CRIME AND THE MEDIA

Question 1

how does the media give a distorted image of crime?

Answer 1

• over represents violent and sexual crime. Ditton and Duffy found that 46% of media reports were about violent or sexual crimes yet they made up 3% of all crimes reported by police in 1983.
• media portrays criminals and victims as older and more middle class
• media coverage exaggerates police success in clearing up cases
• exaggerates the risk of victimisation especially to women, white people, and higher class individuals.
• overplays extraordinary crimes and underplays ordinary crimes.

Question 2

what are news values ?

Answer 2

• immediacy
• dramatisation
• personalisation
• higher status
• simplification
• novelty or unexpectedness
• risk
• violence

Question 3

how does the media cause crime?

Answer 3

• imitation
• arousal
• desensitisation
• transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques
• stimulating desire for unaffordable goods
• glamourising offending
• portraying the police as incompetent

Question 4

how does the media create fear of crime?

Answer 4

• exaggerates amount of violent crime and risk of certain groups such as women and old people.
• gerbner et al found that heavy users of tv had higher levels of fear of crime

Question 5

what is the link between media, relative deprivation, and crime?

Answer 5

• left realists argue that mass media helps increase the sense of relative deprivation among the poor and the marginalised.
• images of a materialistically good life pressures them to conform to this and they may do so through deviant behaviour or crime.

Question 6

what is the media’s commodification of crime?

Answer 6

• cultural criminology argues that media turns crime into a commodity
• hayward and young see late modern society as a media saturated society where the line between the image and the reality of crime is blurred.
• corporations and advertisers use media images of crime to sell products
• for example; perfumes such as opium, poison.

Question 7

evaluation of media as a cause of crime

Answer 7

• media has also helped develop surveillance techniques which could prevent crime.
• ## media can help solve crime sometimes through use of social media