Media and crime Flashcards
Over representations of violent and sexual crime
DITTON & DUFFY: 46% of medua resports were in these crimes - makes up only 3% of crimes recorded by the police.
AO2 - #MeToo movement covered many cases of sexual assault over a long period of time, over which many other types of crimes happen more frequently but didn’t make the news
AO3 - sexual and violent crimes could be considered some of the worst crimes to be victims of, perhaps they deserve more focus?
Over - represent criminals & victims as older & middle class
Most crime is actually committed by working-class people ages 15-20
FELSON - the ‘age fallacy’
e.g. Grenfell tower had huge coverage when victims were working class
Exaggerate police success
Police are a major source for crime stories. They want themselves to be presented in a good light.
AO2 - The media over-represents violent crime - which is far more likely to be solved than property crime, which hardly ever makes the news.
AO3 - coverage where the police have made mistakes: e.g. george floyd
Exaggerate risk of becoming a victim
Women, white people and higher-status people are shown to be more at risk, when actually young BME males are often more at risk of many crimes
AO2 - during the #MeToo movement, white high-status women were at the centre of media coverage
AO3 - is it the readers fault for making the connection between reporting of crime and becoming a victim, rather than the media’s?
Crime is reported as a series of separate events
Underlying structures and causes of crime are never explained or examined
AO2 - in any rape cases, the perpetrator is dehumanised before any context is considered. Many sexual crimes are committed by people who themselves have seen victims in the past
AO3 - is the media’s job to explain structures and causes?
Extraordinary crimes are overplayed
The media makes crime seem daring and clever
felson : calls this the ‘dramatic fallacy’
AO3- sexual crime isn’t considered brave or clever
News values
Immediacy
Dramatisation
Personalisation
Higher-status
Simplification
Novelty and unexpectedness
Risk
Violence
Media as a CAUSE of crime
- materialism - presented images of ‘perfect life’ = material deprivation
- Desensitisation - Media expresses people to commit violent crimes regularly. exposure to games
- Imitation - ‘copycat crimes’
- Arousal - Violent and sexual imagery in the media may stimulate potential criminals
- Knowledge - learning criminal techniques
Create a fear of crime
GERBNER ET AL - heavy users of television had higher levels of fear of crime
GREER & REINER - much ‘effects’ research on the media as a cause of crime or fear or crime ignores the meanings that viewers give to media violence.
This 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 or read
Media and relative deprivation
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 groups
media present everyone with images of a materialistic ideal life of leisure, fun and consumer goods as the norm to which they would conform
Cultural criminology
media turn crime itself into the commodities that people desire.
Rather than simply producing crime in their audiences, the media encourage them to consume crime, the the form of images of crime.
HAYWARD & YOUNG: late modern society = media-saturated, where we are immersed in the ‘mediascape’ - blurring between the image and reality of crime, so that the two are no longer clearly distinct or separable
Moral panics
An exaggerated over-reaction by society to a perceived problem, which is usually driven and/or inspired by the media. The reaction to this enlarges the problem out of proportion to its real seriousness.
Stages in a moral panic:
- The media identify a folk devil or a threat to societal values
- The media present the group in a negative, stereotypical fashion and exaggerate the scale of the problem
- Moral entrepreneurs, editors, politicians, police chiefs and other ‘respectable’ people condemn the group and its behaviour
Mods and Rockers
COHEN:
disturbances between two groups of working class teenagers in the 1960s’
- Mods wore smart dresses and rode scooters.
- Rockers wore leather jackets and rode motorbikes.
The groups created disorder by smashing windows and throwing stones
Although the disorder was relatively minor, the media over reacted
Deviancy amplification spiral
COHEN:
media’s portrayal of events made the problem seem like it was spreading and getting out of hand.
= increased marginalisation and stigmatisation of the ‘folk devils’.
The media definitions of situations are crucial in creating a moral panic. This is because people rely on the media for information about ‘folk devils’ because they rarely have experience of them themselves.
Cyber crime
WALL 4 categories of cyber-crime:
- Cyber-trespass - crossing boundaries into others’ cyber-property. Including hacking and sabotage
- Cyber deception and theft - including identity theft, phishing and violation of intellectual property rights.
- Cyber-pornography - including porn involving minors and opportunities for children to access pron on the internet.
- Cyber-violence - includes cyber-stalking and hate crimes against minority groups as well as bullying by text.
