and amplify the deviance of some groups?
Moral panic is the ability to generate widespread feelings of anxiety and concern that exaggerates the risks the public might face from particular threats (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994). The media can create an exaggerated climate of fear in which we become sensitised to certain risks and not other
- Moral Panic - How moral panic theory works
- Media identifications – something or someone is identified and labelled by the media which is seen as a ‘threat’ according to society’s values.
- Media exposure – the ‘threat’ is sensationalised and exaggerated negatively by the media.
- Public concern – the perceived threat causes heightened concern in the public.
- The reaction by the authorities – authorities and opinion-makers, e.g., politicians, editors of newspapers, police commissioners, moral entrepreneurs and the public become concerned with leads to a ‘crackdown’ on deviants.
- Increases in public concern – as the media reports on the ‘crackdown’ and more and more deviants are identified, this creates a SFP – their initial concerns that there is a problem become true. This creates increased panic, which in turn leads to further police activity and pressure on politicians to pass new laws to ensure harsher sentences.
- Amplification spiral – while the media continues to report police and law enforcement activity, this further amplifies public fear, which in turn leads to further police activity, which leads to more public reaction and therefore additional police activity creating a deviancy amplification spiral.
Folk Devils and Moral Panics (2002 [1972])
Cohen showed how the media helped to create 2 opposing youth groups in the 1960s – the Mods and the Rockers. 1964, Clacton – minor acts on vandalism and scuffles between some Mods and Rockers. However, the media carried hugely exaggerated reports of what happened and gave misleading impression that Clacton had been terrorized. This generated a moral panic, with widespread public fear of, and hostility towards, the Mods and Rockers
- Cybercrime - How far does the internet create new opportunities for crime?
Thomas and Loader (2000) – define cybercrime as computer-meditated activities that are either illegal or considered illicit by some, and that are conducted through global electronic networks.
Jewkes (2003) – notes, the internet creates opportunities to commit both ‘conventional crimes’, such as fraud, and ‘new crimes using new tools’, such as software piracy.
