crime and the media

Question 1

what did Ericson find about the medias documentation of deviance

Answer 1

study of Toronto found that 45-71% of quality press and radio news was about various forms of deviance

Question 2

what % of british newspapers devote to crime

Answer 2

30%

Question 3

how media presents distorted image of crime

Answer 3

• the media over-represent violent and sexual crime
  (Ditton and Duffy found that 46% of media reports were about violent or sexual crimes yet only made up 3% of all crime reported by the police)
• media portrays criminals and victims as older and more MC
• media coverage exaggerated police success in clearing up cases
• media exaggerates the risk of victimisation

Question 4

felstons fallacies

Answer 4

media portray criminals and victims are older and more MC than those found in the CJS “the age fallacy’

crime underplayed ordinary crimes ‘the dramatic fallacy’

media images lead us to believe that to commit the crime (and solve it are needs to be daring and clever ‘the ingenuity fallacy”

Question 5

how have the ways things are reported changed?

Answer 5

Schlesinger and tumbler
In the 1960s the focus was on murders and petty crimes, by the 1990s these were less important and focused more on drugs, child abuse, terrorism mugging. part of this change is because the death penalty was removed for murder and rising crime meant a crime had to be ‘special’ to attract coverage

Question 6

soothill and walby- on the over-reporting of sexual crimes

Answer 6

coverage focuses on identifying a ‘sex fiend’ or ‘beast’. the result is a distorted picture of rate, one of serial attacks committed by psychopathic strangers.
while these crimes do occur they arethe exception rather than the rule- in ost cases the perpetrator is known to the victim

Question 7

what are the news values

Answer 7

new values are the criteria by which the media decides whether a story is worthy of being reported or not

• immediacy
• dramatisation
• personalisation
• higher status
• simplification
• novelty/ unexprectedess
• risk
• violence

Question 8

what did mandel find about fictional representation of crime

Answer 8

over 10 billion crime thrillers were sold worldwide. 25% of prime time TV and 20% of films are on crime

Question 9

surette on fictional representation

Answer 9

crime trends in fictional represenation tend to be the opposite of crime statistics:

• property crime is under-represetned, while violence, drugs and sex crimes are over represented

Question 10

pike on fictional crime

Answer 10

polive dramas on tele -
- exaggerate focus on confessions and extraordinary intelligent people solinving victims
crime being complex
emphasis on false methods (holograph)

Question 11

example of video narties leading to crime

Answer 11

killing of james buldger after watching too many horror movies

Question 12

nicolas cruz

Answer 12

in 2018 killed 17 students leading to Kentucky goverenet calling all producers of violent movies to think about what tey are doing rather than blaming the NRA

Question 13

what is the hypodermic needle model

Answer 13

media transmits messange

peopel passivley accept message

therefore violent messages will make people more violent

Question 14

example of the hypodermic needle

Answer 14

colombine school shooting 1999 killed 13 studetns adn was said to be linked to maralyn mansion and violent songs that the perpetrator listened to

Question 15

why is the hypotermic needle theory problematic?

Answer 15

balming video games or the media is an easy way to simplify the causes of violence, when there are much deeper issues such s lack of socialisation, mental health issues or being excluded in society which makes murderers play violent video games for sinister reasons rather than normal people playing vdeio games and then killing people just due to that influence alone

Question 16

how can the media make us more likely to commit crimes

Answer 16

people who are already inclued to commit violent crimes are influenced by the media as it desentivises them to violence and even teaches crime techniques (cultivation theory)

Question 17

relative deprivation and the media

Answer 17

advertising, concumerism and social media lead to relative deprivation which according to jock young makes people commit crimes out fo individualism and frustration towards society

Question 18

gerbner’s cultivation theory

Answer 18

heavy TV users had higher levels of fear of. crime leading to mean world syndrome

Question 19

mean world syndome

Answer 19

schleinger found that there was a correlation between tabloid news and heavy TV and the fear of being a victim
leads to thinking that the world is more unsafe than it is

Question 20

postmodernist hyper reality view

Answer 20

(use when supporting gerber)
the media socially consitcts a distorted view of crime and the CJS the rick of beconigna. victim of crime and uneccecarily increases the publics fear of crime

creating a hyper ralitifty suggesting that the media doesn’t reflect reality hut instead creates something that seem areas

between 1995-2020 crime rates gradually fell but polls showed that 3/4 of the population wrongly thought it was rising

Question 21

evaluation of the fear of crime

Answer 21

the study is problematic as it onyl shows that people who fear crime stay in and watch TV rather than the TV causing the crime and making people stay in

Question 22

moral panics and media

Answer 22

cohen aruges that moral entreprenurs sucha s politicans and tv create moral crusades which attack groups of people in society and make them outsiders this leads to deviance amplification and more crimes influenced by the media coverage of the ‘panic’

however durkehim argues that moral panics are good as they created boundary matinetnace by identifying deviant subculture

Question 23

how has the internet influenced more crime to take place

Answer 23

jewkes:
growing fears of cyber crimes as it allowed more opportunity of annonimity of crimes
for example cyber trespassing and hacking is a new annoynymous way to commit crimes that arent as conetinally easy to track down

Question 24

example of moral panic about the media

Answer 24

trump (moral entrepreneur) created a moral crusade against video games arguing that was the cause of school shootings
this cerated a moral panic about letting children used video games and eventually lead to the WHO declare gaming addiction a mental health issue

this diverts from the real issues of guns in america and scapegoats a form of media whihc is relativley hamrless if peopel who arent pre-disposed to violence use it

Question 25

how can the media help contibute to deviance amplification

Answer 25

the media in cenrtal in creating moralpanics have helped raise the profile of the issue which in turn can be seen by deviance amplification

in fwaberts study of. the hoodies in bluewater moral panic, the week prior hoodies made no headlines the week later itwas on every headline
no surise. that hoody saels in bluewater increased massivley

Question 26

criticsm of new media causing more crimes

Answer 26

crimes on the. internet are far easier to track due to having a digital. footprint