Key Theorists - Crime and The Media (Globalisation and Crime)

Question 1

Key Theorist - Ericson et al: Media and Crime

WHERE WAS THEIR STUDY CONDUCTED?

Answer 1

• Toronto

Question 2

Key Theorist - Ericson et al: Media and Crime

WHAT DID THEIR STUDY FIND?

Answer 2

• 45-71% of quality press and radio news was about various form of deviance and its control.

Question 3

Key Theorists – Williams and Dickinson: Media and Crime

WHAT DID THEY FIND?

Answer 3

• British newspapers devote 30% of their news space to crime.

Question 4

Key Theorists - Schlesinger and Tumber: Media and Crime

WHAT DID THEY FIND?

Answer 4

• Petty crime and murder were the focus in the 1960s and by the 1990s crime which was more special was needed to grab attention e.g. child abuse, terrorism and football hooliganism.

Question 5

Key Theorists - Soothill and Walby: Media and Crime

WHAT DID THEY FIND?

Answer 5

• Newspaper reports increasingly reported rape cases between 1950 and 1985 and focused on the perpetrator as a ‘sex fiend’ or ‘beast’. This creates an image of a psychopathic rapist which is not the reality.

Question 6

Key Theorists – Cohen and Young: Media and Crime

WHAT DO THEY ARGUE?

Answer 6

• News is not discovered but manufactured.

- Stories are picked based on news values

Question 7

Key Theorists – Cohen and Young: Media and Crime

WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT NEWS VALUES THAT DETERMINE WHICH STORIES ARE CHOSEN?
GIVE AT LEAST TWO EXAMPLES.

Answer 7

At least two from:

• Immediacy
• Dramatisation (exciting)
• Personalisation (human interest about individuals)
• High status (celebrities)
• Simplification (black and white)
• Novelty/Unexpected
• Risk (victim centred, fear)
• Violence (spectacular, visible)

Question 8

Key Theorist – Mandel: Fictional Representations of Crime

WHAT DOES THIS THEORIST ARGUE?

Answer 8

• From 1945-1984 10 billion crime novels were sold worldwide and 25% of prime time TV were crime related.

Question 9

Key Theorist – Surette: Fictional Representations of Crime

WHAT DOES THIS THEORIST ARGUE?

Answer 9

• Fictional stories and films usually show the opposite of official statistics, but mirror news stories. For example, violence, drugs and sex crimes are overrepresented and the motivation behind crime often differs and the police are portrayed with far higher levels of competency. The law of opposites.

Question 10

Key Theorist – Surette: Fictional Representations of Crime

HOW CAN THIS THEORY BE EVALUATED/

Answer 10

• This is now changing - cops are corrupt and brutal, criminals are from the underclass.