Media And Crime Flashcards
What did Williams and Dickson calculate the % of news spaces newspapers devoted to crime?
30%
Who is news a social construction and who says it’s “not discovered but manufactured”
Distorted picture of crime by the media reflects fact news is socially constructed as it doesn’t exist waiting to be discovered by journalist, stories are accepted or rejected
Cohen and young say “news is not discovered but manufactured”
What are some news values and who came up with it?
News values are criteria by journalist and editors and if they are present they have better chance at making the news
Jewkes (2011) says these are some:
- dramatisation: if event is considered to be dramatic enough (eg serial killer rather than a single murderer)
- Proximity: if event has cultural meaning or is physically close (eg Manchester bombing)
- simplification: events are easy to
Understand - risk: if a event can be posed as serious making or risk to general public
What are a strength and weakness of news values
+ it shows how media is socially constructed and doesn’t represent true crime,
❌ fails to acknowledge media is just doing its job and getting sales
What does mandel say % of TV shows and movies fall under the crime genre?
Madel found 25% of TV shows and 20% of movies fell under crime genre
What do Surret argue media like TV, film or books follow and construct?
They follow the “law of opposites” and a backwards version of reality similar to news coverage:
- property crime under represented while violence, drugs and sex over
- real life homicides due to brawls and domestic dispitues fictional ones are of greed and calculation
- fictional crimes commited by psychopathic strangers rather than people u know
- villains tend to be high status, middle age white men and cops get the bad guy
What is a criticism of fictional representations of crime and law of opposites
Recent trends in fictional representation of crime don’t follow law of opposites
New genre of infotainment shows like ‘COPS’ feature young, non white, underclass offenders
Also shows protesting police as corrupt and brutal eg line of duty
How has media been blamed as a cause of crime?
Blamed on negatively effecting attitudes and values of people in society especially those most susepitable to violence eg young, lower class and uneducated
Eg in 1950s horror comics blames and recently video games like GTA or rap music have been blamed
It can normalise behaviours and label certain groups as criminal creating a Moral panic
What is the hypodermic syringe model and 3 points from it
Several ways media “injects” it’s influence into viewer leading to crime and deviance:
- imitation recreating already existing crime eg copy cat killers
- desensitisation: see violence every day in media so makes crime see normal
- glamorising offending: presenting crimes and criminals as rebels and cool
How does the case of Nathan martinez support hypodermic syringe model?
Nathan martinez watched the violent film ‘natural born killers’ abour 10x before killing his step mother and half sister.
His friends said he wished to “go out in a blaze of glory” like the films main characters
However the film director said Martinez would have been violent anyway cause he had a violent father
How would livingstone criticise hypothermic syringe model
Livingstone says despite lack of evidence between media and criminal behaviour
people are still preoccupied with its impact on children cause of our desire to see childhood as time of innocence in private sphere
How does relative depravation and media relate?
Left realist say mass media increases sense of relative depravation in poor/marginalised groups supported by social realist like Young
Today peioke everyone has access to media whixh present them with materialistic “good life” of lesuire fun and consumer goods. This creates relative depravation and social exclusion by poor groups causing them to commit crime
Merton argues pressure to conform to social norms causes deviant behaviour when ways to achieve materialistic goals through legitimate means are blocked so media plays role in promotion crime
Socially included but economically excluded
What do cultural criminologist say about media and crime?
Cultural criminologists say media turns itself into commodity that ppl desire so rather than encouraging crime media makes people wanna consume crime in images they offer
What do cultural criminologists Hayward and young (2012) say about media and crime
They claim late modern soxisty is media saturated as ppl immersed in “mediascape” -ever expanding tangle of fluid images including crime- this blurs boundaries between images and reality of crime making them not separable
Eg gang fights are not just caught on camera but now staged and later edited as package as a “underground fight video”
Or
Police car cameras don’t just record police activity but now change how they work
What are some examples of shows that blur the boundaries heteeen images and reality of crime?
To catch a predator or don’t pay we’ll take it away
How much of it is staged and how much of it is real?
