Crime And The Media Flashcards
MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS OF CRIME:
The media over-represent violent and sexual crime: Ditton & Duffy (1983) found that 46% of media reports were about violent or sexual crimes, yet these made up only 3% of all crimes recorded by the police.
The media portray criminals and victims as older and more middle-class than those typically found in the criminal justice system. Felson (1998) calls this the ‘age fallacy’.
Media coverage exaggerates police success
in clearing up cases.
The media exaggerate the risk of victimisation, especially to women, white people and higher status individuals.
CHANGES IN THE TYPE OF COVERAGE:
Schlesinger & Tumber found that in the 1960’s the focus had been on murders and petty crime, but by the 1990’s these were of less interest to the media and were replaced by drugs, child abuse, terrorism, football hooliganism and mugging.
Stan Cohen & Jock Young (note, news is not discovered, but manufactured.
A central aspect of this is the notion of ‘news values’- criteria by which journalists and editors decide whether a story is newsworthy or not. Key news values include:
Immediacy- ‘breaking news’
Dramatisation- action and excitement
Personalisation- human interest stories about individuals
Higher-status-persons and ‘celebrities’
Simplification-eliminating shades of grey
Novelty or unexpectedness-a new angle
Risk-victim-centred stories about vulnerability and fear
Violence-especially visible and spectacular acts
A03
Three recent trends are worth noting. Firstly, the new genre of ‘reality’ infotainment shows tends to feature young, non-white ‘underclass’ offenders.
Secondly, there is an increasing tendency to show police as corrupt and brutal (and as less successful).
Thirdly, victims have become more central, with law enforcers portrayed as their avengers and audiences invited to identify with their suffering.
Are the media responsible for crime
The media have for a long time been blamed for having a negative effect on attitudes, particularly among the young, poorly educated and lower classes.
The 20’s and 30’s saw cinema responsible for corrupting the young; the 1950’s blamed horror movies for the moral decline and 1980’s saw the creation and fear of the ‘video nastie’. More recently we have seen computer games…
Schramm et al (1961) say in relation to the effects of TV viewing on children:
‘For some children, under some conditions, some television is harmful. For some children under the same conditions, it may be beneficial. For most children under most conditions, most television is neither particularly harmful or particularly beneficial.’
However, Sonia Livingston claims that most people still tend to be concerned with the dangers of television on children. Why might our research into childhood in unit 1 help here?
Fear of crime
Gerbner et al: People who were heavy users of television (over 4 hours a day) had higher levels of fear of crime.
However, it has been suggested that this doesn’t really show a direct correlation. E.G: it may be that those who are already afraid of going out at night watch more TV just because they stay in more.
Relative deprivation
Relative deprivation explains how the media produce or cause crime. By showing people lifestyles they desire but cannot afford, the media create a sense of relative deprivation that causes people to resort to crime to get the commodities they cannot obtain legitimately.
Cultural criminology
By contrast, cultural criminology argue that the media turn crime itself into the commodity that people desire. The media encourage audiences to consume crime, in the form of images of crime.
Cultural criminology (Haywood & Jock Young)
Cultural criminologists such as Hayward & Jock Young (2012) see late modern society as a media-saturated society where we are immersed in the ‘mediascape’- an ever expanding tangle of fluid digital images, including the image and the reality of crime, so that the two are no longer clearly distinct or separable. The way the media represent crime and control now actually constitutes or creates the thing itself.
THE COMMODIFICATION OF CRIME:
A further feature of late modernity is the emphasis on consumption, excitement and immediacy. In this context, crime and its thrills become commodified.
Corporations and advertisers use media images of crime to sell products, especially in the youth market. E.G: gangster rap and hip hop combine images of street hustler criminality with images of consumerist success.
Similarly, leading hip hop stars parade designer chic clothing, jewellery, champagne, luxury cars and so on.
‘Packaged’
Fenwick & Hayward (2000):, ‘crime is packaged and marketed to young people as a romantic, exciting, cool and fashionable cultural symbol.’
This is even true of mainstream products. E.G: Hayward & Young cite examples of car ads featuring street riots, joyriding, suicide bombing, graffiti and pyromania.
Likewise, the fashion industry and its advertisers trade on images of the forbidden (with perfume brands such as Opium, Poison and Obsession), ‘heroin chic’, sadomasochism and violence against women. The retailer ‘FCUK’ ‘brands’ transgression into its name. Designer clothing section 60 is named after the section of the Act giving police the power to stop and search.
‘Brandislism’
Even counter-cultures are packed and sold. Corporations now use graffiti in a ‘guerrilla 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 labels valued by young people as badges of identity now function as symbols of deviance.
E.G: some pubs and clubs now refuse entry to individuals wearing certain brands, while Bluewater shopping centre has banned the wearing of hoodies . In some towns, police compile lists of branded clothing they see as problematic. Brands become tools of classification for constructing profiles of potential criminals.
Moral panics
Cohen was interested in the truth behind the ‘Mods vs. Rockers’ media hype in the late 1960s. According to the media the violence between the ‘Mods’ and ‘Rockers’ was a national problem that represented the decay (atrophy) of society.
MODS AND ROCKERS IN THE MEDIA
Exaggeration and distortion; The media exaggerated the numbers involved and the extent of the 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: Their clothes, bikes and scooters, hairstyles, music etc were all negatively labelled and associated with deviance. The media’s use of these symbols allowed them to link unconnected events. E.G: bikers in different parts of the country who misbehaved could be seen as part of a general underlying problem of disorderly youth.
THE REALITY OF MODS AND ROCKERS
> The ‘violence’ that the media reported was actually minimal.
> The majority of young people at the seaside during these so called ‘riots’ were not Mods or Rockers.
> The media seemed to have painted a skewed picture of events & sensationalised the clashes between these two groups.
What is a moral panic
The process of arousing social concern over an issue—usually the work of MORAL ENTREPRENUERS. This inevitably involves the creation of a FOLK DEVIL.
“OK, so what’s a ‘moral entrepreneur?’
A Moral Entrepreneur is a person, group or organisation with the power to create or enforce rules & impose their morals, views & attitudes on to others E.G: > Politicians> Teachers> Parents> Religious Leaders
“AND, A ‘FOLK-DEVIL’?”
Over simplified, ill-informed generalisations of particular people/ social groups who Moral Entrepreneurs wish to demonise E.G: > Mods & Rockers
> Hoodies
> Lone-parent Families
> Immigrants
> Young Muslims
> Paedophiles
> Football Hooligans etc……….
The wider context
Cohen puts the moral panic about the mods and rockers into the wider context of change in post-war British society. This was a period in which the new found affluence, consumerism and hedonism of the young appeared to change the values of an older generation who had lived through the hardships of the 1930’s and 1940’s.
Cohen argues that moral panics often occur at times of social change, reflecting the anxieties many people feel when accepted values seem to be undermined. He argues that the moral panic was a result of ‘boundary crisis’, where there was uncertainty about where the boundary lay between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour.
Why are crimes misrepresented
Stuart Hall (1976) adopts a Neo Marxist approach and locates the role of moral panics within the context of capitalism. Hall claims that hegemony refers to the process by which the ruling class is able to coerce a subordinate class to conform to its interests.
Fragments the working classes and turns them on one-another and thus justifies the use of repressive control.
Justifies inequalities in society and reasserts the power of those in the higher echelons of society i.e. Labelling being used as a form of SOCIAL CONTROL.
E.G: Hall argues that the moral panic over mugging in the 1970’s was used to distract attention away from the crisis of capitalism, divide the w/c on racial grounds and legitimate a more authoritarian style of rule.
Knife crime
Moral panics about knife crime = more fear of being attacked= more people carrying knives themselves.
It is a fact that you are more likely to be stabbed or stab someone else if you are carrying a knife yourself!
Critisms of moral panics
It assumes that the societal reaction is a disproportionate over-reaction. Who is to say what a disproportionate reaction is?
What turns the amplifier ‘on’ and ‘off’?: why are the media able to amplify some problems into a panic, and not others? Why do panics go on increasing indefinitely once they have started?
Thornton and McRobbie argue that Moral panics are now routine and therefore have a lesser impact. Also, in late modern society, there is little consensus about what is deviant anymore. E.G: single motherhood.
Global cyber crime
FACT: Over half the world’s population are now ‘on-line’.
As with other forms of the media, the internet has led to moral panics about cyber-crime.
Douglas and Loader (2000) define cyber crimes as being computer mediated activities that are either illegal or felt to be illicit, and that are conducted through global electronic networks.
Jewkes argues that cyber crime creates opportunities to commit both conventional crimes such as fraud and new crimes such as software piracy.
WALL (2001): 4 CATEGORIES OF CYBER CRIME
Cyber pornography
Cyber tresspass -Crossing boundaries into other cyber property, e.g. Hacking and sabotage.
Cyber deception and theft-
Identity theft, phishing (stealing bank details) and violation of intellectual property (illegal down loads or software piracy).
Cyber violence
POLICING CYBER SPACE
It’s really hard to do
The side if the internet
The globalised nature of it
Police culture does not traditionally see cyber crime as a priority as it lacks the excitement as conventional policing
However, Jewkes (2003) claims that ICT can be an asset to the police providing them with opportunities for greater surveillance and control of the population. What examples can you think of?
Left realism
Argue the mass media increase the sense of relative deprivation among poor and marginalised groups.
Lea & Young (1996): In today’s society, where even the poorest groups have media access, the media present everyone with a materialistic ‘good life’ of leisure, fun and consumer goods as a norm to which they must conform.
MERTON: These marginalised groups who cannot afford these goods then turn to deviant behaviour when the opportunity to achieve by legitimate means is blocked.
