crime and the media Flashcards
What percentage does crime and deviance make up of British newspapers?
What 3 ways does the media distort the image of crime?
30%
Over-representing violent and sexual crimes
Exaggeration of police success
Exaggeration of the risk of victimisation
How does the media over-represent violent and sexual crimes?
Sociolgists found that 46% of media reports were about violent or sexual crimes, but these only made up 3% of reported crimes altogether
How does media coverage exaggerate police success?
Police are a major source of crime stories and want to present themselves in a good light
Only 2.7% of crimes reported to the police are solved
Exaggerated in fictional tv-shows
How does the media exaggerate the risk of victimisation?
Especially to women and white with higher status’
Left realists argue that crime disproportionally affects WC people
Give 3 ways media could potentially LEAD to crime and deviance?
Desensitisation, through repeated viewing of violence
Transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques
Imitation, providing deviant role models
What are the 4 ways media has CAUSED crime
Cyber crime
Relative depravation
Intimitation
Moral panics
What is cyber crime?
What does sociologist Jeweks argue about it?
Illegal activities carried out with a computer over a network e.g. the internet, social MEDIA
Internet creates opportunities to commit conventional crimes e.g. fraud and crimes using tools e.g. software piracy
What are 2 examples of cyber crime? Explain
Internet fraud (scamming), e.g. oasis fans were scammed on sites such as facebook, average fan scammed lost £356
Cyber bullying, 20% of school children have experienced it
What is moral panic?
What does it usually lead to?
Exaggerated over-reaction in society to a perceived problem, usually driven from the media who present the group in a negative stereotypical pattern
A ‘crackdown’, but this typically creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that amplifies the problem in the first place -‘deviance amplification spiral’
What does Cohen argue about the deviance amplification spiral with media?
The media’s portrayal of events produced a deviance amplification spiral, making it seem as if the problem was spreading and getting out of hand
Led to increased control response from the police and courts, producing a further marginalisation and stigmatisation
Less tolerance for them>upward spiral
Explain Hall et al’s moral panic
There was a moral panic over black muggers
This served an interest to capitalism as they say a crisis (^ inflation, unemployment) > needed to use force to maintain control
^ in mugging became associated with black youth to police and the media>scape goat>divide WC on racism>weakens capitalist opposition
What is a critisism of Hall et al’s moral panic?
How do left realists criticise them?
They do not show how the capitalist crisis led to moral panic or provide evidence that public were panicking or blaming black youth
People’s fears of mugging is realistic
What’s a critisism of the deviance amplification spiral?
Doesn’t specify what turns the amplifier on and off
Why are the media able to amplify some problems into panic, but not others?
How do late modernity sociologists critisise moral panics?
Todays media audiences are accustomed to ‘shock and horror’ stories
Moral panics are now routine and have less impact
An alternative view is that medias portrayals of normal, instead of criminal lifestyles can encourage people to commit crime, give an example
Left realists argue that the mass media help to increase the sense of relative depravation among poor and marginalised social groups
