Crim 101 Chapter 2

Question 1

What are attitudes, beliefs and perception of crime shaped by? 3 things

Answer 1

These ideas are shaped by

• News stories they have read
• Television shows and films they have watched
• Video games they have played

Question 2

By age 18, what is the estimate amount of violent acts and murders they seen on tv?

Answer 2

By age 18, an average child has seen about 200 000 violent acts and 16 000 murders on tv.

Question 3

What happened in the 1940s with Canada’s parliamentarians? 2 things

Answer 3

• They warned crime comics would increase psychopathology among young people
• They passed a law under section 163 of the Criminal Code stating that it is a crime to make, print, publish, distribute or sell a crime comic.

Question 4

Define media and media effect. What is an example of media effect?

Answer 4

Media is any means of mass communication and media effect is the concept that exposure to media has an effect on behavior. For example, young people exposed to violent media will behave aggressively

Question 5

When did social scientists first began to study crime and media and what did they sought to do?

Answer 5

The social scientists first began to study crime and media in the 1960s and 1970s and they sought to measure the impact of media consumption on aggression.

Question 6

What Matt DeLisi, Michael Vaugn, Douglas Gentile, Craig Anderson and Jeffrey Shook argued for?

Answer 6

They argued that youth with pre-existing psychopathology are particularly at risk for deleterious effects of violent video games

Question 7

What did Ray Surette suggest?

Answer 7

Surette suggest that media images of crime expose viewers to anti-social behaviors and that these behaviors may be copied by youth who are already pre-disposed to violence

Question 8

When criminologists examine the cultural meaning of media violence, what is much of the work based on?

Answer 8

Much of this work is based on the cultural studies concept of active audiences

Question 9

Define active audience

Answer 9

The concept that audiences are not passive recipients of information or meanings but are instead active in the process of creating meaning by making their own meaning of the given information

Question 10

What has led to the emergence of the subdiscipline of cultural criminology and define cultural criminology?

Answer 10

Active audiences has led to the emergence of the subdiscipline of cultural criminology. Cultural criminology explores the links between culture, crime and crime control in contemporary social life.

Question 11

What are two social sites and what are they used for?

Answer 11

Two social sites are news media and popular culture. Social sites is where people collectively negotiate the meaning of crime, violence, victimization, justice and community.

Question 12

Why are media narratives excellent cultural artifacts for criminologists to examine?

Answer 12

Because they provide a window into the social construction of the meaning of crime

Question 13

Understanding media requires what?

Answer 13

Critical thinking

Question 14

Define critical thinking

Answer 14

The process of evaluating information, claims or arguments through careful questioning and the application of reason.

Question 15

What are some of the questions to consider in order to think critically about media? 7 questions

Answer 15

Check box 2.1 for the answers

Question 16

What happened in the case of Columbine High School shooting? 5 things.

Answer 16

• On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Colorado and shot 15 people before commit suicide.
• Over 400 reporters, 75 - 90 satellite trucks and 60 television cameras were on the scene
• Largest US news story for 1999 and the seventh largest story of the 1990s
• Within days, news coverage shifted from reporting facts to discussing causes of this case. Causes like lack of gun control, interest in video games, Marilyn Manson’s music and the movie The Matrix.
• Harris and Klebold made videos of themselves before the shooting in which they reflect on how famous they will become after

Question 17

Are media and crime mutually constituted?

Answer 17

Media and crime are mutually constituted as each works to shape the other.

Question 18

What did David Altheide suggested and argued for?

Answer 18

He suggested that violence is treated in this way because both news organizations and popular media producers are primarily focused on entertainment (crime is entertaining) and are, accordingly, looking for clear, unambiguous stories. He argued that media stories about crime are therefore cast through a problem frame because such a frame helps generate a narrative that is easily understood and likely to sell.

Question 19

Define problem frame

Answer 19

A narrative that is easily understood because it focuses on the existence of something extraordinary and “bad” that affects many people, and identifies unambiguous solutions that can be implemented in the future.

Question 20

What does an ideal story?

Answer 20

An ideal story contains a crime that is unambiguously bad and calls out for a solution that can be pointed to in some point in the future when an organization responsible for fixing the problem will do so

Question 21

How is the problem frame applied to the Columbine High School Shooting incident?

Answer 21

• Media stories focused on the exceptional nature of school shootings (the extraordinary and easily identifiable bad thing) and the horror it generated in the community, the nation and beyond (affecting many people).
• One of the factor that could have caused the shooting, violent video games, was solved by the government by holding a series of consultations on youth consumption of violent media and by enacting legislation requiring rating labels and content warnings for media content.

Question 22

What was the aftermath of the Columbine High School shooting? 5 things

Answer 22

• A factor of the cause was gun control and the government “fixed” it by creating gun laws and created difficulties to access guns.
• Mental health and the need for better services for young people in crisis were not a significant part of the debate
• Violent video games, was solved by the government by holding a series of consultations on youth consumption of violent media and by enacting legislation requiring rating labels and content warnings for media content.
• Michael Moore made a documentary “Bowling for Columbine” in 2002 to examine politics and power relationships and took issue with the arguments that popular media causes crime by indicating that other countries with high video game consumption does not have elevated levels of shooting violence and by including an interview with Marilyn Manson who defended himself from being accused to Harris’s and Klebold’s motivations.
• Danny Ledonne made a controversial video game called “Super Columbine Massacre RPG!” where it re-enacts the Columbine High School Shooting by playing as Harris or Klebold

Question 23

What did the “Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order” by Stuart Hall, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarkem and Brian Roberts demonstrate?

Answer 23

It demonstrated how media stories about a new “crime wave” of muggings in London in the 1970s encouraged politicians to devote more police resources to catching the perpetrators, which led to more arrest and more convictions. Judges quoted new stories to justify higher sentences for offenders.

Question 24

Define moral panic (two definitions)

Answer 24

• When a “condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests.
• Occurs when there is a gap between people’s perceptions of a problem and the “fact” of the problem and the difference can be explained ideologically

Question 25

Define moral entrepreneurs

Answer 25

A person, group or organization that takes the lead in identifying certain behavior as deviant and in need of legal sanctions

Question 26

What did Edwin Lemert’s “Folk Devils and Moral Panics” book discussed about and what are they?

Answer 26

His book discussed about primary and secondary deviance. Primary deviance occurs when an individual (or group) engages in disapproved behavior without seeing that behavior as necessarily “deviant” or “criminal”. Secondary deviance results from the social reaction to primary deviance.

Question 27

What did Howard Becker’s book “Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance” discuss and what are they? What did Becker argue?

Answer 27

His book discussed the role of moral entrepreneurs in the social construction of deviance. Moral entrepreneurs are members of society who have wealth, power and political clout that pursue their moral crusades. Becker argued that unless a certain type of behavior was deemed to be deviant or criminal by these moral entrepreneurs, and as a consequence became the target of rule making and rule enforcement, then that behavior would likely be tolerated by society or, if not, then at least ignored.

Question 28

What is a crucial factor in stirring up moral panics?

Answer 28

Mass media

Question 29

What did Cohen say about what media does?

Answer 29

Media actively search for social “problems” to sensationalize and individuals or groups to demonize. They usually single out youth culture - hippies, skinheads, punks - and present them as the next big threat to the social order

Question 30

What were the Mods and Rockers of 1960s and what happened to them? 6 things

Answer 30

• They became the news in the mid-1960s
• They are known for being two loosely organized youth groups and are not new groups.
• The groups dressed differently, listened to different kinds of music and occasionally clashed in “rumbles” in seaside resort towns
• The British media distorted the seriousness of these “rumbles” by describing their activities as “orgies of destruction” and referred the Mods and Rockers as screaming mobs
• Nobody was killed and relatively little property damage took place
• The concern about the Mods and Rockers quickly died out

Question 31

What did Hall argued and what happened between the tension between the police and London’s black community?

Answer 31

Hall argued that crime news reflects society’s shared values, linking the ideological role of the “rising crime rate equation” in 1970s London to rising racial tension between the police and London’s black community.
Increased arrests and convictions were then used to restrict the freedom of the supposed criminals (black Londoners accused of mugging) or also known as folk devils

Question 32

Define folk devils

Answer 32

Originating in images from folklore, this term refers to people or groups presented in media as deviant outsiders and the cause of social problems

Question 33

What is the “rising crime rate equation”?

Answer 33

The rising crime rate equation is when crime rate is increased because of more policing and arrests in a certain type of crime. As a result, it makes it look like the crime is on the rise even when it is not.

Question 34

What are three factors that help stereotype an offender?

Answer 34

Assumptions, concerns and anxieties help bring stereotype upon an offender

Question 35

What did Rodanthi Tzanelli, Majid Yar, and Martin O’Brien wrote about crime stories?

Answer 35

They wrote that crime stories “as a whole can be seen to make use of, exemplify and give voice to wider assumptions, concerns and anxieties about social life, social disorder and social change”

Question 36

Define stereotyping

Answer 36

The simplistic and often belittling representation of a person or group, using exaggerations of traits that the larger group supposedly possesses

Question 37

What is one example of racalized population being portrayed as criminals? And what happened? 2 things

Answer 37

• Two NFL quarterbacks, Michael Vick and Ben Roethlisberger has been accused of violent criminal activity. Vick being charged with operating an illegal interstate dog-fighting ring in 2007. Roethlisberger accused of two sexual assault in 2009 and 2010.
• The media demonized Vick as he was African American while the media was more sympathetic and understanding towards Roethlisberger as he was Caucasian

Question 38

What did Coogan write and argue?

Answer 38

He wrote “In influencing perceptions and attitudes, race represents a salient factor for viewers” and argues that the overwhelming media portrayal of blacks as perpetrators of crime can gave real social consequences, resulting in viewers or readers perceiving them as more dangerous and violent than any other groups

Question 39

What happened in Hurricane Katrina? 4 things

Answer 39

• Hurricane Katrina struck the southern US coast in August 2005 and devastated New Orleans
• Police and public officials fed the media false information about low-status hurricane refugees becoming villains and went on a murderous rampage.
• Media’s distortion of events can be explained by several factors, including breakdowns in communication, class and racial stereotyping and narratives that had been established such as “civil unrest” and “urban warfare”
• People accepted reports of rampant murder because they were consistent with the emerging, myth-inspired media narrative that characterized New Orleans as a “snake pit of anarchy”, a violent place where armed gangs of black men took advantage of the disaster, not only to loot but also to commit capital crimes

Question 40

What are some of the “bad guys” as a result of stereotypes? 4 things

Answer 40

• Muslims tend to be terrorist, jihadists and sexual deviants
• Black people tend to be violent and barbaric
• Women tend to be passive and self-restrained
• Dangerous youth are led astray by violent music or violent video games

Question 41

What happened in the terrorist attack of September 11? And the other event in 2010 incident? 3 things

Answer 41

• On September 11, 2001, an airplane attacked occurred on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that involved Muslims
• As a result, the stereotype of Muslims being terrorist, jihadists and sexual deviants was created and discrimination occurred.
• In 2010 incident, a small plane was flown into a government building in Austin Texas but because the pilot was a white man, the narrative of a “terror attack” faded quickly

Question 42

Define discourses

Answer 42

Refers to forms of language, representation, and practices and how meaning is created and shared. Discourses take place within specific cultural and historical contexts

Question 43

What are female offenders seen as?

Answer 43

Worrisome and commonly described as predatory or promiscuous

Question 44

Portrayals of criminals are more likely to include social minorities whether in what terms? 4 things

Answer 44

Portrayals of criminals are more likely to include social minorities whether in ethnicity, religion, age, or gender.

Question 45

Why do people portray others (minorities, etc) as criminals?

Answer 45

To preserve majority social values and construct others as inherently transgressive

Question 46

Define other

Answer 46

A person or group of people defined as fundamentally different or even deviant by the dominant culture, often through stereotyping

Question 47

Who characterized moral panic with five features? What are the five features and what are they about?

Answer 47

Goode and Ben-Yehuda characterized moral panic with

• Concern: A “heightened level of concern” about the “problem” , often fanned by media attention, action groups or legislative initiatives
• Hostility: An “increased level of hostility” toward the targeted group, with the group’s behavior characterized as harmful or threatening to the values, beliefs, and morals of “normal” society.
• Consensus: Some sort of fairly widespread “consensus” (agreement) among members of the society that the threat posed by the wrongful behavior is real and serious
• Disproportionality: A level of concern that is disproportionate to the actual seriousness of the threat; figures may be exaggerated, and there may be little or no evidence of a real threat
• Volatility: The sudden appearance and then disappearance of the “threat” without any valid explanation for why it became such a big problem one day and was no longer a problem the next day.

Question 48

What are 3 theories Goode and Ben-Yehuda proposed to explain why moral panics emerge and what are they about?

Answer 48

• Grassroots theory: suggests that moral panics begin with genuine public concern about a problem (real or imagined) and that politicians and the media become involved in response to this public concern. Most proponents of the grassroots model would acknowledge that involvement of the media, action groups, and politicians is necessary in order for a moral panic to develop fully.
• Elite-engineered theory: suggests that small, powerful group deliberates set out to create moral panics to divert public attention away from truly serious social problems where the solutions to those problems might negatively impact the interests of the elite groups themselves.
• Interest group theory: Most common perspective on moral panics. It suggests that interest groups such as media, politicians, professional groups and religious organizations may act independently. The moral panics generated by these interest group believe that they are acting in the best interests of society

Question 49

According to Christie, define ideal victim (6 points)

Answer 49

Ideal victim is

1. Weak in relation to the offender; either female, sick, very old, very young or a combination thereof
2. Going about routine, respectable and legitimate daily activities when she or he is victimized
3. Blameless for what transpired
4. Unrelated to and unacquainted with the person who committed the offence
5. In a submissive or subordinate position to the perpetrator, who can easily be described in negative terms
6. Someone without enough influence, power or sympathy to assert “victim status” without threatening the broader political status quo

Question 50

What are 6 things portrayals of victims affected by?

Answer 50

Portrayals of victims are affected by racism, Islamophobia, ageism, ableism, homophobia and misogyny.

Question 51

What are the two major components of media portrayals of victims?

Answer 51

Race and gender

Question 52

Which receives more news coverage? Crimes committed by racial minorities or crimes committed against them? what about committed against white people? What about crimes committed against females?

Answer 52

• Crimes committed by racial minorities receive more news coverage than crimes committed against them.
• Crimes committed against white victims are more newsworthy than crimes against minorities
• Crimes committed against female victims are more newsworthy than male victims

Question 53

What does it mean by “reality fiction”?

Answer 53

To make something real seem something that is fictional.

Question 54

What is an example of the “good guys” and how are they portrayed as? (5 things) What does this cause? (3 effects)

Answer 54

An example of the “good guys” are police. The media portrayed them as crime-fighting, heroic, no nonsense law enforcers who are hypercompetent, hard-working and “tough on crime”. This causes exaggerated public expectations for real-life police performance, conceal the darkside side of policing like police brutality, abuses of power or police incompetency and the build up of pro-police sentiment among the public.

Question 55

What are two examples of high-profile portrayals of police abuse of power in Canada?

Answer 55

1. The fatal tasering of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver Airport in 2007
2. The use of excessive force during mass protests at the G20 summit in Toronto in 2010

Question 56

Define sousveillance. What is it considered as and what can it be used for?

Answer 56

The recording, by a citizen participant or witness, of an incident or activity, to hold a bureaucratic organization to account. It can be used to record incidents in which police may be seen abusing their power and ensure that they don’t abuse their powers. Sousveillance is considered as a form of “watching the watchers”.

Question 57

Define surveillance

Answer 57

The monitoring of individuals or populations for the purposes of control and/or care

Question 58

What happens from the “top down”? Surveillance or sousveillance? What about “bottom up”?

Answer 58

Surveillance happens from the “top down” (government).

Sousveillance happens from the “bottom up” (people).

Question 59

What are 3 examples of social media tools?

Answer 59

Twitter, Facebook and YouTube

Question 60

Why might a journalist give the police editorial control and report stories of police in a positive way? What is the result of this?

Answer 60

• Because it creates a positive relationship with the police to ensure access to interviews and updates on ongoing investigations.
• The result of this is that the footage that portrays police in a positive light is only shown

Question 61

What is the CSI and how did it portray crime investigations? What is the CSI effect?

Answer 61

CSI is a TV police drama called Crime Scene Investigation. It portray crime scene investigation as police agencies having endless resources, elaborate methods of forensic testing that seem to produce instant results, an ability (and a need) to get forensic evidence for every case, and small caseloads. The “CSI effect” refers to the theory that in the real world “jurors hold unrealistic expectations of forensic evidence and investigation techniques, and have an increased interest in the discipline of forensic science because of the influence of CSI-type television shows. Jurors’ decision is greatly influenced by forensic evidence and forensic television program (CSI effect).

Question 62

In Robber’s 2008 study, what do prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges spend more time on? 3 things

Answer 62

• They spend more time on reviewing and critiquing forensic evidence
• They spend more time considering the extend of a potential CSI effect during voir dire (the preliminary examination of prospective jurors)
• They spend more time familiarizing themselves with forensics

Question 63

How did Crawford and Burns apply the four features of moral panic with school shootings? Hint: 4 examples of concern, 2 examples of hostility , 2 examples of consensus, 3 examples of disproportionality and zero for volatility

Answer 63

1. Concern: Enhanced security measures were introduced in schools nationwide (with metal detectors and “drop and cover” drills); daytime television was preempted to provide continuous coverage; front page coverage appeared in the major newspaper and politicians quickly stepped into the fray by blaming the entertainment industry for promoting youth violence and promising tough legislative changes
2. Hostility: $1 billion US government grant to prevent and toughen the prosecution of juvenile crime and proposal for a $1.5 billion grant for state and local governments that imposed corrective sanctions on young, first-time offenders.
3. Consensus: Nationwide survey regarding the threat posed by school shootings with 75% of Americans saying that they “were very seriously concerned” and many that expressed fear for their child safety at school.
4. Disproportionality: Burns and Crawford pointed out more school shooting death took place in both 1992-94 than in 1997-98, that arrest rates for violent juvenile crime were on the decline when moral panic erupted and that chances of being killed in a school shooting were less than the chances of being struck by lightning.

Question 64

Draw figure 2.1

Answer 64

Check figure 2.1 on pg.42