crime and the media

Question 1

media representation of crime

Answer 1

-crime and deviance makes up a large proportion of the news coverage- Williams and Dickinson found British newspapers, devote 30% to crime
-However, the media gives a distorted image of crime…
-overepresent violent and sexual crimes: Dutton and Duffy found 46% of media reports were about violent or sexual crimes. Yet these make up only 3% of crimes recorded by police.
-Portray, criminals and victims as older and more middle-class: Felson calls this ‘age fallacy’
-Exaggerate police success
-Exaggerate the risk of victimisation
-Crime is reported as a series of separate events
-Overplay, extraordinary crimes: Felson calls this ‘dramatic fallacy’- also they lead us to believe that one needs to be daring and clever to commit crime (‘ingenuity fallacy’)

Question 2

changes in the type of crime covered
Schlesinger and Tumber
Soothill and Walby

Answer 2

-S&T: found that in the 1960s, the media had focused on murders and petty crime. By the 1990s, these were less of an interest and the change of crime came about…
-Partly due to the abolition of the death penalty
-Partly due to the rising crime rate, meaning crime had to be ‘special’ to attract coverage

although, S&W found newspaper reporting of rape cases had increased to over 1/3 in 1985. They also know the portrayal of the actor as a ‘sex fiend’ or beast

(could link to Heidensohn: women controlled in public- media representation of rape, frighten women into staying indoors at night)

Question 3

Cohen and Young: news values and crime coverage

Answer 3

-The distorted picture of crime, painted by the news, media reflects the fact that news is a social construction
-Cohen and Young say ‘ news, is not discovered, but manufactured’
-A central aspect of the manufacture of the news is the notion of news value (whether a story is worthy or not)

examples of news values:
-immediacy: ‘breaking news’
-Dramatisation : action and excitement
-Personalisation : human interest stories about individuals
-Higher-status, persons and celebrities
-Simplification: eliminating shades of grey
-Novelty/unexpected: a new angle
-risk: victim centred stories about vulnerability and fear
-Violence: especially visible and spectacular acts
these values mean that deviance is newsworthy, almost by definition

Question 4

fictional representations of crime:
Mandel
Surette

Answer 4

-Mandel estimates that from 1945-1980, over 10 billion crime thrillers were sold worldwide on the same hand, 25% of prime TV and 20% of films are crime shows or movies -these fictional representations of crime follows what Surette calls ‘ law of opposites’- they are the opposite of official statistics

Question 5

problems with fictional representations of crime
But what are some trends worth noting?

Answer 5

-property crime is under represented
-fictional sex crimes are committed by psychopathic strangers and the fictional villains tend to be white middle age, higher class males
-Fictional homicides are the product of greed and calculation
-Fictional cops usually succeed

however…
3 trends worth noting
-‘reality’ infotainment (a new genre) shows tentative future, young non-white ‘underclass’ offenders
-An increasing tendency to show police as corrupt and brutal, and as less successful
-Victims have become more central with law enforcers portrayed as their avengers, and audiences invited to identify with their suffering

Question 6

the media as a cause of crime?

Answer 6

-has been a long ongoing concern that the media has a negative effect on attitudes, values and behaviour
-In 1920s/30s, cinema was blamed for corrupting the youth, but recently it has been lyrics and computer games
-there are numerous ways in which media might possibly cause crime and deviance:
-Imitation: by providing deviant role models, resulting in copycat behaviour
-Arousal: through viewing violent or sexual imagery
-Desensitisation: e.g. Through repeated viewing of violence
-By transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques
-As a target for crime e.g. Theft of TVs
-by stimulating desires for unaffordable goods through advertising
-by portraying the police as incompetent
-By glamorising offending

Question 7

What have studies actually shown about the effect of media on audiences?
Schramm

Answer 7

-most studies found that actually the exposure to media violence has had a small and limited negative impact
-Schramm says “for most children under most conditions, most TV is neither particularly harmful, nor particularly beneficial”

Question 8

Livingstone

Answer 8

-Notes, people continue to be preoccupied with the effects of the media and children, due to our desire to regards childhood as a time of uncontaminated innocence in the private sphere

Question 9

Fear of crime

Answer 9

-The media exaggerates the amount of violent and unusual crime, and exaggerate the risks of certain groups of people becoming its victims, such as young women and old people
-This leads to concerns of distorting the public impression of crime, creating an unrealistic fear
-Research evidence to an extent, support the view that there is a link between media and the fear of crime

Question 10

Gerbner et al: fear of crime

Answer 10

in the USA found that heavy users of TV (4+ hours a day) had higher levels of fear of crime

Question 11

Schlesinger and Tumber: fear of crime

Answer 11

found a correlation between media consumption and fear of crime, with tabloid readers and heavy users of TV, expressing fear of becoming a victim, especially of physical attack and mugging
BUT
): CORRELATION DOES NOT INFER CAUSATION-..

Question 12

fear of crime
Greer and Reiner
critique

Answer 12

-note that much media effects research ignores the meanings viewers give to media violence
-Greer and Reiner: in cartoons, horror films, news bulletins, there are different meanings of violence

Question 13

Lea and Young: the media, relative deprivation and crime

Answer 13

-an alternative viewpoint is to consider how different meanings of far media portrayals of normal lifestyles > violence
-Criminal lifestyles might also encourage people to commit crime
-Lea and Young: argue that the media helps to increase the sense of relative deprivation
-Today, even the poor have access to media and so they can see the ‘materialistic good life’ as a normal to conform to as to not feel marginalised, which could lead to crime by the poor feeling the need to steal, for example
-

Question 14

Merton: the media, relative deprivation and crime

Answer 14

-argues that pressure to conform to the norm can lead to deviant behaviour where legitimate opportunity is blocked
-The media set the norms and so therefore cause crime

Question 15

Cultural criminology, the media and crime

Answer 15

-contrasts the relative deprivation explanation
-argue that media turns crime itself into a commodity that people desire- encourages people to consume crime in the form of images of crime

Question 16

Hayward and Young: Cultural criminology, the media and crime

Answer 16

-see late modern society as a media-saturated society where we are immersed in the ‘mediascape’- an overexpanding tangle of fluid digital images, including images of crime
-In this world, there is a blurring between the image and reality of crime, so the two are no longer distinct or separable
-The way media represents crime and crime control now actually constitutes or creates the thing itself
-e.g. Gang assaults aren’t just caught on camera but staged for camera and later package together, ‘underground fight videos’
-e.g. Police car cameras, don’t just record police activity but all of the way policework such as by using reality TV shows like Cops in the USA as promotion videos

Question 17

Media and the commodification of crime
How does crime and deviance become a style to be consumed?

Answer 17

-corporations and advertisers use media images of crime to sell products, especially in the youth market
-e.g. ‘ gangster’ rap, and hip-hop, combined images of street hustler criminality with images of consumerist success
-Leading hip-hop, stars, parade, designer, chic clothing, jewellery, champagne, luxury cars, and so on
-Crime and deviance, thus become a style to be consumed

Question 18

Fenwick and Hayward: Media and the commodification of crime

Answer 18

-“ crime is packaged and marketed to young people as a romantic, exciting, cool and fashionable cultural symbol”
-Also true of mainstream products- they site examples of car, ads, featuring street, riots, joy, riding, suicide, bombing, graffiti, and pyromania

Question 19

Examples of media and the commodification of crime through products

Answer 19

-The fashion industry, and his advertises trade on images of the forbidden with brands like Opium and Poison, ‘heroin chic’, sadomasochism, and violence against women
-The designer clothing ‘Section 60’ was named after the section of the act, giving police the power to stop and search
-Even counter-cultures are packaged and sold- graffiti is a marker of deviant urban cool but corporations use it as a marketing technique called ‘brandalism’ to sell everything from theme, parks to cars and video games
-Companies use moral panics, controversy and scandal to market their products
-Ironically, the designer label was valid by young people as badges of identity, now function as symbols of deviance e.g. Pubs refuse entry to those certain brands, Bluewater shopping centre has the wearing of hoodies (but can still be purchased there)
-In some towns, Local bars and police, compile lists of branded clothing they see as problematic and these brands become tools of classification for constructing profiles of potential criminals

Question 20

moral panics

Answer 20

-The media may cause crime through labelling
-Moral entrepreneurs may disapprove of a certain behaviour, and you immediately to put pressure on authorities to do something
-If successful, this will result in labelling or changes in the law (e.g. The Marijuana Tax Act in the USA)
-Creating a moral panic

Question 21

what happens in a moral panic

Answer 21

-The media, identify a group as ‘folk devils’ (a threat to societal values)
-they present this group in a negative stereotypical way, and exaggerate the problem
-moral entrepreneurs, politicians, police etc. condemn the group and its behaviour
-This leads to a ‘crackdown’ on the group. However, this could create a self fulfilling prophecy which only amplifies the problem (deviance amplification spiral)

Question 22

Cohen: Mods and Rockers
Book called ‘Folk devils and moral panics’

Answer 22

-this book was centred around the study of the ‘mods and rockers’-2 large working class groups at English, seaside resorts
-There was a violent conflict in 1964, which in reality was relatively minor., the media over-reacted exaggerate exaggerated this event.
-The media produces an inventory or stocktaking of what happened
-Cohen says this inventory contains three elements:
(1) exaggeration, and distortion
(2) prediction
(3) symbolisation

Question 23

prediction

Answer 23

The media regularly assumed there would be further conflict resulting in violence

Question 24

Exaggeration and distortion

Answer 24

-they exaggerated the number of people involved, and the extent of violence
-Towns ‘held their breath’ for invasions that did not materialise

Question 25

symbolisation

Answer 25

Included the group’ clothes and bikes
-The symbols were all negatively labelled and associated with deviance
-The medias use of the symbols, allow them to link to unconnected events

Question 26

Cohen: deviance amplification spiral

Answer 26

-The media’s portrayal of events produced a deviance amplification spiral by saying the problem is getting out of hand
-This led to calls for and increase control response and so further marginalising and stigmatising the mods and rockers as deviant, and as a result, there was less and less tolerance of them
-The media further amplified the defence by defining the two groups and the subcultural lifestyle, which led to more youths, adopting the style, and both groups grew in size
-By emphasising, the two groups differences, the media created two distinct identities, and transformed loose-knit groups into tight-knit gangs
-he notes that media definitions, are now crucial and creating moral panics, as most people will have no direct experience of their events themselves, so have to rely on the media

Question 27

the wider context

Answer 27

-Cohen, put this moral panic into the wider context of change in post-war British Society
-This was a period in which the new found affluence of the young challenge, the values of an older generation who had lived through hardships
-He argues moral panics often occur at times of social change, which reflects the anxiety most feel when values seem to be undermined
-The moral panic was a result of ‘ boundary crisis’ (what is and isn’t acceptable ) in times of change. The folk devils gave focused to popular anxieties of social disorder.

Question 28

Other examples of folk devils

Answer 28

-dangerous dogs (XXL BULLY)
-AIDS
-Single parents

Question 29

functionalist perspective of moral panics

Answer 29

-Moral panics as responding to the sense of anomie created by change
-By dramatising the threat to society in the form of folk devil, the media raises the collective conscience and reasserts social control

Question 30

Hall et al: neo-Marxist perspective of moral panics

Answer 30

-argue the moral panic serves to distract attention away from the crisis of capitalism, divide the working class on racial grounds, and legitimate a more authoritarian style of rule

Question 31

Criticisms of the idea of moral panics

Answer 31

): assumes that the societal reaction is a disproportionate overreaction, but who is to decide what is a disproportionate reaction, and what is a panicky one?- relates to the left realist view that people’s fear of crime is rational
): what turns the ‘amplifier’ on and off: why are the media able to amplify some problems into panic, but not others? why do panics not go on increasing indefinitely once they started?
): Late modernity: McRobbie and Thornton

Question 32

Late modernity
McRobbie and Thornton: criticism of the idea of moral panics

Answer 32

-argue that moral panics are now routine and have less impact
-Also in late modern Society, there is little consensus about what is deviant
-Lifestyle choices, condemned 40 years ago e.g. Single motherhood, are no longer universally regarded as deviant so it is harder for the media to create panics about them

Question 33

global cyber-crime
Jewkes

Answer 33

-policing cybercrime is difficult because of the sheer scale of the Internet and the limited resources of police
-Also, its globalised nature poses problems of jurisdiction. Police give cybercrime low priority as it lacks excitement of conventional policing.
-HOWEVER new information, communication and technology provides the police and state with greater opportunities for surveillance and control of the population (JEWKES- cctv, electronic databases, digital fingerprinting etc.)

Question 34

Wall: 4 categories of cybercrime

Answer 34

-Cyber-trespass
-Cyber-deception and theft
-Cyber pornography
-Cyber-violence

Question 35

cyber-trespass

Answer 35

crossing boundaries into others’ cyber-property
-Includes hacking and sabotage e.g. Spreading viruses.

Question 36

cyber-deception and theft

Answer 36

including identity theft, ‘phishing’ (obtaining identity or bank account details by deception), and violation of intellectual property rights (e.g. Software piracy, illegal, downloading and file-sharing)

Question 37

cyber-pornography

Answer 37

including porn involving minors and opportunities for children to access porn on the Net

Question 38

cyber-violence

Answer 38

-doing psychological harm or inciting physical harm
(e.g. Cyberstalking, bullying via text, hate crimes against minority groups)