Media and crime

Question 1

Crime as consumer spectacle

Answer 1

• fictional and non-fictional crime and deviance are major themes in popular culture
• in fiction, comics, thrillers and films frequently feature acts of crime and violence, particularly theft and murder
• the news is full of crime and deviance, which have become an integral part of contemporary media infotainment eg in programmes like crimewatch and reality shows like police interceptors
• Hayward and Young (2012) - advertisers have turned images of crime and deviance into tools for selling products in the consumer markets, eg in gangsta rap and videogames like Grand Theft Auto combine images of criminality, street gang culture and designer chic to represent crime as a style and fashion choice
• crime is seen as romantic, exciting and cool
• some consumer items, like hoodies, have become symbols of deviance

Question 2

Agenda-setting definition

Answer 2

involves the power to manage which issues are to be presented for public discussion and debate and which issues to be kept in the background

Question 3

Agenda-setting

Answer 3

• many issues that people think about are based on the subjects reported in the media
• this influence of the media is known as agenda-setting
• the media provides knowledge and impressions about crime and deviance based on what it selects to report
• this means that peoples perceptions of crime are based on what the media presents

Question 4

News values definition

Answer 4

the values and assumptions held by editors and journalists which guide them in choosing what is ‘newsworthy’ - what to report and what to leave out, and how what they choose to report should be presented

Question 5

News values

Answer 5

• Greer and Reiner (2012) - in the news and media, stories of violent crimes are the most exciting so capture the popular imagination, and the media exploits possibilities for a ‘good story’ by dramatising, exaggerating, over-reporting and sensationalising some crimes out of proportion to generate audience interest
• Reiner (2007) - media coverage of crime and deviance is filtered through the values and assumptions of editors, journalists and media managers about what is ‘newsworthy’ - news values
• Jewkes (2011) - the news values which influence the reporting of crime and deviance include proximity, predictability, risk, celebrity, violence, children and more and guide what is reported and what is left out
• Greer (2005) - these news values explain why all mainstream media, both fact and fiction, tend to exaggerate the extent of violent crime and why nearly all deviance by celebrities receives mass coverage

Question 6

The backwards law: public perceptions and the distortion and exaggeration of crime

Answer 6

• surveys like the CSEW show that most people base their knowledge of crime and the CJS on how it is represented in the media
• Surette (2010) - there is a ‘backwards law’, with the media constructing images of crime and justice which are an opposite and backwards version of reality
• Greer (2003) - this backwards law is shown in the following ways: the overrepresentation and exaggeration of sex, drugs and violence; by portraying property crime as more serious and violent than it usually is; by over-exaggerating police effectiveness in clearing-up (solving and prosecuting) crimes’ by exaggerating the risk of white higher-status people, the elderly, women and children of becoming victims; by emphasising individual incidents of crime, rather than any patterns or causes of crime
• Left realists - the media reporting of crime disguises that both offenders and victims are usually WC
• marxists - the media conceals the significance of white-collar and corporate crime

Question 7

The hyperreality of crime

Answer 7

• the backwards law, combined with agenda-setting and news values, means that the media constructs a distorted view of crime and the CJS, exaggerates the risk of being a victim of crime and unnecessarily increase the public’s fear of crime
• this illustrates Baudrillard’s (2001) postmodernist idea of hyperreality, which suggests that the media does not reflect reality but it actively creates it, with most people’s only knowledge of crime being due to media-created images
• Flatley et al (2010) - although crime has been steadily falling in the UK 1995-2010, more than 2/3 of the population thought it was rising

Question 8

Folk devils definition

Answer 8

individuals or groups posing an imagine or exaggerated threat to society

Question 9

Becker (interactionist) - The media as moral entrepreneurs

Answer 9

• moral entrepreneurs can enforce and create rules which define deviance
• the media acts as moral entrepreneurs and establish themselves as self-appointed guardians of morality by labelling and stereotyping groups and activities as deviant
• through exaggerated and even untrue media stories, the media can demonise groups who do certain acts as folk devils and sensitise the public to supporting action against them
• the media does this through creating moral panics

Question 10

Deviancy amplification, folk devils and moral panics

Answer 10

• Hall et al (1978) in his black muggers study and Cohen (2002) in his mods and rockers study show that the media can create a moral panic about deviance, labelling deviants as folk devils
• they suggest that these moral panics tend to occur during periods of rapid social change or political or economic crisis, with deviants being blamed for social problems
• moral panics can sensitise the police, courts and other agencies of social control to the group or problem, leading to increased surveillance and police action (eg heavier policing, stiffer fines etc)
• this increased action may lead to deviancy amplification

Question 11

Deviancy amplification definition

Answer 11

the way the media may actually make worse or create the very deviance they condemn by their exaggerated, sensationalised and distorted reporting of events and their presence at them

Question 12

Example of deviancy amplification - Cohen’s folk devils and moral panics

Answer 12

• in the 1960s there was a moral panic over conflict between opposing youth groups - the mods and the rockers
• originally there was very little conflict (minor vandalism and a few scuffles)
• however, the moral panic over this led to increased arrests, more young people joining both groups and increased conflict and fighting

Question 13

Relevancy of moral panics: McRobbie and Thornton (1995) suggest that the concept of a moral panic

Answer 13

is no longer useful for understanding crime, and is outdated in the age of the new media, because the new media has changed the reporting of and reaction to events which may have once caused a moral panic

Pluralists and postmodernists argue that the diversity of media reports and interpretations make it more difficult for the media to define events and audiences are less likely to believe them, reducing moral panics

Question 14

Relevancy of moral panics: Hunt (2003) suggests

Answer 14

that the boundaries separating moral and immoral behaviour have become blurred, and late modernists like Beck (1992) argue that in ‘risk society’ there are now so many risks that the things and anxieties which used to become moral panics are now part of everyday life - Beck suggests that the concept of a moral panic is now too vague to explain a situation in which daily life is marked by crises and ‘crime consciousness’ is a part of normal daily life

Question 15

Relevancy of moral panics: Hall (2012)

Answer 15

• dismisses the concept of moral panics, suggesting that newspaper headlines reflect a real sense of exasperation felt by many, but these headlines do not produce moral panics
• argues that moral panics are not real, but some crimes are over sensationalised and this causes anxiety, but the media overstates the CJS’s ability to solve crimes and bring about justice
• he also argues that there are rational concerns about real crimes, and these concerns cannot be dismissed as simply due to ‘moral panics’

Question 16

Do the media cause crime?
Greer and Reiner (2012) point out the long history of what Pearce (1983) calls ‘respectable fears’ about the media causing crime and deviance, and identify several ways in which the media may do this, including

Answer 16

• labelling, moral entrepreneurship and deviancy amplification
• providing motives for crime by encouraging consumerist culture - relative deprivation and bulimic society (Young)
• knowledge and learning of criminal techniques eg whether Child’s Play film contributed to murder of Jamie Bulger
• new means of committing crimes through new media and technology
• the reduction of social controls over crime and whether people see these controls as effective, through stories mocking the police and suggesting that they are ineffective and through sympathetic representations of crime and criminals