Media Flashcards
Schramm et al (1961)
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.
Ways the media might commit crime
- 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
Sonia Livingstone (1996)
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.
Gerber
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.
Schlesinger and Tumber (1992)
Tabloid readers and heavy users of TV were more fearful of becoming victims of crime.
Lea and Young (1996)
The media helps to increase the sense of relative deprivation.
Cohen: Mods and Rockers
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Eval: McRobbie and Thornton (1995), argue moral panics are an outdated idea due to the development of the media.
McRobbie and Thornton (1995)
Moral panics are an outdated idea due to the development of the media. There are so many crises shown every few minutes nowadays.
Williams and Dickinson (1993)
Newspapers gave 30% of their space to the reporting of crime. (It’s overrepresented).)
Ditto and Duffy (1983)
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.
How is the police success rate represented in the media?
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.
Schlesinger (1994)
Crime reporting changes over time
1960s - focus on murder and petty crime
1990s - these issues were less important to the media
Soothill and Walby (1991)
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.
Cohen and Young (1973)’s description of news
News is not discovered, it is manufactured
News values
Immediacy Dramatisation Personification/human interest High status Simplification Novelty Risk Violence
Mandel (1984)
Estimated that from 1945-84, over 10 billion crime thrillers were sold worldwide and that 25% of prime time TV was about crime.
Surette (1998)
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’
Def: cyber crime
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
Crimes that can be committed online
Extortion Identity theft Theft Stalking Phishing/fraud Hacking Distributing child porn Revenge porn Buying illegal goods Piracy
Wall (2001)
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
Why is cyber crime difficult to police?
- huge scale
- questions of whose jurisdiction each act is
- police culture (cyber crime isn’t exciting)
Jewkes (2003)
The media has increased opportunities in policing immensely. New cctv, electronic databases, digital fingerprinting, etc..