CRIME + DEVIANCE - Media and Crime

Question 1

Fear of Crime

Answer 1

There is concern that the media may be distorting the public’s impression of crime, causing an unrealistic fear of crime

Question 2

Agenda Setting

Answer 2

The ability to influence the importance placed on topics of the public agenda.

Question 3

News Values

Answer 3

This is the criteria by which journalists deem whether a story is newsworthy or not.

Immediacy (breaking news)

dramatization (excitement)

personalisation (human interest stories about individuals)

higher status (celebrities etc.)

simplification (eliminating grey areas), novelty (new angles)

risk (vulnerability and fear stories centring on victim)

violence (spectacular and visible acts).

Question 4

Relative Deprivation

Answer 4

By showing people lifestyles they desire but cannot have, the media creates a sense of relative deprivation that causes people to resort to crime to get the commodities they cannot legitimately get.

Question 5

Cultural Criminology

Answer 5

This places criminality and its control in the context of culture. It views crime and the agencies of crime control as cultural products.

Question 6

Commodification of Crime

Answer 6

Transforming crime into a marketable good. In our late modern society, the media commodifies crime.

Question 7

Moral Panics

Answer 7

A moral panic is an exaggerated over-reaction by society to a perceived problem, usually driven by the media

Question 8

Folk Devils

Answer 8

A scapegoat essentially.

Question 9

Moral Entrepreneurs

Answer 9

Individuals or groups that seek to influence a group to adopt or maintain a norm.

Question 10

Deviancy Amplification Spiral

Answer 10

A media hype phenomenon defined by media critics as a cycle of increasing numbers of reports on a category of anti-social behaviour or some other undesirable event leading to a moral panic.

Question 11

MEDIA AS A CAUSE OF CRIME

What does this mean?

What does Sonia Livingstone believe?

Answer 11

This has been a historic trend – in the 1920s, and 1930s, cinema was blamed for corrupting the youth. More recently, rap and computer games has been criticised for creating violence among youth.

The media may cause crime through imitation, arousal, desensitisation, transmitting criminal knowledge, stimulating desires for unaffordable goods, portraying the police as incompetent, and through glamourising offending.

Sonia Livingstone notes, that even if studies point to a limited impact, people continue to be preoccupied with effects on media on children because of our desire to regard childhood as an innocent part of life.

Question 12

MEDIA AS A CAUSE OF CRIME

Distorting public impression of crime

What do Gerber et al say?

Answer 12

There is concern that the media may be distorting the public’s impression of crime, causing a fear of crime.

Gerber et al found that heavy users of television had higher levels of fear of crime.

The existence of such correlations doesn’t prove that media viewing causes fear.

E.g., it may be that those who are already afraid of going out, watch more TV, because they stay in more.

Question 13

MEDIA AS A CAUSE OF CRIME

What doe Left Realists believe about media and its role in creating crime?

Answer 13

How far media portrayals of normal rather than criminal lifestyles might also lead people to commit crime.

E.g., left realists argue that mass media helps to increase the sense of relative deprivation – the feeling of being deprived relative to others.

Even the poorest have access to media, and the media presents everyone with images of a materialistic ‘good life’ of leisure, fun, and consumer goods as the norm to which they should conform.

This encourages exclusion among those who cannot afford their consumerist desires.

Question 14

MEDIA AS A CAUSE OF CRIME

What do cultural criminologists believe about the media and its role in creating crime?

What do Hayward and Young believe about media?

Answer 14

They argue that the media turn crime itself into the commodity they desire – rather than producing crime in their audiences, media encourages them to partake in crime.

CC’s, Hayward and Young see late modern society as a media-saturated one, where we are immersed in the mediascape, where there is a blurring between reality of crime and its image.

E.g., a gang fight is no longer a gang fight, it’s a packaged and sold commodity on the www.

Question 15

MEDIA AS A CAUSE OF CRIME

Late modern societies and their role in selling crime

Answer 15

Late modern society emphasises consumption and thrill, so crime becomes commodified.

Corporations and advertisers use media images of crime to sell products, especially in the youth market – e.g., gangster rap and hip hop clothing etc.

So, crime and deviance become a style to be consumed – it is marketed to young people as romantic, cool, exciting etc.

FCUK, Section 60, Opium perfume etc.

Companies use moral panic, controversy, and scandal to market their products.

E.g., you can’t wear a hoodie at Bluewater but you can buy one.

Question 16

MEDIA REPRESENTATION OF CRIME

What did Ditton and Duffy find?

Answer 16

Ditton and Duffy found that 46% of media reports were about sexual and violent crimes, yet in total, these only made up 3% of all crimes recorded

Question 17

MEDIA REPRESENTATION OF CRIME

What did Felson find?

His three fallacies.

Answer 17

The media portray criminals and victims as older and more M.C, which is not proportionate to the stats found in the official statistics.

Felson notes this as the (1) AGE FALLACY

The media also over-represent police success because they want to be popular and prevent panics.

The media overplay extraordinary crimes and underplay ordinary ones, which Felson calls the (2) DRAMATIC FALLACY.

He also addresses how the media leads us to believe that if were to commit a crime, one needs to be daring and clever to solve it (3) INGENUITY FALLACY.

Question 18

MEDIA REPRESENTATION OF CRIME

How and when does media coverage of crime change?

What did Soothill and Walby find?

Answer 18

It depends on the pressing issues of that particular time…

Soothill and Walby found that newspaper reporting of rape cases increased from under a quarter of all cases in 1951 to over a third in 1985.

The media identifies the perpetrator as ‘beasts’ creating further misrepresentation as most perpetrators are known to their victims.

Question 19

MEDIA REPRESENTATION OF CRIME

Explain the process of crime being manufactured

What did Cohen and Young believe?

Answer 19

Distorted picture of crime reflects the fact that the news is simply a social construction. News is not discovered, but ‘manufactured’ - Cohen and Young.

News values - criteria by which journalists deem whether a story is newsworthy or not. If a story can be told using this criterion, it has greater chance of being successful.

Immediacy, dramatization, personalisation , higher status, simplification, novelty, risk, and violence.

Question 20

MEDIA REPRESENTATION OF CRIME

Who explores the law of opposites and the representation of fictious crime?

Answer 20

Fictional representations of crime, is what Surette labels ‘the law of opposites’ – they are the opposite of the official statistics, and similar to the news coverage…

E.g.,
Property crime is under-represented, sex crimes are committed by psychopaths and not acquaintances, villains are M.C, white men, fictional cops get the man they’re looking for etc.

Recent trends however, put this on break – infotainment now focuses on the W.C, non-white offender, there is increasing tendency to outline the corrupt nature of the cops etc.

Question 21

MORAL PANICS

Who are moral entrepreneurs and what do they do?

Answer 21

Moral entrepreneurs who disapprove of particular behaviour may use the media to put pressure on authorities to ‘do something’, about the alleged issue.

Usually, their campaign if successful, will put a negative label on the behaviour so it’ll affect the law.

Question 22

MORAL PANICS

What is a moral panic?

Answer 22

A moral panic is an exaggerated over-reaction by society to a perceived problem, usually driven by the media.

The reaction enlarges and distorts the issue

Question 23

MORAL PANICS

What is a folk devil?

Answer 23

The media identifies a group as a folk devil, presents this group as negative and exaggerates the scale of the problem –

moral entrepreneurs, politicians, and police chiefs (and other respectable people) condemn the group and its behaviour.

Question 24

MORAL PANICS

Explore the Deviancy Amplification Spiral

Answer 24

Moral entrepreneurs disapprove of behaviour.

They pressurise authorities to do something to stop this behaviour.

Media drives a complete over-reaction to the issue.

The media identifies a folk devil and presents them in a negative light.

Moral entrepreneurs and others condemn this behaviour.

They crackdown the folk devil.

This leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby the problem is amplified.

Question 25

MORAL PANICS

Folk Devils and Moral Panics; briefly explain the study

Answer 25

Folk Devils and Moral Panics

He examines the media’s response to disturbances between two groups of largely W.C teenagers – mods and rockers - who often hung about seaside resorts in the 1960s.

The Mods wore smart clothing and rode scooters. Rockers wore leather jackets and rode motorbikes.

• Although the disorder was relatively minor, the media over-reacted – Cohen uses the analogy of a disaster, where the media produce an inventory or stocktaking of what happened. Cohen believes this inventory has three elements to it:
  1. Exaggeration and distortion – the media exaggerated the numbers of those involved and the extent of damage caused. Sensational headlines such as Day of Terror by Scooter Gangs caused a moral panic. Further, towns held their breath for invasions that didn’t even materialise.
  2. Prediction – the media regularly assumed and predicted further conflict and violence would result.
  3. Symbolisation – the symbols of mods and rockers – their clothes, bikes, scooters – all negatively labelled and associated with deviance – the media’s use of these symbols allowed them to link unconnected events such as bikers in different parts of the country were all categorised into a general underlying issue of disorderly youth.

Question 26

MORAL PANICS

Folk Devils and Moral Panics; what happened between the mods and the rockers?

Answer 26

In 1964, an initial few confrontations meant that there were a few scuffles and stone throwing.

Question 27

MORAL PANICS

Folk Devils and Moral Panics; how did the media respond?

State the three elements of the media response.

Answer 27

The disorder was relatively minor, but the media over-reacted –

Cohen believes this inventory has three elements to it:

1. Exaggeration and distortion – the media exaggerated the numbers of those involved and the extent of damage caused. Sensational headlines such as Day of Terror by Scooter Gangs caused a moral panic.
2. Prediction – the media regularly assumed and predicted further conflict and violence would result.
3. Symbolisation – the symbols of mods and rockers – their clothes, bikes, scooters – 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 were all categorised into a generalisation.

Question 28

MORAL PANICS

Folk Devils and Moral Panic; apply the mods and rockers to a deviancy amplification spiral example

Answer 28

Cohen argues that the media portrayal made it seem uncontrollable which led to calls for increased control response from the police and courts

This increased marginalisation and stigma surrounding the mods and rockers.

This created less tolerance of them.

The media amplified the deviance by defining the two groups and their subcultural style which created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Cohen notes that media definitions are crucial in creating a moral panic because in large-scale modern societies, most people have no direct experiences and they use the media to form ideas and beliefs.

Question 29

MORAL PANICS

Folk Devils and Moral Panics; when do moral panics happen according to Cohen?

Answer 29

He argues that moral panics occur at times of social change, reflecting the anxieties that people may feel when accepted values are undermined.

He believes the moral panic was a result of a boundary crisis, where there was uncertainty about where the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour lay – the folk devil allows people a focus to exercise their anxieties about social order.

Question 30

MORAL PANICS

How does Stuart Hall utilise Cohen’s theory on moral panics but in reference to Capitalism?

Answer 30

Stuart Hall believed that the moral panic over mugging in the British media in the 1970s served to distract attention from the crisis of capitalism. This divided the W.C on racial grounds and weakened them.

Question 31

EVALUATING MORAL PANICS

We are rational beings

Answer 31

It assumes that the societal reaction is an over-reaction – who is to decide what is an appropriate reaction? Everyone is rational.

Question 32

EVALUATING MORAL PANICS

Late modernity perspective

Answer 32

Late modernity perspective – do we really over-react? In a society where we all desensitised?

Moral panics are routine – there is little consensus about what is deviant, and so there is no longer a universal agreement as to what is deviant. It is harder for the media to create them

Question 33

CYBER-CRIME

What is Douglas Thomas and Brian Loader’s definition of cyber-crime?

Answer 33

Douglas Thomas and Brian Loader define cyber-crime as computer-mediated activities that are illegal but are conducted through global electronic networks.

Question 34

CYBER-CRIME

What does Yvonne Jewkes believe?

Answer 34

Yvonne Jewkes notes the internet facilitates conventional crimes and now, crimes using new tools such as software piracy.

The arrival of new types of media created moral panics too - horror comics, television, video games - all undermine public morality and corrupt the young.

Question 35

CYBER-CRIME

State the four types of cyber crime outlined by Wall

Answer 35

1. Cyber-trespassing; crossing boundaries into other people’s cyber-property.
2. Cyber-deception; identity theft and violation of intellectual property rights.
3. Cyber-pornography; including porn of minors.
4. Cyber-violence; psychologically harmful or physically harmful violence.

Question 36

CYBER-CRIME

Why it is not a priority

Answer 36

Global cyber-crime: policing cyber-crime is difficult to do because of the scale of the internet – police culture also gives it a low priority because it is lacking excitement and does not really follow conventional policing etc.