Crime and The Media

Question 1

Three ways the media represents crime:

Answer 1

• Over-represent violent and sexual crime.
• Portray criminals and victims as older and more middle-class.
• Exaggerates police success.

Question 2

Cohen and Young

Answer 2

News is not discovered, but manufactured. They pick out news stories that will create the most shock, etc…

Question 3

News Values (Cohen and Young)

Answer 3

Journalists assume that the majority of people in society share common values of reality, so by reporting these issues, they are giving the public what they want.

Question 4

Mandel

Answer 4

• Estimated from 1945-1984, 10 billion crime thriller books were sold.

Question 5

The media as a cause of crime:
Fear of crime Gerbner et al, Schlesinger and Tumber

Answer 5

• Gerbner et al found that in the US, TV users of over 4 hours a day had higher fear levels of crime.
• Schlesinger and Tumber found a correlation between media consumption and fear of crime.

Question 6

The media as a cause of crime:
The media, relative deprivation and crime Left realists, Lea and Young

Answer 6

• Left realists say that mass media makes you feel deprived from others.
• Lea and Young say the mass media have disseminated a standardised image of lifestyle. In today’s society, even the poorest groups have access to the media. Merton would say this leads to strain.

Question 7

The media as a cause of crime:
Cultural criminology, the media and crime Hayward and Young, Fenwick and Hayward

Answer 7

• The media glamorises offending which makes crime look cool.
• Hayward and Young see late modern society as a media saturated society.
• Fenwick and Hayward say crime is packaged and marketed to young people as romantic, exciting, cool and a fashionable cultural symbol.

Question 8

Patterning

Answer 8

Filming people beating each other up.

Question 9

Moral panic

Answer 9

Exaggerating something that is deviant.

Question 10

Folk devil

Answer 10

A group with exaggerated stigma about them.

Question 11

Cohen’s methodology and key findings of Mods and Rockers

Answer 11

• Observations, he wandered around listening to teens.
• Interviewed magistrates.
• Analysis of secondary sources, such as newspapers.
  He found:
• The moral panic occurred because of social change.

Question 12

McRobbie and Thornton

Answer 12

Say moral panic doesn’t have that much of an impact anymore.

Question 13

Jewkes - new opps

Answer 13

The internet creates new opportunities to commit conventional crime and new crimes using new tools.

Question 14

Wall

Answer 14

Identifies 4 types of cyber crime:
- Cyber-trespass e.g. hacking.
- Cyber-deception and theft e.g. identity theft.
- Cyber-pornography e.g. porn involving minors.
- Cyber-violence e.g. cyber-stalking.

Question 15

Jock Young

Answer 15

• Uses the concepts of secondary deviance and deviant career in his study of hippy marijuana users in Notting Hill.
• He found drugs were peripheral to the hippies’ lifestyle - an example of primary deviance.
• However, persecution and labelling by the control culture (the police) led the hippies increasingly to see themselves as outsiders.