media and crime Flashcards
overview
crime and deviance make up a large proportion of news coverage, ericson’s study of Toronto found that 45-71% of quality press and radio news was about various forms of deviance and its control while Williams and Dickinson found that British newspapers devote up to 30% of their news space to crime
media distorts crime factors
overrepresent violent and sexual crime
media portrays victims as older and more middle class
media coverage exaggerates police success
the media exaggerate the risk of victimization
crime is reported as a series of separate events
the media overplays extraordinary crimes
overrepresent violent and sexual crime sociologist
Ditton and Duffy
Marsh
media portrays criminals and victims as older and more middle class sociologist
felson
Media overrepresent violent and sexual crimes
For example, Ditton and Duffy (1983) found that 46% of media reports were about violent or sexual crimes, yet these made up only 3% of all crimes recorded by the police. One review by Marsh (1991) of studies of news reporting in America found that a violent crime was 36 times more likely to be reported than a property crime.
The media portray criminals and victims as older and more middle-class
The media portray criminals and victims as older and more middle-class than those typically found in the criminal justice system. Felson (1998) calls this the ‘age fallacy’
Media coverage exaggerate police success
Media coverage exaggerates police success in clearing up cases. This is partly because the police are a major source of crime stories and want to present themselves in a good light, and partly because the media over-represents violent crime, which has a higher clear-up rate than property crime.
Media exaggerate the risk of victimisation
The media exaggerate the risk of victimisation, especially to women, White people and higher status individuals.
Crime is reported as a series of separate events
Crime is reported as a series of separate events without structure and without examining underlying causes.
The media overplays extraordinary crimes
The media overplay extraordinary crimes and underplay ordinary crimes - Felson calls this the ‘dramatic fallacy’. Similarly, media images lead us to believe that to commit crime (and to solve it one needs to be daring and clever - the ‘ingenuity fallacy’.
Is the media changing sociologists
Schlesinger and Tumber (1994)
Is the media changing
There is some evidence of changes in the type of coverage of crime by the news media. For example, Schlesinger and Tumber (1994) found that in the 1960s the focus had been on murders and petty crime, but by the 1990s murder and petty crime were of less interest to the media. The change came about partly because of the abolition of the death penalty for murder and partly because rising crime rates meant that a crime had to be ‘special’ to attract coverage.
By the 1990s, reporting had also widened to include drugs, child abuse, terrorism, football hooliganism and ‘mugging’
Media preoccupation with sexual crime sociologist
Walby
Media preoccupation with sexual crimes
For example, Keith Soothill and Sylvia Walby
(1991) found that newspaper reporting of rape cases increased from under a quarter of all cases in 1951 to over a third in 1985. They also note that coverage consistently focuses on identifying a ‘sex fiend’ or ‘beast’, often by use of labels (such as ‘the balaclava rapist’). The resulting distorted picture of rape is one of serial attacks carried out by psychopathic strangers. While these do occur, they are the exception rather than the rule - in most cases the perpetrator is known to the victim.
News value and crime coverage
The distorted picture of crime painted by the news media reflects the fact that news is a social construction. That is, news does not simply exist ‘out there’ waiting to be gathered in and written up by the journalist. Rather, it is the outcome of a social process in which some potential stories are selected while others are rejected. As Stan Cohen and Jock Young (1973) note, news is not discovered but manufactured.
News values
A central aspect of the manufacture of news is the notion of ‘news values’. News values are the criteria by which journalists and editors decide whether a story is newsworthy enough to make it into the newspaper or news bulletin. If a crime story can be told in terms of some of these criteria, it has a better chance of making the news.
Key news values influencing the selection of crime stories include:
Immediacy - ‘breaking news’ - in which old news is disregarded and there is a race between news outlets to provide their report first before anybody, however due to this value it can be said that the outlets within the media disregard accuracy iin order to gain immediacy which will increase their circulation in their war against competing outlets
• Dramatisation - action and excitement - news is written for shock factor to grab the attention of the reader which can lead to increased preoccupation with certain crimes and inaccurate headlines for the sole purpose of getting attention
• Risk - victim-centred stories about vulnerability and fear
One reason why the news media give so much coverage to crime is that news focuses on the unusual and extraordinary, and this makes deviance newsworthy almost by definition, since it is abnormal behaviour.
Fictional representation of crime
We don’t just get our images of crime from the news media. Fictional representations from TV, cinema and novels are also important sources of our knowledge of crime, because so much of their output is crime-related.in example, Ernest Mandel (1934) estimates that from 1945 to 1984, over 10 billion crime thrillers were sold worldwide, while about 25% of prime time TV and 20% of films are crime shows or movies.
Fictional representations of crime, criminals and victims follow what Surette (1998) calls the law of opposites”: they are the opposite of the official statistics - and strikingly similar to news coverage.
Fictional representation of crime factors
• Property crime is under-represented, while violence, drugs and sex crimes are over-represented.
• While real-life homicides mainly result from brawls and domestic disputes, fictional ones are the product of greed and calculation.
• Fictional sex crimes are committed by psychopathic strangers, not acquaintances. Fictional villains tend to be higher status, middle-aged White males.
• Fictional cops usually get their man.
Eval of fictional representation of crime
However, three recent trends are worth noting. Firstly, the new genre of ‘reality’ infotainment shows tends to feature young, non-White ‘underclass’ offenders. Secondly, there is an increasing tendency to show police as corrupt and bruta (and as less successful). Thirdly, victims have become more central, with law enforcers portrayed as their avengers and audiences invited to identify with their suffering.
Media as a cause of crime overview
There has long been concern that the media have a negative effect on attitudes, values and behaviour - especially of those groups thought to be most susceptible to influence, such as the young, the lower classes and the uneducated.
Media causes crime factors
Fear of crime
Relative Deprivation
Cultural deprivation
The commodification of crime
Fear of crime sociologist
Gerbner et al
Schlesinger and Tumber (1992)
Fear of crime
As we have seen, the media exaggerate the amount of violent and unusual crime, and they exaggerate the risks of certaln groups of people becoming its victims, such as young women and old people. There is therefore concern that the media may be distorting the public’s impression of crime and causing an unrealistic fear of crime.
Research evidence to some extent supports the view that there is a link between media use and fear of crime. For example, in the USA, Gerbner et al found that heavy users of television (over four hours a day) had higher levels of fear of crime.
Similarly, Schlesinger and Tumber (1992) found a correlation between media consumption and fear of crime, with tabloid readers and heavy users of TV expressing greater fear of becoming a victim, especially of physical attack and ‘mugging’.
Eval of fear of crime
However, the existence of such correlations doesn’t prove that media viewing causes fear. For example, it may be that those who are already afraid of going out at night watch more TV just because they stay in more.
Finally, as Greer and Reiner (2012) note, much ‘effects’ research on the media as a cause of crime or fear of crime ignores the meanings that viewers give to media violence. For example, they may give very different meanings to violence in cartoons, horror films and news bulletins. This criticism reflects the interpretivist view that if we want to understand the possible effects of the media, we must look at the meanings people give to what they see and read.
Media and relative deprivation sociologist
Lea and Young
Merton
Relative deprivation and the media
media portrayals of crime and deviant lifestyles lead viewers to commit crimes themselves.
For example, left realists argue that the mass media help to increase the sense of relative deprivation - the feeling of being deprived relative to others - among poor and marginalised social groups. In today’s society, where even the poorest groups have media access, the media present everyone with images of a materialistic ‘good life of leisure, fun and consumer goods as the norm to which they should conform. The result is to stimulate the sense of relative deprivation and social exclusion felt by marginalised groups who cannot afford these goods. As Merton argues, pressure to conform to the norm can cause deviant behaviour when the opportunity to achieve by legitimate means is blocked. In this instance, the media are instrumental in setting the norm and thus in promoting crime.
Lea and young quote
“The mass media have disseminated a standardized image of lifestyle, particularly in the areas of popular culture and recreation, which, for those unemployed and surviving through the dole queue or only able to obtain employment at very low wages, has accentuated the sense of relative deprivation.
Cultural criminology and the media sociologist
Hayward and Young 2012
Cultural criminology and the media
By contrast, cultural criminology argues that the media turn crime itself into the commodity that people desire. Rather than simply producing crime in their audiences, the media encourage them to consume crime, in the form of images of crime.
Cultural criminologists such as Mike Hayward and Jock Young (2012) see late modern society as a media-saturated society, where we are immersed in the ‘mediascape’ - an ever-expanding tangle of fluid digital images, including images of crime. In this world, there is a blurring between the image and the reality of crime, so that the two are no longer clearly distinct or separable. The way the media represent crime and crime control now actually constitutes or creates the thing itself. For example, gang assaults are not just caught on camera, but staged for the camera and later packaged together in
“underground fight videos’. Similarly, police car cameras don’t just record police activity; they actually alter the way in which the police work, with US police forces for example using reality TV shows like Cops as promo videos.
The commodification of crime sociologist
Fenwick and Hayward
The commodification of crime
A further feature of late modernity is the emphasis on consumption, excitement and immediacy. In this context, Hayward and Young argue, crime and its thrills become commodified. Corporations and advertisers use media images of crime to sell products, especially in the youth market. For example, hip hop combines images of street hustler criminality with images of consumerist success.
Similarly, leading hip hop stars parade designer chic clothing, jewellery, champagne, luxury cars and so on.
Crime and deviance thus become a style to be consumed.
As Fenwick and Hayward (2000) put it, ‘crime is packaged and marketed to young people as a romantic, exciting, cool, and fashionable cultural symbol.’
This is also true of mainstream products. For example, Hayward and Young cite examples of car ads featuring street riots, joyriding, suicide bombing, graffiti and pyromania. Likewise, the fashion industry and its advertisers trade on images of the forbidden (with brands such as Opium, Poison and Obsession), ‘heroin chic’, sadomasochism and violence against women,
Even counter-cultures are packaged and sold. Graffiti is the marker of deviant urban cool, but corporations now use it in a guerrilla marketing’ technique called ‘brandalism’ to sell everything from theme parks to cars and video games.
Companies use moral panics, controversy and scandal to market their products. ronically, the designer labels valued by young people as badges of identity now function as symbols of deviance.
For example, some pubs and clubs now refuse entry to individuals wearing certain brands, In some towns, local bars and police compile lists of branded clothing that they see as problematic. Brands become tools of classification for constructing profiles of potential criminals.
THE HYPODERMIC SYRINGE MODEL
This is the argument that the media INJECTS the audience (like a syringe would)
with images and ideas which encourage/ cause them to commit copycat acts.
There are examples of cases where this argument has been used to explain the
actions of criminals.
other ways the media causes crime
Arousal e.g. porn creates dysfunctional view of sex
and causes individuals to commit sexual offences
Desensitisation – being exposed to portrayals of
violence causes it to be normalised, turns us off to
reality and so makes it more likely to be re created
Transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques
e.g. how to hot wire a car or commit identity fraud
Portraying the police as incompetent- makes us
think we’re going to get away with crime
Glamorising crime- crime capers such as Ocean’s
11 make crime appear fun, harmless and cool
Portraying the police as incompetent- makes us
think we’re going to get away with crime
Glamorising crime- crime capers such as Ocean’s
11 make crime appear fun, harmless and cool
evals of the media causes crime
It is reductionist. It reduces the cause of violence and
crime as solely due to the media.
It therefore ignores other possible causes such as
poverty, marginalisation, mental health issues etc (Left Realists focus on this alternative view)
It rarely focuses on the possibility that the media could also impact positively on beliefs and actions
Most of the research is very unrepresentative. Quite a lot is lab based and focuses on children but it is low in ecological validity.
sociological perspective on the media
marxist
functionalist
post modernists
feminism
marxists, the media and crime
The media’s reporting of crime reflect the hegemony and ideology of the ruling class:
Media owned by a small minority of elites
5 billionaires own 80% of UK media
Miliband (1973) - allows bourgeoise to set the
agenda and create hegemony controlling the
working-class
White-collar and corporate crimes are under reported
Media over report working-class crime and
criminals
E.g. The Kray’s, Peaky Blinders, Don’t get
done, get Don, Jeremy Kyle
functionalists the media and crime
In reporting crime the media helps to keep social
solidarity
Crimes reported tend to reflect the things people want to see reported
The media meets demand
Different forms of media report different crimes in
different ways,
Not all dominated by a single ideology or small
group of owners pushing the same agenda
The Guardian vs the Telegraph
BBC News vs. Russia Today
post modernism, the media and crime
Baudrillard – Simulacra and Simulation
The media creates reality
People have no understanding of crime only
the representations of crime they experience
through the mass media
feminism the media and crime
Crime reporting reinforces the stereotyping and
oppression of women
Women are portrayed as victims
Under reporting of violence against women -
especially domestic violence
They are highly critical of reporting of sex crimes
against women as a way to provide entertainment
moral panic meaning
A moral panic is an exaggerated outburst of public
concern over the morality or behaviour of a group in
society
what is a moral panic generated by - media
Generally created by moral crusaders
Links to Neo-Marxism and Interactionism
Links to labelling theory
Instead of an agent of social control labelling
it’s the media
two keys related terms to media and moral panic
Folk devil (Cohen)
Refers to the subject of a moral panic
The group who the media is focussing on, the group who is being targeted for exaggerated reporting
Deviancy Amplification
The alleged consequences of a moral panic
Where a group becomes more deviant as a result of media exaggeration of their deviance
Similar to the Self Fulfilling Prophecy
key study concerning the media
mods and rockers
mods and rockers sociologist
Cohen
mods and rockers study in depth
The most influential study of moral panics and the role of the media is Stanley Cohen’s (1972) book, Folk Devils and Mora Panics. Cohen examines the media’s response to disturbances between two groups of largely working-class teenagers, the mods and the rockers, at English seaside resorts from 1964 to 1966, and the way in which this created a moral panic.
Mods wore smart dress and rode scooters; rockers wore leather lackets and rode motorbikes - though in the early stages, distinctions were not so clear-cut, and not many young people identified themselves as belonging to either ‘group’. The initial confrontations started on a cold, wet Easter weekend in 1964 at Clacton, with a few scuffles, some stone throwing, some windows being broken and some beach huts wrecked.
However, although the disorder was relatively minor, the media over-reacted.
Cohens analysis - media
Cohen says this inventory contained three elements:
Exaggeration and distortion The media exaggerated the numbers involved and the extent of the violence and damage, and distorted the picture through dramatic reporting and sensational headlines such as Day of Terror by Scooter Gangs’ and ‘Youngsters Beat Up Town - 97 Leather Jacket Arrests’. Even non-events were news - towns held their breath’ for invasions that didn’t materialise.
Prediction The media regularly assumed and predicted further conflict and violence would result.
Symbolisation The symbols of the mods and rockers
- their clothes, bikes and scooters, hairstyles, music etc were all negatively labelled and associated with deviance. the media’s use of these symbols allowed them to link unconnected events. For example, bikers in different parts of the country who misbehaved could be seen as part of a more general underlying problem of disorderly youth.
What did the media and moral panic create
Deviance amplification spiral
Deviance amplification spiral
cohen argues that the media’s portrayal of events produced a deviance amplification spiral by making it seem as if the problem was spreading and getting out of hand. This led to calls for an increased control response from the police and courts. This produced further marginalisation and stigmatisation of the mods and rockers as deviants, and less and less tolerance of them, and so on in an upward spiral.
The media further amplified the deviance by defining the two groups and their subcultural styles. This led to more youths adopting these styles and drew in more participants for future clashes.
This encouraged polarisation and helped to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of escalating conflict as youths acted out the roles the media had assigned to them.
Cohen notes that media definitions of the situation are crucial in creating a moral panic, because in large-scale modern societies, most people have no direct experience of the events themselves and thus have to rely on the media for information about them. In the case of the mods and rockers, this allowed the media to portray them as folk devils - major threats to public order and social values.
The wider context - moral panic and crime
Cohen puts the moral panic about the mods and rockers into the wider context of change in post-war British society.
This was a period in which the newfound affluence, consumerism and hedonism of the young appeared to challenge the values of an older generation who had lived through the hardships of the 1930s and 1940s.
Cohen argues that moral panics often occur at times of social change, reflecting the anxieties many people feel when accepted values seem to be undermined. He argues that the moral panic was a result of a boundary crisis, where there was uncertainty about the where the boundary lay between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in a time of change. The folk devil created by the media symbolises and gives a focus to popular anxieties about social disorder.
From a functionalist perspective, moral panics can be seen as ways of responding to the sense of anomie or normlessness created by change. By dramatising the threat to society in the form of a folk devil, the media raises the collective consciousness and reasserts social controls when central values are threatened.
Other sociologists and the wider context of moral panics
Other sociologists have also used the concept of moral panics. For example, Stuart Hall et al (1979) adopt a neo-Marxist approach that locates the role of moral panics in the context of capitalism. They argue that the moral panic over ‘mugging’ in the British media in the 1970s served to distract attention from the crisis of capitalism, divide the working class on racial grounds and legitimate a more authoritarian style of rule.
Critic of moral panic
There are several criticisms of the concept of moral panics: it assumes that the societal reaction is a disproportionate over-reaction - but who is to decide what is a proportionate reaction, and what is a panicky one? This relates to the left realist view that people’s fear of crime is in fact rational.
What turns the ‘amplifier’ on and off: why are the media able to amplify some problems into a panic, but not others?
Why do panics not go on increasing indefinitely once they have started?
late modern critic of moral panic sociologist
McRobbie and Thornton
Late modern critic of moral panic
Late modernity Do today’s media audiences, who are accustomed to ‘shock, horror’ stories, really react with panic to media exaggerations? McRobbie and Thornton
(1995) argue that moral panics are now routine and have less impact. Also, in late modern society, there is little consensus about what is deviant. Lifestyle choices that were condemned forty years ago, such as single motherhood, are no longer universally regarded as deviant and so it is harder for the media to create panics about them.
cyber crime overview
Cyber Crime is a fast-growing area of crime
Speed, convenience and anonymity of the Internet
creates a diverse range of criminal activities with no
borders
Can cause serious harm and poses real threats to
victims worldwide
Macionis & Plummer (2005) point out how Cyber crime has created new forms of ‘Trouble’ and ‘New Worlds of crime’
Internet-based fraud, pornography, Identity Theft,
terrorism, Organised Crime rings, Money Laundering,
Hacking, Online Bullying and harassment, Phishing
19% increase in Facebook crimes in UK 2019/2020
sociologist - cyber crime
Macionis and plummer
jewkes
jewkes
Internet creates opportunities to
commit ‘conventional crimes’
Also creates opportunity for new
crimes
4 types of cyber crime sociologist
wall
4 types of cyber
- Cyber Deception and Theft
- Cyber Pornography
- Cyber Trespass
- Cyber Violence
cyber deception and theft
Hacking, Phishing, Piracy, illegal Downloads & File
Sharing, identity theft, fraud.
126.7 billion viewings worth of US-produced TV
episodes are pirated every year
There were over 17 million stream-rippers in
2018
106.9 billion visits to pirate websites in 2017
Illegal downloading of copyrighted materials
takes up 24% of the global bandwidth
cyber porn
Increase in opportunities for underage people
to consume pornography on the internet
PsychologyToday – average of a male
first porn use is 13 becoming regular
uses by 16/17
Increase in ‘revenge porn’
22% increase in calls to government
helpline 2020
Images involving minors
cyber trepass
Crossing boundaries into others ‘Cyber-Property’ e.g.
Sending Computer Viruses & Hacking
NHS WannaCry hack 2017 – costing £92 million
Wikileaks
cyber violence
Creating psychological harm or inciting physical harm
e.g. Cyber-Bullying, Terrorist Websites, Hate-Based
Sites
CyberHarassment – revenge porn, sextortion,’doxing’,
storms of abuse, violent threats
cyber and social control
New technologies give agents of social control new
opportunities to monitor the population
Zuboff (2019) – surfing the web produces data
which leads to the predictions of movements and
behaviours (Amazon, Google, Facebook,
Pokémon Go!)
China’s proposed social credit system
Jewkes (2003)
IT permits routine surveillance through the use of
CCTV, electronic databases, digital finger printing,
listening devices and internet service providers
