Media in Crime

Question 1

What are the four fictional archetypes?

Answer 1

• Criminals fit into four archetypes which are the master criminals, the incompetent and the psychopath and the planner

Question 2

What are some victim fictional archetypes?

Answer 2

• Helpless female
• Vigilante male
• Ethnic minority
• Innocent

Question 3

What are some police archetypes?

Answer 3

• Super intelligent
• The bumbling idiot
• Always captures the bad guy

Question 4

Is crime over represented in media according to Madel?

Answer 4

• Crime is overrepresented in fictional media which gives us a false sense of what criminal activity is like?

Question 5

What is the Law of Opposites?

Answer 5

• Surette argues that it shows the opposite of what is underrepresented in statistics

Question 6

How are criminals seen in factual crime?

Answer 6

• Often the under class, young, men and ethnic minority groups

Question 7

How are victims seen in factual crime?

Answer 7

• Selective Reporting
• Missing white woman syndrome (Coverage of pretty, young white women rather than others)

Question 8

How are police seen in factual crime?

Answer 8

• Corruption and brutality
• Racists
• Incompetent

Question 9

What did Kidd-Hewitt and Osborne argue about factual crime?

Answer 9

• Reporting is driven by spectacle and dramatization of cases which is engaging, fascinating and also repelled

Question 10

What does Neil Postman argue about factual crime?

Answer 10

• Media coverage is a mixture of entertainment and sensationalism which leads to infotainment. We want the coverage of crime to be entertaining

Question 11

What did Felson argue about factual crime?

Answer 11

• Dramatic Fallacy
• The drama and speculation surrounding the crimes is put on to get viewers
• The reporters speculate to create intrigue rather than mundane which leads to a false sense of crime

Question 12

How does news values affect the reporting of crime?

Answer 12

• Companies selectively choose which incidients to report which is decided by news values which decide whether it is newsworthy
  Some examples of news values are =
  1. Dramatazisation which is the action of excitement
  2. Simplification which is black and grey
  3. Unexpectedness
  4. Risk with victim centred stories about vulnerability
  5. Violence
• Greer and Reiner found that stories of sexual and violent crimes are able to capture our attention

Question 13

Does news value lead to underrepresentation?

Answer 13

• Underrepresentation of property crimes
• Overrepresentation of violence, drugs and sex crimes
• Exaggerates police success and the risk of being a victim

Question 14

What is hyperreality of crime?

Answer 14

• Baudrillard’s postmodern idea of hyperreality suggests media does not reflect reality but creates it as people only know crime through media

Question 15

What is the hypodermic syringe model and how does it cause crime?

Answer 15

• Suggests that audiences are passive and directly influenced by media messages
• Media injects information into the audience’s mind
• Audience’s do not question the media messages
• Everyone is exposed to the same media messages and respond similarly
  eg. James Bulger

Question 16

What are different factors why media causes crime?

Answer 16

1. Imitation = People will act out crimes they view via the media
2. Arousal = People engage in risky behaviour after seeing on media
3. Desensitisation = Watching violence means people do not acknowledge the shock or horrifying events therefore more likely to commit the act
4. School of crime = Shows them how to commit crime and less detectable
5. Deprivation = Media provides unobtainable ideas which they try to gain through crime
6. Glamorisation = Provide a glamorised view of the criminal lifestyle where people want to emulate

Question 17

How does the media commodify crime?

Answer 17

• Emphasis on consumption, excitement and immediacy
• Crime becomes commodified
• Fenwick and Hayward - Advertising uses crime to sell products which shows how crime is marketed a fashionable cultural symbol

Question 18

What is an evaluation of media as a cause of crime?

Answer 18

• Not everyone who consumes media commits crime
• It may cause sensitisation rather than desensitisation
• Ignores models that suggest active audiences

Question 19

What do Schlesinger and Tumbler argue about the fear of crime?

Answer 19

• Overrepresents certain types of crime
• Found a correlation between media consumption and fear of being a victim of crime
  eg. Black Muggings

Question 20

What does Stanley Cohen argue about the fear of crime?

Answer 20

• The media exaggerates the threat creating widespread fear. Media creates moral panics which causes the public to fear crime disproportionately
  eg. Black Muggings
• Islamic terrorism
• Knife crime

Question 21

What do Miller and Reilly argue about the fear of crime?

Answer 21

• Moral panics can be used as a form of ideological control, if you create a moral panic where people become fearful of becoming a victim to certain groups, it can control behaviour

Question 22

What does McRobbie and Thornton argue about moral panics?

Answer 22

• They are an outdated concept due to factors
  1. Frequency has increased therefore no longer noteworthy
  2. Context due to more viewpoints meaning less folk devils
  3. Reflexivity, some groups try to create their own moral panic for benefits
  4. Difficulty, there is less certainty about what is bad therefore they are harder to start
  5. Rebound, people are wary about starting one due to the rebound effect on them such as negativity