crime and the media Flashcards
a distorted picture
the media over represents violent and sexual crime
portrays criminals and victims as older and more middle class than those found in the criminal justice system
media coverage exaggerates police success in clearing up cases
exaggerates the risk of victimisation, especially to women, white people and people of higher status
overplay extraordinary crime and underplay ordinary crime
schlesinger and tumber - the portrayal of crime has changed from the 1960s to the 1990s. in the 1960s, the focus was on murder and petty crime, in the 1990s, murder and petty crime was of less interest and more on mugging, abuse and hooliganism. the change came about due to to abolition of the death penalty for murder and because rising crime rates meant that crime had to be special to attract coverage
soothill and walby - media gives a distorted view of sex crimes because coverage consistently focuses on identifying a sex fiend often by the use of lables - results in a picture of rape being carried out by psychopathic strangers
news values
immediacy
dramatisation
personalisation
higher status people
simplification
novelty or unexpectedness
risk
violence
used to manufacture the news - if a crime story an be told in terms of these criteria, it has a better chance of making the news
crime as a social construct
kidd-hewitt & osborne - see media reporting of crime increasingly driven by the need for a spectacle, which are engaging because audiences are both repelled and fascinated at the same time
kooistra & mahoney - media coverage of crime is increasingly a mixture of entertainment and sensationalism
tabloid newspapers negatively target undesirable groups such as gypsies and asylum seekers. such groups are viewed as not us or other groups
the media tends to demonise rapists as evil psychopaths, whereas in reality the majority of victims are raped by people they know, trusted and often live with
news is a social construction since it is the outcome of of a social process in which some potential stories are selected while some are rejected
surette
fictional representations of crime/victims are opposite to official statistics and strikingly similar to news coverage
property crime is underepresented
killing is a result of greed/ calculation, not from brawls
crimes are committed by psychopath strangers, not acquaintances
villains are higher status, middle class males
cops get their man
recent trends in fictional representations of crime
reality infotainment shows tend to feature young, non white, underclass offenders
show police as corrupt and less successful
victims have become more and more central with law enforcers portrayed as their avengers and audiences invited to identify with their suffering
the media as a cause of crime - ways in which it causes crime
imitation - by providing deviant role models resulting in copycat behaviour
arousal - viewing violent or sexual imagery
desensitisation - repeated viewing of violence
by transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques
as a target from crime - theft of tvs and laptops
stimulating desires for unaffordable goods through advertising
portraying the police as incompetent
glamourising offending
the effects of media
schramm - the media has a small and limited effect, but may be harmful/ unharmful for some people
livingstone - people continue to be preoccupied with the effects of media on children because childhood is regarded as an uncontaminated innocence in the private sphere
fear of crime
media exaggerates the amount of violent crime and the risks of certain groups becoming its victims -creates fear
gerbner - heavy users of tv ( 4 or more hours per day) had a higher level of fear of crime
schlesinger and tumber - found a correlation between media consumption and fear of crime, with tabloid readers and heavy tv users expressing greater fear of becoming a victim, particularly of mugging or physical attack
greer and reiner - an interpretivist approach should be used when investigating the effects of media because if we want to understand the effects, we need to look at the meanings people give to what they see/ read
relative deprivation and crime
mass media helps to increase the sense of relative deprivation among poor groups - everyone has access to the media
the pressure to conform to a materialistic good life can cause deviance when opportunity to achieve it is blocked - illustrates merton’s view of crime
cultural criminology
the media turns crime into a commodity by encouraging people to consume crime in the forms of images of it
hayward and young - the impact of a media saturated society is that there is a blurring between the image and reality of crime - no longer separable
hip hop combines images of street hustler criminality with consumerist success - crime became a style to be consumed
brandalism - where brands are scandal and controversy to sell products/ market their products. the use of graffiti to sell and market theme parks to car and video games
brands are used of tools of classification because they construct profiles of potential criminals
moral panics
an exaggerated over reaction by society to a perceived problem, usually driven by the media, where the reaction enlarges the problem out of proportion to its seriousness
three stages of a moral panic:
- the media identify a group as a folk devil or threat to societal values
- the media present the group in a negative stereotypical fashion and exaggerate the scale of the problem
- respectable authorities condemn the group and its behaviour
cohen - mods and rockers
mods - smart dress, rode scooters
rockers - leather jackets, rode motorbikes
elements of media reporting identified by cohen:
- exaggeration and distortion - media exaggerates numbers involved and the extent of violence and damage, and distorted the picture through dramatic reporting and sensational headlines such as ‘day of terror by scooter gangs’
- prediction - the media regularly assumed and predicted further conflict and violence would result
- symbolisation - the symbols of the mods and rockers were all negatively labelled and associated with deviance
deviance amplification spiral
the media further amplified the deviance by defining the two groups and their subcultural styles which led to more youths adopting these styles and drew in more participants for future clashes
by doing this, the media crystallised 2 distinct identities and transformed loose knit groupings into two tight knit gangs which encouraged polarisation and created self fulfilling prophecy
media definitions are crucial in a moral panic because large scale modern societies have no direct experience of the events themselves and have to rely on the media for information
wider context
cohen highlights that the nature of post war society was a period in which the newfound affluence, consumerism and hedonism of the young challenged the values of the older generation
moral panics occur at a time of social change because there is anxiety when accepted values are undermined
functionalists explain moral panics as a way of responding to the sense of anomie created by change
hall - moral panics arise from the context of capitalism. for example, the moral panic over mugging in the 1970s served to distract attention from the crisis of capitalism
criticisms of moral panics
assumes that the societal reaction is a disproportionate over reaction, but who decides what is a proportionate reaction is?
what turns the amplifier on and off? why is the media able to amplify some problems but not others?
mcrobbie and thornton - moral panics are now routine and have less impact, and in late modern society, there is little consensus about what is deviant
