Media

Question 1

Schramm et al (1961)

Answer 1

On the effects of TV viewing on children:

Sometimes TV can be harmful, sometimes it’s beneficial; most of the time it has no effect.

Question 2

Ways the media might commit crime

Answer 2

• Imitation, by providing deviant role models, resulting in copycat behaviour
• Arousal, e.g. through watching violent or sexual imagery
• Desensitisation, e.g. through repeated viewing of violence
• By transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques
• A target for crime, e.g. TVs
• By stimulating desires for unaffordable goods, e.g. through advertising
• By glamourising offending

Question 3

Sonia Livingstone (1996)

Answer 3

People continue to be preoccupied with the the effects of the media on children because society has a desire to see childhood as a time of uncontaminated innocence.

Use this to evaluate the point of looking at the effects of the media on children. Question why children require special attention.

Question 4

Gerber

Answer 4

In the USA, people who watched TV for more than 4 hours per day had higher levels of fear of crime.

Eval: dated study. People are on the phones all the time now.

Question 5

Schlesinger and Tumber (1992)

Answer 5

Tabloid readers and heavy users of TV were more fearful of becoming victims of crime.

Question 6

Lea and Young (1996)

Answer 6

The media helps to increase the sense of relative deprivation.

Question 7

Cohen: Mods and Rockers

Answer 7

Society has moral panics

Method: Interviewed mods, rockers, police and journalists; and analysed coverage of ‘clashes’ in newspapers.

Concluded there was secondary deviance.

Deviancy amplification.

Eval: McRobbie and Thornton (1995), argue moral panics are an outdated idea due to the development of the media.

Question 8

McRobbie and Thornton (1995)

Answer 8

Moral panics are an outdated idea due to the development of the media. There are so many crises shown every few minutes nowadays.

Question 9

Williams and Dickinson (1993)

Answer 9

Newspapers gave 30% of their space to the reporting of crime. (It’s overrepresented).)

Question 10

Ditto and Duffy (1983)

Answer 10

The media over-represents violent and sexual crimes

46% of reports relate to violence/sex crimes, whereas these crimes are only 3% of crimes reported by the police.

Eval: Marsh (1991) found the same trend.

Question 11

How is the police success rate represented in the media?

Answer 11

Media reporting exaggerates the success rates of the police.

The police are a major source of the media’s stories and will therefore present themselves in a positive light.

Question 12

Schlesinger (1994)

Answer 12

Crime reporting changes over time

1960s - focus on murder and petty crime

1990s - these issues were less important to the media

Question 13

Soothill and Walby (1991)

Answer 13

There has been an increased interest in sex crimes in the media. In 1951, the reporting of rape cases was a quarter of all cases. In 1985, this was just over a third.

Question 14

Cohen and Young (1973)’s description of news

Answer 14

News is not discovered, it is manufactured

Question 15

News values

Answer 15

Immediacy 
Dramatisation 
Personification/human interest
High status 
Simplification
Novelty
Risk
Violence

Question 16

Mandel (1984)

Answer 16

Estimated that from 1945-84, over 10 billion crime thrillers were sold worldwide and that 25% of prime time TV was about crime.

Question 17

Surette (1998)

Answer 17

Points to the ‘law of opposites’, in that fictional representations of crime are the opposite of official statistics.

• property crime is underrepresented, whereas violence, drugs and sex crimes are overrepresented
• murder is generally presented as the result of greed and calculation, not the reality of fights that go wrong and domestic disputes
• the fictional cop always ‘gets their man’

Question 18

Def: cyber crime

Answer 18

Leader and Thomas (2000) define cyber crime as:

Computer mediated activities that are either illegal or considered illicit by some, and that are conducted through global electronic networks

Question 19

Crimes that can be committed online

Answer 19

Extortion 
Identity theft
Theft
Stalking
Phishing/fraud
Hacking 
Distributing child porn
Revenge porn
Buying illegal goods
Piracy

Question 20

Wall (2001)

Answer 20

4 categories of cyber crime

1) cyber trespass, e.g. Hacking, sabotage, etc
2) cyber deception and theft, e.g. Identity theft, phishing, violating intellectual property, etc
3) cyber pornography, e.g. Sharing photos of someone under 16
4) cyber violence, e.g. Causing psychological harm and inciting physical harm

Question 21

Why is cyber crime difficult to police?

Answer 21

• huge scale
• questions of whose jurisdiction each act is
• police culture (cyber crime isn’t exciting)

Question 22

Jewkes (2003)

Answer 22

The media has increased opportunities in policing immensely. New cctv, electronic databases, digital fingerprinting, etc..