Crime and the media Flashcards
List the 12 news values identified by Galtun and Ruge.
Extraordinariness Threshold Unambiguity Reference to elite persons References to elite nations Personalisation Meaningfulness Frequency Continuity Consonance Negativity Composition
Explain how characteristics of crimes and offenders affect the likelihood of crime being reported.
The specific characteristics of crimes and offenders also affect the likelihood of crime being reported.
For example, research into the cover of homicides in three national British newspapers over a four year period (Peelo et al., 2003) found that only 40% of homicides were reported nationally.
They were more likely to get coverage if they involved sexual motives, monetary gain, revenge or jealousy, whereas e.g. domestic quarrels that got out of hand got little attention- a very large number of women are killed by their partners each year and most of these cases do not make the news.
The nature of the victim was also important: the murder of children, women, and high status individuals got the most coverage, although the murder of babies generally wasn’t widely reported as personalisation is not possible with infants.
Explain the misleading nature of media coverage.
Tim Newburn (2013) suggests that media coverage can be misleading . Compared to the official picture in crime statistics, news reports are distorted because they:
Disproportionately feature higher status and older offenders
Exaggerate the proportion of crimes that are cleared up by the police
Exaggerate the risk of being a victim of crime, especially for white/ high status people
Tend to present crime as a series of individual incidents and have little coverage of patterns, trends or underlying causes
In addition, media coverage gives the impression that serious violent and sexual crime is much more common than it actually is.
What specific news values does Jewkes suggest applies to crime stories?
The involvement of sex
Famous/ high status people or children as offenders or victims
The involvement of violence
The availability of graphic images
Stories that fit a conservative ideology
Explain crime and the construction of reality.
Sociologists recognise that reporting does not just convey ‘facts’ but instead manufactures- or socially constructs- a picture of reality- Cohen and Young (1973) argued that this was visible in crime news. Reiner (2007) illustrates this point by arguing that three main trends are evident in crime coverage:
It accentuates the negative.
It highlights victim culture- audiences are positioned to identify with the victims, whose innocence and vulnerability is emphasised. Punishment of offenders is emphasised over rehabilitation.
Law and order solutions are portrayed as the only way to tackle a frightening and out of control crime wave.
Reiner sees these trends as reflecting an increasing emphasis upon individualism in a consumer oriented capitalist society; more collective aspects of social life get little media coverage- e.g. there is little discussion about the role of welfare in preventing crime, or of rehabilitation or poverty reduction in controlling crime.
Media coverage tends to assume that the existing social order is secure and fair, but that it is constantly under threat from deviant outsiders, and this justifies strict control of these threats. This type of coverage supports a conservative ideology (and is suppostive of the neo-Marxist cultural effects model of media impact).
Explain fictional representations of crime.
Surette (1998) proposes a ‘law of opposites’, claiming that fictional representations of crime are the opposite to what official statistics show- and strikingly similar to news coverage:
Property crime is under-represented , while violence, drugs and sex crimes are over represented.
Fictional sex crimes are committed by psychopath strangers, not acquaintances.
Fictional police officers usually get their man.
This has the effect of distorting people’s perceptions of reality.
Explain the case study of Luther as a fictional representation of crime.
In Luther there are multiple representations of the most serious offences. The detectives are seen to deal with incidents such as serial killers, murderers and armed robberies.
There is a distinct lack of procedural elements (uniformed officers, forensics etc.) shown as the director clearly believes the best drama comes from the relationships between the key characters.
Luther, as the central protagonist, is fundamentally flawed and seems to regularly go against what is expected from a detective, yet the audience are encouraged to sympathise with and support him.
The opening sequence of the series allows the audience to see that Luther, while fundamentally wanting to stop criminals, is taking to whatever measures necessary to protect and save those who are vulnerable.
Grotesque villains and shocking acts of violence- particularly against women- are mainstays of the show.
Evaluate media coverage of crime.
Writers such as Reiner tend to portray media coverage of crime as being very consistent. However, they are aware that not all coverage fits the model that they propose- e.g. Reiner accepts that there is increased coverage of police corruption.
Nevertheless, writers such as Cohen and Young and Reiner still underestimate the extent of coverage that reflects badly on those in power- i.e. they may be overly cynical.
Thus there is some variety in media coverage of crime, even if the dominant coverage does tend to support a consensual view of society.
What did Greer and Reiner identify as being possible criminogenic effects of the media?
Motives
Means
Opportunity
Absence of controls
Explain motives as a criminogenic effect of the media.
A crime will not occur unless someone is tempted, driven, or otherwise motivated to carry out the ‘labelled’ act. The media feature in many of the most commonly offered social and psychological theories of the formation of criminal dispositions.
Probably the most influential sociological theory of how criminal motives are formed is Merton’s version of anomie theory. The media generate pressures to acquire ever higher levels of material success regardless of the legitimacy of the means used.
Psychological theories of the formation of motives to commit offences also often feature media effects as part of the process.
Explain means as a criminogenic effect of the media.
It has often been alleged that the media act as an open university of crime, spreading knowledge of criminal techniques
This is frequently claimed in relation to particular causes célèbres or horrific crimes.
Video games such as Grand Theft Auto have been accused of being an especially potent source of learning about crime, as the player is placed in the subject position of a criminal. However, despite much discussion, the evidence that these are major sources of crime is weak (Young 2004; Hargrave and Livingstone 2006).
New forms of media have sometimes been seen as creating new means to commit crime. This concern has been particularly stimulated by the Internet, which is feared as facilitating all sorts of offences, from fraud, identity theft, child pornography and grooming children for sex, to organizing transnational crime and terrorism.
Explain opportunities as a criminogenic effect of the media.
The media may increase opportunities to commit offences by contributing to the development of a consumerist ethos, in which the availability of tempting targets of theft proliferates.
They can also alter ‘routine activities’, especially in relation to the use of leisure time, which structure opportunities for offending (Cohen and Felson 1979).
The domestic hardware and software of mass media use—TVs, personal computers, mobile phones—are the common currency of routine property crime, and their proliferation has been an important aspect of the spread of criminal opportunities.
Explain absence of controls as a criminogenic effect of the media.
Motivated potential offenders, with the means and opportunities to commit offences, may still not carry out these crimes if effective social controls are in place. These might be external—the deterrent threat of sanctions represented in the first place by the police—or internal—what Eysenck has called the ‘inner policeman’. A regularly recurring theme of respectable anxieties about the criminogenic consequences of media images of crime is that they erode the efficacy of both external and internal controls.
They may undermine external controls by derogatory representations of criminal justice. Negative representations of criminal justice could lessen public cooperation with the system, or potential offenders’ perception of the probability of sanctions, with the consequence of increasing crime.
Probably the most frequently suggested line of causation between media representations and criminal behaviour is the allegation that the media undermine internalized controls, by regularly presenting sympathetic or glamorous images of offending. In academic form this is found in psychological theories of disinhibition and desensitization.
Evaluate the media being a direct cause of crime.
(+) Bandura’s research
(-) Typically, however, the effects of exposure to media stimuli in experimental situations are small. Interestingly, most of the research has looked at supposed negative effects of media, such as violence. The few studies that have examined the effects of ‘prosocial’ images suggest that these are much larger.
(-) As Greer and Reiner (2012) note, a number of other factors or variables may influence whether there are effects from witnessing violence and other kinds of crime.
Beyond causing crime, what may be the other effects of media coverage?
The media have been held responsible not just for directly causing crime, but also a range of other effects.
One suggestion is that they may affect whether certain acts are considered criminal or deviant. Greer and Reiner suggest that the media can play an important role in helping to create new types of offence by highlighting and causing public concern about particular types of behaviour, such as e.g. internet bullying.
They can also play a role in “changing perceptions and sensitivities, leading to fluctuations in apparent crime. For example, Roger Graef’s celebrated 1982 fly-on-the-wall documentary about the Thames Valley Police was a key impetus to reform of police treatment of rape victims” (Reiner, 2007)- this led to an increase in reported rapes.
The media may also play a role in causing fear of crime.
