Crime and The Media

Question 1

Identify three news values that the media use to select crime stories.

Answer 1

Immediacy; dramatization; personalisation; any of the news values listed on page 124.

Question 2

Identify three ways in which the media’s fictional portrayal of crime and policing differs from that of official crime statistics.

Answer 2

Violent crime is over‐represented; police success is exaggerated; victims and criminals are seen
as older and more middle‐class than those who appear in the official statistics; crimes are often
represented as daring and ingenious; crimes by strangers are over‐represented.

Question 3

In what way may the media and fear of crime be linked?

Answer 3

The media may promote fear of crime by exaggerating the amount and seriousness of crime and
the risks to groups such as young women and old people.

Question 4

Suggest three ways in which the media may encourage of cause crime and deviance.

Answer 4

By imitation, arousal, desensitisation, or any of the other ways listed on page 120.

Question 5

How do left realists explain the role of the media in causing crime?

Answer 5

The media increase the sense of relative deprivation among poor and marginalised social
groups. They present everyone with images of a ‘good life’ to which they should conform which
stimulates relative deprivation and social exclusion felt by marginalised groups who cannot
afford these goods.

Question 6

Explain what is meant by ‘The commodification of crime’?

Answer 6

Corporations and advertisers use media images of crime to sell products, especially in the youth
market. Crime and deviance become commodities to be consumed.

Question 7

Explain what is meant by the term ‘ Deviance Amplification’?

Answer 7

The amount of deviance increasing or appearing to increase. The media contribute to deviance
amplification by highlighting deviant behaviour and by calling for measures to control it, which
may produce a self‐fulfilling prophecy.

Question 8

Identify three ways in which the media amplified the deviance of the mods and the rockers.

Answer 8

Exaggeration/distortion; prediction; symbolisation; linking unconnected events; by calling for a
crackdown; by defining deviant identities and providing deviant role models.

Question 9

Identify two criticisms of the concept of moral panic.

Answer 9

McRobbie and Thornton argue that moral panics are less likely nowadays because audiences are
accustomed to exaggerated shock stories and don’t ‘panic’. There is less agreement in society
about what is deviant. It is not clear why some problems are amplified and others not. It is not
clear why the reaction should be seen as ‘disproportionate’ rather than rational.

Question 10

Suggest three examples of cyber-crimes.

Answer 10

Hacking; spreading viruses; identity theft; internet pornography; cyber‐stalking.