Media

Question 1

Media representations of crime

Answer 1

• Media representations of crime – in every facet of our lives
• TV is obsessed with real and fictional crime
• Williams and Dickinson – 30% devoted to crime in newspapers (and tend to give a distorted view of crime)

Question 2

News values and crime coverage

Answer 2

• News values and crime coverage – 1. over representation of sexual crime (Ditton and Duffy – majority vs. 3%) 2. Criminals and victims as older and MC (age fallacy) 3. Exaggerate police success 4. Exaggerate risk of victimization (to women, white people and those of high status) 5. Crime seen as series of separate events 6. Media overplay extraordinary crime (dramatic fallacy)

Question 3

Cohen

Answer 3

news is not discovered but manufactured (selection and rejection)
• Immediacy, dramatization, personalization, higher status, simplification, novelty, risk and violence

Question 4

Fictional representations of crime

Answer 4

• Fictional representations of crime – Mandel found that over 40 years, 10 billion crime thrillers had been sold and 25% of primetime TV is crime related
• Surette – property crime is underrepresented but violent and sexual crimes are overrepresented. In this, the police get their man

Question 5

Effects of media

Answer 5

• Media as a cause of crime – has a negative effect on attitudes and values (cinema, horror films and rap music)
• Imitation, desensitization, arousal, transmitting knowledge of techniques, stimulating consumerism and by glamourizing offending
• Correlation between media use and fear of crime

Question 6

Media, relative deprivation and crime

Answer 6

left realists highlight that media encourages crime by stimulating materialism and relative deprivation

Question 7

Cultural criminology

Answer 7

media shows desirable lifestyles and media saturation has led to the blurring of images and reality of crime

Question 8

Media commodification of crime

Answer 8

images of crime are used to sell products (in branding or advertising)

Question 9

Moral panics

Answer 9

moral entrepreneurs disapprove of something, put pressure on authorities, this creates a negative label, creates exaggerated over – reaction by society to perceived problem, groups labelled as ‘folk devils’, lead to crackdown on their behaviour (creates SFP and deviance amplification spiral)
• Examples – AIDs and Islamic fundamentalism
• Cohen – symbolization, exaggeration and prediction

Question 10

Wider context of moral panics

Answer 10

1. Post – war change: new affluence and hedonism challenged values of those who lived through hardship. There was a boundary crisis, an uncertainty about values.
2. Functionalist – moral panics are a response to a sense of anomie. Panic reasserts social controls.
3. Neo – Marxist: Hall et al found moral panic about ‘black mugger’ as serving capitalism.

Question 11

Cyber - crime

Answer 11

Wall’s 5 types (cyber trespass, cyber deception, cyber pornography, cyber – violence and global cyber crime)

Question 12

Evaluation

Answer 12

assumes that reaction is over the top (may be proportionate – realism), what turns amplifier on and off, desensitization in PM society (no consensus on deviance)