Media and Crime

Question 1

What is Hypodermic syringe model of media?

Answer 1

audience receives messages directly and passively influences them rather than engaging in them

Question 2

What are the Pattern of crime in media?

Answer 2

1)Media represents violent and sexual crimes-46% of media report are on on sexual or physical violence however 3% of crimes are recorded by police
2)Media portrays criminal and victims as older and middle class-older than those are actual victims
3) Media coverage exaggerates police success-they want to show police in positive light
4)Media exaggerate the risk of victimisation-Especially to women people of high status and white people
5)Crime is reported as a series of separate events
6)Media over-play extra-ordinary crimes

Question 3

Marcus Felson notes how media creates the following fallacies about crime?

Answer 3

•Age fallacy-Adults are shown as criminals and victim despite official statistics show that it’s young people
•Class fallacy-Middle class are shown as victim despite stats showing it comes from WC
•Dramatic fallacy-Everyday crimes are underreported and violent crimes are over reported

Question 4

New values impact on stories worthiness of being in the news and story need to meet the following values!

Answer 4

•Dramatisation-Showing excitement or action
•Personalisation-People can relate to it
•Risk
•Bad news

Question 5

How does Media distort of crime?

Answer 5

Postman-media coverage of crime is increasingly a mixture of entertainment and sensationalism.

Question 6

Media as a cause of crime?

Answer 6

•Media has a negative effects on attitudes,values and behaviour-especially to WC
-1920’s Cinema was blamed for corrupting youth
-1950’s comics were held responsible
-1990’s ‘video nasties’ were argued as reason from crime

Question 7

How media causes crime?

Answer 7

•Imitation-Providing deviant role models resulting in ‘copy cat’ behaviour e.g. Derek brown a Jack the Ripper copy cat killer murdered two women before he was caught
•Arousal-people get excited watching action and crime dramas lead to violence
•Desensitisation-repeated of violent image which is seen as normal
•Transmission of knowledge-people learn skills on how to commit crime
•By glamorising crime

Question 8

Criticisms of Media?

Answer 8

•Downsett found that more ‘competitive’ the game the more aggressive the participant was the violence within the game did not have an effect
•French found that actually increase in video games meant a decrease in crimes in areas of crime