Crime and the Media Flashcards
_ + _: _% of British newspaper coverage is on crime
- William + Dickinson: 30% of British newspaper coverage is on crime
comapred with official statistics, in what ways does the media give a distorted image of crime
- media over-represents violent + sexual crime
- portrays criminals + victims as older + MC: Felson’s ‘age fallacy’
- exaggerates police successes
- exaggerates risk of victimisation: esp for women
- crime is reported as a series of separate events: doesn’t consider underlying causes
list the different criterias of news values
- immediacy: ‘breaking news’
- dramatization: action + excitement
- personalisation: human interest stories about individuals
- higher-status: people of notability - e.g. celebrities
- simplification: simple concept to understand
- violence: visible + spectacular acts
outline fictional representations of crime
- the news media isnt the only source of crime coverage
- fictional representations of crime from TV, cinema and novels are also important sources
outline Livingstone’s view of crimes affect on audiences
- although it was found that media has little effect on the likeliness of committing crime, people continued to be preoccupied with the effects of media on children
- this is due to our desire to regard childhood as a time of innocence in the private sphere
outline news values and coverage
- the distorted picture of crime painted by news media reflects how news is a social construction - it is the outcome of a social process in which some potential stories are selected while others are rejected
- Cohen + Young: news isn’t discovered, but manufactured
- there are several ‘news values’ which help decide whether a story is newsworthy
_ + _: _% of media reports were about violent + sexual crimes, yet these only make up _% of all recorded crimes
- Ditton + Duffy: 46% of media reports were about violent + sexual crimes, yet these only make up 3% of all recorded crimes
what are 3 new trends in fictional representations of crime
1) new genre of ‘reality’ infotainment shows tend to feature young, non-white ‘underclass’ offenders
2) increasing tendency to show the police as corrupt + brutal + less successful
3) victims have become more central, with law enforcers portrayed as their avengers + audiences identify with their suffering
outline Surette’s view of fictional representations of crime
- Surette: fictional representations of crime, criminals and victims are the ‘laws of opposites’ - they are opposite to official statistics, but similar to news coverage
- property crime is under-represented, while violence, drugs and sex crimes are over-represented
- while real life homicides result from brawls + domestic disputes, media ones are the product of greed + calculation
- fictional sex crimes are committed by psychopathic strangers - not acquaintances as stats show
_: from -, over _ crime thrillers were sold worldwide
- Mandel: from 1945-84, over 10 billion crime thrillers were sold worldwide
outline the media as a cause of crime
- the young, lower classes and uneducated are thought to be most susceptible to being negatively influenced by the media
- in recent years, rap lyrics + computer games such as GTA have been criticised for promoting violence + criminality
outline a criticms of the link between media intake and fear of crime
- the existence of such correlations that says higher media intake causes fear of crime doesn’t mean they’re directly correlated - e.g. maybe those who are scared of crime go out less and so consume more TV
- Greer + Reiner: the idea of a direct correlation ignores the meanings that viewers give to media violence - e.g. diff meanings of violence may be given to violence in cartoons, horror films, and the news
list ways that the media can cause crime and deviance
- imitation: media provides deviant role models, resulting in ‘copycat’ behaviour
- arousal: through viewing violent or sexual imagery
- desensitisation: through repeated viewing of violence
- stimulates desire for unaffordable goods - e.g. through advertising
- portrays police as incompetent
outline fear of crime
- the media exaggerates the amount of violent + sexual crime + the risks of certain groups of becoming victims - e.g. women + old people
- there is concern the media is distorting the public’s impression of crime + causing unrealistic fear of crime
- there has found to be a link between media use + fear of crime - e.g. Gerbner found that heavy users of TV had higher levels of fear of crime
outline cultural criminology, the media and crime
- cultural criminology argues the media turns crime into a commodity that people desire - the media encourages them to consume crime in the form of imagery
- Hayward + Jock: late modern society is media-saturated where we are immersed in the ‘mediascape’ (an expanding tangle of digital images, e.g. of crime)
- there is a blurring between the image + reality of crime so that the two are no longer separate - the media now constitutes crime itself
- e.g. police car cameras don’t just record police activity, but actually alter the way in which police work, with US police forces using reality TV shows like Cops as promo
outline the media, relative deprivation and crime
- alternatively, it can be considered how far media portrayals of ‘normal’ life can also encourage people to commit crime
- Left Realists: argues the mass media helps to increase the sense of relative deprivation among poor + marginalised groups
- modern media presents everyone with images of a materialistic ‘good life’ of leisure, fun and consumer goods as the norm to which people should conform to
- this results in relative deprivation + social exclusion felt by marginalised groups who cant afford these goods
- Merton: pressure to conform can cause deviant behaviour when the opportunity to achieve by legitimate means is blocked
outline the media and the commodification of crime
- another feature of late modernity is the emphasis on consumption, excitement and immediacy
- corporations + advertisers use media images of crime to sell products - e.g. hip hop combines images of street hustler criminality with consumerist success - e.g. by wearing designer clothes
- Fenwick and Hayward: crime is packaged + marketed to young people as a romantic, exciting, cool and fashionable cultural symbol
- e.g. the fashion industry’s advertisers trade on images of the forbidden - brands such as Opium, Poison and Obsession, trend of ‘heroin chic’
- brands become tools of classification for constructing profiles of potential criminals; designer labels valued by the youth as badges of identify now function as symbols of deviance
outline media causing crime through labelling
- media can also cause crime + deviance through labelling
- the media can be used as a tool to pressurise authorities to ‘do something’ about an alleged problem, which if successful, can result in negative labelling of the behaviour/ a change in law - e.g. the Marijuana Tax Act in the US
- to do this, a moral panic must be created
define + outline moral panics
- 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
- the creating of a moral panic usually leads to calls for a ‘crackdown’ on the group which can create a self-fulfilling prophecy that amplifies the root problem which caused the original panic
- e.g. setting up special drug squads led the police to discover more drug taking which calls for even tougher action - creating a deviance amplification spiral
define moral entrepreneur
- moral entrepreneur = an individual, group, or formal organization that seeks to influence a group to adopt/ maintain a social norm; altering the boundaries of deviance, duty, or compassion
what are the 3 stages in creating a moral panic
- in a moral panic:
1) the media identifies a group as a folk devil or threat to societal values
2) the media presents the group in a negative + stereotypical fashion and exaggerates the scale of the problem
3) moral entrepreneurs, editors, politicians, police force and other ‘respectable’ authorities condemn the group and its behaviour
outline the case study of Mods and rockers
- in Cohens book ‘Folk Devils and Moral Panics, he examines the medias response to disturbances between 2 groups of largely WC teenagers (the mods and rockers) from 1964-66 and how this created a moral panic
- Mods wore smart dress + rode scooters, rockers wore leather jackets and rode motorbikes - but in early stages groups weren’t so distinct + no one identified themselves as belonging to either group
- initial confrontation: in 1964, a few scuffles, some stone throwing, some windows broken and beach huts wrecked
- although the disorder was minor, the media over reacted according to Cohen’s 3 elements (exaggeration and distortion, prediction, symbolisation)
outline Cohen’s 3 elements of the medias over reaction to the Mods and rockers
1) exaggeration and distortion: media exaggerated the numbers involved + extent of the violence + damage. they distorted the picture through dramatic reporting and sensational headlines - e.g. ‘Day of Terror by Scooter Gangs’
2) prediction: media regularly assumed + predicted further conflict + violence would result
3) symbolisation: the symbols of the mods and rockers (clothes, bikes, hair, scooters, music) were all negatively labelled + associated with deviance. the media use of these symbols allowed them to link unconnected events - e.g. with bikers in different parts of the country
outline deviance amplification spiral
- Cohen: argues that the medias portrayal of events produced a deviance amplification spiral by making it seem as if the problem was spreading + getting out of hand
- this led to calls for an increased control response from the police + courts, thus producing further marginalisation and stigmatisation of mods + rockers and less tolerance of them - an upward spiral
- the media further amplified the deviance by defining the 2 groups + their subcultural styles - led to more youths participating in their subcultures + future clashes
- by polarising the groups, the media transformed them into 2 rival gangs + created a SFP of escalating conflict as youths acted out the roles assigned
- media definitions are crucial to creating a moral panic, as many rely on the media for information for events
outline the wider context for the Mods and rockers case
- Cohen places the case of the mods + rockers in the wider context of change in post-war Britain - a period of new affluence, consumerism which challenged the values of the older generation who had lived through the hardships of the 1930s-40s
- Cohen argues moral panics often occur at times of social change, reflecting the anxieties many people feel when social norms are undermined
- this moral panic resulted from a boundary crisis - an uncertainty of the boundary between acceptable + unacceptable behaviour in a changing time
- the curated folk devils symbolises + gives focus to popular anxieties about social disorder
outline cyber crime
- the arrival of new types of media is often met with a moral panic - e.g. horror comics, cinema, TV, video games - have all been accused of undermining morality + corrupting the young
- the arrival of the internet has led to fears of cyber-crime - 2/3 of the population is online
- Jewkes: the Internet creates opportunities to commit both ‘conventional crimes’ such as fraud, and ‘new crimes using new tools’ such as software piracy
- Wall has 4 categories of cybercrime: cyber-trespass, cyber-deception + theft, cyber-pornography and cyber-violence
outline the functionalist view of moral panics
- functionalist argue moral panics are a way of responding to anomie created by change
- by dramatizing the threat of society through folk devils, the media raises the collective consciousness + reasserts social control when social norms are threatened
name some modern examples of moral panics
- dangerous dogs (XL bullies)
- New Age travellers
- child sexual abuse
- single parents
- Aids
outline some AO3 criticisms of the idea of moral panics
- it assumes that the societal reaction is disproportionate - who is to decide what is a proportionate one? - relates to the Left Realist view that peoples fear of crime is rational
- Late Modernity: do todays audiences, who are accustomed to violence really react with panic to media exaggerations? also, in LM society, there is no consensus of what deviant is - harder to create panics about them
- McRobbie + Thornton: moral panics are now routine + have less impact
outline Hall’s 4 types of cyber crimes
1) cyber-trespass: crossing boundaries into others’ cyber property - e.g. hacking , spreading viruses
2) cyber-deception + theft: identity theft/ ‘phishing’, piracy
3) cyber-pornography: porn involving minors, opportunities for children to access porn
4) cyber-violence: physiological harm, inciting physical harm - e.g. cyber-stalking, cyber-bullying
outline policing global cyber crime
- policing cyber crimes is difficult partly because of the scale of the internet + limited resources of the Police + globalised nature of CC
- this poses problems of jurisdiction - e.g. in which country should someone be prosecuted for an internet offence
- police culture also gives CC a low priority because its seen as lacking the excitement of conventional policing
- BUT; ICT also provides police + state with greater opportunities for surveillance + control of population - e.g. through CCTV cameras, online databases, digital fingerprinting
