Media And Crime Flashcards
Jewkes
Observes that crime is newsworthy for several reasons:
- it is bad news which attracts larger television audiences than good news
- it has a human interest element since we are all at risk of being victims of crime
- particularly rare crimes attract more media attention
Ditton and Duffy
Found that nearly half of media reports about crime focused on murder or rape, despite the fact that these types of crimes only make up about 3% of crimes recorded by the police
Felson
Claims that media reporting about crime reinforces myths or fallacies about crime e.g that women and middle class people are the main victims of crime and that most crime is planned, when in reality most victims are male and working class and most crime is opportunist and spontaneous
Functionalist - Reiner
Media and advertising representations of material success are partly responsible for crime because they have created anomie or moral uncertainty among poorer sections of society. Believes that media falsely raises people’s expectations and hopes with regard to monetary success and access to consumer goods.
Left realists and media effects
Media representations serve to highlight and reinforce the sense of relative deprivation and social exclusion felt by poorer groups who cannot afford the ‘good life’ shown in media reports of celebrity lifestyles
Marxists and media effects
Mass media reporting of crime is shaped by ruling class ideology in order to give the impression that working class crime is more costly to society than white collar or corporate crime
Newsome
Impressionable audiences such as children or teenagers may be negatively influenced by violent, immoral or anti social media content. So it is a powerful secondary agent of socialisation - her approach is commonly known as the hypodermic syringe since media is accused of teaching criminal behaviour and de-Sensitising viewers to the distresses of violent crime
Richard Sparks
Many media effects students ignore the meanings that viewers give to media violence. There is evidence that audiences interpret violence in cartoons, horror films and news quite differently whereas the hypodermic syringe model suggest that these very different portrayals are the same
Evaluation of newscombe
Fails to recognise that audiences differ in terms of factors such as age, social class, intelligence and level of education and so react differently e.g ….
David Morrison
Showed a range of violent film clips to women, young men and war veterans. All of the groups thought that the violent scene in pulp fiction was humorous because there was light hearted dialogue. However a scene from ladybird, ladybird showing a domestic violence caused distress for all three groups and therefore criticises the hypodermic syringe model since it fails to consider the context in which onscreen violence takes place
Labelling theorists
Believe that media contributes to the social construction of crime by labelling powerless groups as criminal or deviant through the creation of moral panics - intense public anxiety about a social problem or group that has been brought to public attention by the mass media
Stan cohen
1972 study focuses on the media’s representation of two opposing groups the mods and rockers in the 1960s. He argues that the media generated a moral panic about the behaviour of these groups in 1964 through exaggerated reports of minor vandalism which led to a widespread public fear and a police crackdown - the distorted view encouraged the groups to identify with one of the two groups and see each other as rivals
Neo Marxist- Stuart hall
Sees moral panics as deliberately engineered by the ruling class to divide and rule the working class and to distract people from the crisis of capitalism
McRobbie and Thornton
The concept of moral panic is outdated because of the existence of social media platforms such as facebook and twitter so audiences are now exposed to more interpretations about potential social problems and so are less likely to respond with panic or anxiety
