Sociology-crime-media

Question 1

How prevalent is crime and deviance in the news?

Answer 1

Crime and deviance make up a large proportion of news coverage. Eg Ericson et al’s study of Toronto found that 45-71% of quality press and radio news was about various forms of deviance and its control, while Williams and Dickinson found British newspapers devote up to 30% of their news space to crime

Question 2

What is a problem with the media representation of crime?

Answer 2

While the news media shows a keen interest in crime, they give a distorted image of crime, criminals and policing. Eg as compared with the picture of crime we gain from official statistics: the media over-represent violent and sexual crime, the media portray criminals and victims as older and more middle class, media coverage exaggerates police success, the media exaggerate risk of victimisation, crime is reported as a series of separate events, media overplay extraordinary crimes

Question 3

How does the fact that the media over-represent violent and sexual crime lead to a distorted image of crime?

Answer 3

Ditton and Duffy found that 46% of media reports were about violent or sexual crimes, yet these made up only 3% of all crimes recorded by the police. One review by Marsh of studies of news reporting in America found that a violent crime was 36 times more likely to be reported than a property crime

Question 4

How does the fact that the media portray criminals and victims as older and more middle class lead to a distorted image of crime?

Answer 4

Media portray criminals and victims as older and more middle class than those typically found in the criminal justice system. Felson calls this the ‘age fallacy’

Question 5

How does the fact that media coverage exaggerates police success lead to a distorted image of crime?

Answer 5

Media exaggerates police success in clearing up cases. This is partly because the police are a major source of crime stories and want to present themselves in a good light, and partly because the media over-represents violence crime, which has a higher clear up rate than property crime

Question 6

How does the fact that the media exaggerate risk of victimisation lead to a distorted image of crime?

Answer 6

Exaggerated risk of victimisation, especially to women, white people and higher status individuals

Question 7

How does the fact that crime is reported as a series of separate events lead to a distorted image of crime?

Answer 7

Crime reported as series of separate events without structure and without examining underlying causes

Question 8

How does the fact that media overplay extraordinary crimes lead to a distorted image of crime?

Answer 8

Overplay extraordinary crimes and underplay ordinary crimes. Felson calls this the ‘dramatic fallacy’. Similarly, media images lead us to believe that to commit crime (and to solve it) one needs to be daring and clever (‘ingenuity fallacy’)

Question 9

What is some evidence of changes in the types of coverage of crime by the news media?

Answer 9

Schlesinger and Tumber found that in the 1960s the focus had been on murders and petty crime, but by 1990s murder and petty crime were of less interest to the media. Change came about partly because of abolition of death penalty for murder, and partly because rising crime rates meant crime had to be ‘special’ to attract coverage. By 1990s, reporting had also widened to included drugs, child abuse, terrorism, football hooliganism and mugging

Question 10

What is evidence of increasing preoccupation with sex crimes?

Answer 10

Soothill and Walby found that newspaper reporting of rape cases increased from under a quarter of all cases in 1951 to over a third in 1985. Also note that coverage consistently focuses on identifying a ‘sex fiend’ or ‘beast’, often by use of labels (such as ‘the balaclava rapist’). Resulting distorted picture of rape is one of serial attacks carried out by psychopathic strangers. While these do occur, they are the exception rather than the rule-in most cases the perpetrator is known to the victim

Question 11

What does the distorted picture of crime painted by the news media reflect?

Answer 11

The fact that news is a social construction. It does not simply exist ‘out there’ waiting to be gathered in and written up by the journalist. Rather, it is the outcome of a social process in which some potential stories are selected while others are rejected. As Cohen and Young note, news is not discovered but manufactured

Question 12

What is the central aspect of the manufacture of news?

Answer 12

The notion of ‘news values’. News values are the criteria by which journalists and editors decide whether a story is newsworthy enough to make it into the newspaper or news bulletin. If a crime story can be told in terms of some of these criteria, it has a better chance of making the news

Question 13

What are some of the key news values that influence the selection of crime stories?

Answer 13

Immediacy (‘breaking news’), dramatisation (action/excitement), personalisation (human interest stories about individuals), higher-status (persons and ‘celebrities’), simplification (eliminating shades of grey), novelty or unexpectedness (a new angle), risk (victim-centred stories about vulnerability and fear), violence (especially visible and spectacular acts)

Question 14

What is one main reason why news media give so much coverage to crime?

Answer 14

News focuses on the unusual and extraordinary, and this makes deviance newsworthy almost by definition, since it is abnormal behaviour

Question 15

Apart from news media, where else do mages of crime come from?

Answer 15

Fictional representations from TV, cinema and novels are also important sources of our knowledge of crime, because so much of their output is crime related. Eg Mandel estimates that from 1945 to 1984, over 10 billion crime thrillers were sold worldwide, while about 25% of prime time TV and 20% of films are crime shows or movies

Question 16

What does Surette argue about crime fiction?

Answer 16

Fictional representations of crime, criminals and victims follow what Surette calls ‘the law of opposites’: they are the opposite of the official statistics, and strikingly similar to news coverage

Question 17

What are examples of Surette’s ‘law of opposites’?

Answer 17

Property crime is under-represented, while violence, drugs and sex crimes are over-represented. While real life homicides mainly result from brawls and domestic disputes, fictional ones are the product of greed and calculation. Fictional sex crimes are committed by psychopathic strangers, not acquaintances and fictional villains tend to be higher status, middle-aged white males. Fictional cops usually get their man

Question 18

However, what are recent trends for fictional representations of crime?

Answer 18

The new genre of ‘reality’ infotainment shows tends to feature young, non-white ‘underclass’ offenders. Also there is an increasing tendency to show police as corrupt and brutal (and as less successful). Plus victims have come more central, with law enforcers portrayed as their avengers and audiences invited to identify with their suffering

Question 19

What has been a concern about the media?

Answer 19

Always been concern that the media have a negative effect on attitudes, values and behaviour-especially of those groups thought to be more susceptible to influence, such as the young, uneducated and lower classes. In 1920s and 30s, cinema was blamed for corrupting youth. In the 1950s horror comics were held responsible for moral decline. In the 1980s it was ‘video nasties’. Recently rap lyrics and computer games such as Grand Theft Auto have been criticised for encouraging violence and criminality

Question 20

What are the ways in which the media might cause crime and deviance?

Answer 20

Imitation-By providing deviant role models, resulting in ‘copycat’ behaviour. Arousal-E.g.through viewing violent or sexual imagery. Desensitisation-E.g.through repeated viewing of violence. Transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques. Target for crime-E.g.theft of TV’s. Stimulating desires for unaffordable goods-E.g.through advertising. Portraying police as incompetent. Glamourising offending

Question 21

What has happened as a result of fears about possible negative effects of the media on audiences?

Answer 21

thousands of studies have been conducted. Overall, however, most studies tend to find that exposure to media violence has at most a small and limited negative effect on audiences

Question 22

What does Schramm et al argue about media as a cause of crime?

Answer 22

In relation to the effects of TV viewing on children,“For some children, under some conditions, some television is harmful. For some children under the same conditions, it may be beneficial. For most children, under most conditions, most television is probably neither particularly harmful nor particularly beneficial.”

Question 23

What does Livingstone argue?

Answer 23

Despite such conclusions, people continue to be preoccupied with the effects of the media on children because of our desire as a society to regard childhood as a time of uncontaminated innocence in the private sphere

Question 24

How does media cause a fear of crime?

Answer 24

Media exaggerates the amount of violent/unusual crimes, and they exaggerate the risks of certain groups of people becoming victims, such as young women and young people. It is therefore concern that media may be distorting the public’s impression of crime and causing an unrealistic fear of crime

Question 25

What has research about media and fear of crime found?

Answer 25

Research evidence to some extent supports the view that there is a link between media use and fear of crime. Gerbner et al found that heavy uses of television (over four hours a day had higher levels of fear of crime. Schlesinger and Tumber found a correlation between media consumption and fear of crime, with tabloid readers and heavy users of TV expressing greater fear of becoming a victim, especially of physical attack and mugging

Question 26

Why does the existence of such correlations not prove that media viewing causes fear?

Answer 26

For example, it may be that those who are already afraid of going out at night watch more TV just because they stay in more

Question 27

What do Greer and Reiner note about media and crime?

Answer 27

Much ‘effects’ research on the media as a causes of crime or fear of crime ignores the meanings that viewers give to media violence. For example, they may give very different meanings to violence in cartoons, horror films and news bulletins. This criticism 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 and read

Question 28

What has lab based research focused on?

Answer 28

Whether media portrayals of crime and deviant lifestyles lead viewers to commit crime themselves

Question 29

What is the alternative approach to the lab based research focus?

Answer 29

To consider how far media portrayals of ‘normal’ rather than criminal lifestyles might also encourage people to commit crime. Eg 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 social groups

Question 30

What do Lea and Young argue?

Answer 30

“The mass media have disseminated a standardised image of lifestyle, particularly in the areas of popular culture and recreation, which, for those unemployed and surviving through the dole queue or only able to obtain employment at very low wages, has accentuated the sense of relative deprivation”

Question 31

How is the media even more relevant in today’s society?

Answer 31

In today’s society, where even the poorest groups have media access, the media present everyone with images of a materialistic ‘good life’ of leisure, fun and consumer goods as the norm to which they should conform. Result of this is to stimulate the sense of relative deprivation and social exclusion felt by marginalised groups who cannot afford these goods

Question 32

What does Merton argue about crime, media, and relative deprivation ?

Answer 32

Pressure to conform to the norm can cause deviant behaviour when the opportunity to achieve by legitimate means is blocked-in this instance, the media are instrumental in setting the norm and this in promoting crime

Question 33

What does relative deprivation explain?

Answer 33

How the media produce or cause crime. By showing people lifestyles they desire but cannot afford, the media create a sense of relative deprivation that causes people to resort to crime to get the commodities that they cannot obtain legitimately

Question 34

What view contrasts with relative deprivation?

Answer 34

Cultural criminology

Question 35

What does cultural criminology argue?

Answer 35

The media turn crime itself into the commodity that people-rather than simply producing crime in their audiences, the media encourage them to consume crime, in the form of images of crime

Question 36

How do cultural criminologists-such as Hayward and young-see late modern society?

Answer 36

See late modern society as a media-saturated society, where we are immersed in the ‘mediascape’-an ever-expanding tangle of fluid digital images, including images of crime. In this world there is a blurring between the image and the reality of crime so that the two are no longer clearly distinct or separable-the way the media represent crime and crime control now actually constitutes or creates the thing itself

Question 37

What are examples of Hayward and Young’s view?

Answer 37

Gang assaults are not just caught on camera, but staged for the camera and later packed together in ‘underground fight videos’. Similarly, police car cameras don’t just record police activity; they actually alter the way in which the police work, with US police forces for example using reality TV shows like ‘Cops’ as promo videos

Question 38

What is another feature of late modernity that can affect crime?

Answer 38

The emphasis on consumption, excitement and immediacy. In this context, crime and it’s thrills become commodified

Question 39

How do corporations and advertisers use crime?

Answer 39

Use media images of crime to sell products, especially in the youth market. For example, ‘gangster’ rap and hip hop combine images of street hustler criminality with images of consumerist success. Similarly, leading hip hop stars parade designer chic clothing, jewellery, champagne, luxury cars and so on. Crime and deviance thus become a style to be consumed

Question 40

What do Fenwick and Hayward argue about the commodification of crime and the media?

Answer 40

‘crime is packaged and marketed to young people as a romantic, exciting, cool, and fashionable cultural symbol’

Question 41

What do Hayward and Young argue about the commodification of crime and the media?

Answer 41

Fenwick and Hayward’s point is also true of mainstream products, eg Hayward and Young cite examples of car ads featuring street riots, joyriding, suicide bombing, graffiti and pyromania. Likewise the fashion industry and its advertisers trade on images of the forbidden ‘heroin chic’ and the retailer FCUK ‘brands’ transgression into it’s name. Designer clothing section 60 is named after the section of the Act giving police the power to stop and search

Question 42

How are counter cultures also packaged and sold?

Answer 42

Graffiti is the marker of the deviant urban cool, but corporations now use it in a ‘guerrilla marketing’ technique called ‘brandalism’ to sell everything from theme parks to cars and video games. Companies use moral panic, controversy and scandal to sell their products

Question 43

What has happened to designer labels as a result of crime?

Answer 43

The designer labels valued by young people as badges of identity now function as symbols of deviance. For example, some pubs and clubs now refuse entry to individuals wearing certain brands, while Bluewater shopping centre has banned the wearing of hoodies (though they can still be purchased there). In some towns, local bars and police compile lists of branded clothing that they see as problematic. Brands become tolls of classification for constructing profiles of potential criminals

Question 44

What is one further way in which the media may cause crime and deviance?

Answer 44

Through labelling. Moral entrepreneurs who disapprove of some particular behaviour (eg drug taking) may use the media to put pressure on the authorities to ‘do something’ about the alleged problem. If successful, their campaign will result in negative labelling of behaviour and perhaps change in law

Question 45

What is an example of how moral entrepreneurs decisions and labelling have successfully led to changes in law?

Answer 45

The introduction of the Marijuana Tax Act in the USA. By helping to label marijuana smoking, which previously had been legal, as criminal, the media helped to cause crime

Question 46

What is an important element in the process of labelling leading the media to cause crime?

Answer 46

The creation of a moral panic, which is an exaggerated over-reaction by society to a perceived problem, usually driven or inspired by the media, where the reaction enlarges the problem out of all proportion to its real seriousness

Question 47

What happens in a moral panic?

Answer 47

The media identify a group as a folk devil, or 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, bishops and other respectable people condemn the group and its behaviour

Question 48

What usually happens as the result of a moral panic?

Answer 48

A ‘crackdown’ on the group. However, this may create a self-fulfilling prophecy that amplifies the very problem that caused the panic in the first place. Eg in the case of drugs, setting up special drug squads led the police to discover more drug taking. As the crackdown identifies more deviants, there are calls for even tougher action, creating a deviance amplification spiral

Question 49

What is the most influential study of moral panics and the role of the media?

Answer 49

Cohen’s book, Folk Devils and Moral Panics. Cohen examines the media’s response to disturbances between two groups of largely working class teenagers, the mods and the rockers, at English seaside resorts from 1964 to 1966, and the way in which this created a moral panic

Question 50

Who were the mods and rockers?

Answer 50

Mods wore smart dress and rode scooters while rockers wore leather jackets and rode motorbikes, however in the early stages, distinctions were not so clear-cut and not many young people identified themselves as belonging to either group. The initial confrontations started on an Easter Weekend in 1964 in Clacton, with a few fights, stone throwing, some broken windows, and some wrecked beach huts

Question 51

What did Cohen note about the initial mods and rockers confrontation?

Answer 51

Although the disorder was relatively minor, the media over-reacted. In Cohen’s analysis, he uses the analogy of stocktaking of what happened. Cohen says this inventory contained three elements: exaggeration and distortion, prediction, and symbolisation

Question 52

What is exaggeration and distortion?

Answer 52

Media exaggerated the numbers involved and the extent of the violence and damage, and distorted the picture through dramatic reporting and sensational headlines such as ‘Day of Terror by Scooter Gangs’ and ‘Youngsters Beat Up Town-97 Leather Jacket Arrests’. Even non-events were news-towns ‘held their breath’ for invasions that didn’t materialise

Question 53

What is prediction?

Answer 53

The media regularly assumed and predicted further conflict and violence would result

Question 54

What is symbolisation?

Answer 54

The symbols of the mods and rockers (their clothes, bikes and scooters, hairstyles, music etc) were all negatively labelled and associated with deviance. The media’s use of these symbols allowed them to link unconnected events, eg bikers in different parts of the country who misbehaved could be seen as part of a more general underlying problem of disorderly youth

Question 55

How does Cohen argue the media’s portrayal of events produced a deviance amplification spiral?

Answer 55

Made it seem as if the problem was spreading and getting out of hand. This led to calls for increased control response from police and courts. Produced further marginalisation and stigmatisation of mods and rockers as deviants, and less and less tolerance of them, and so on in an upward spiral

Question 56

How did the media further amplify the deviance in the Mods and Rockers situation?

Answer 56

By defining the two groups and their subcultural styles. This led to more youths adopting these styles and drew in more participants for future clashes. By emphasising their supposed differences, the media crystallised two distinct identities and transformed loose-knit groupings into two tight-knit gangs. This encouraged polarisation and helped to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of escalating conflict as youths acted out the roles the media had assigned to them

Question 57

What does Cohen note about media definitions of situations?

Answer 57

Media definitions of the situation are crucial in creating a moral panic, because in large-scale modern societies, most people have no direct experience of the events themselves and so have to rely on the media for information about them. In the case of the mods and rockers, this allowed the media to portray them as folk devils (major threats to public order and social values)

Question 58

How does Cohen put the moral panic about the mods and rockers into the wider context of change in post-war British society?

Answer 58

This was a period in which the newfound affluence, consumerism and hedonism of the young appeared to challenged the values of an older generation who had lived through the hardships of the 1930s and 1940s

Question 59

According to Cohen, when do moral panics occur?

Answer 59

At times of social change, reflecting the anxieties many people feel when accepted values seem to be undermined. He argues that the moral panic in post-war British society was a result of a boundary crisis, where there was uncertainty about where the boundary lay between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in a time of change. The folk devil created by the media symbolises and gives a focus to popular anxieties about social disorder

Question 60

What do functionalists believe about moral panics?

Answer 60

From a functionalist perspective, they can be seen as ways of responding to the sense of anomie or normlessness created by change. By dramatising the threat to society in the form of a folk devil, the media raises the collective consciousness and reasserts social controls when central values are threatened

Question 61

What is an example of another sociologist that has used the concept of moral panics?

Answer 61

Hall et al adopt a neo-marxist approach that locates the role of moral panics in the context of capitalism. They argue the moral panic over ‘mugging’ in the British media in the 1970s served to distract attention from the crisis of capitalism, divide the working class on racial grounds and legitimate a more authoritarian style of rule

Question 62

In addition to mods and rockers, and muggings, what are other examples of folk devils and moral panics that have been identified in recent years?

Answer 62

Dangerous dogs, New Age travellers, bogus asylum seekers, child sexual abuse, Aids, binge drinking, ‘mad cow; disease and single parents

Question 63

What are the criticisms of the idea of moral panics?

Answer 63

Assumes societal reaction is a disproportionate over-reaction, bit who is to decide what is a proportionate reaction, and what is a panicky one? This relates to the left realist view that people’s fear of crime is in fact rational. Also what turns the ‘amplifier’ on and off: why are the media able to amplify some problems into a panic, but not others? Why do panics not go on increasing indefinitely once they have started?

Question 64

How does late modernity criticise the idea of moral panics?

Answer 64

Do today’s media audiences, who are accustomed to ‘shock, horror’ stories, really react with panic to media exaggerations? McRobbie and Thornton argue moral panics are now routine and have less impact. Also, in late modern society, there is little consensus abut what is deviant. Lifestyle choices that were condemned forty years ago, such as single motherhood, are no longer universally regarded as deviant and so it is harder for the media to create panics about them

Question 65

How does the arrival of new types of media often lead to a moral panic?

Answer 65

Eg horror comics, cinema, television, videos and computer games have all been accused of undermining public morality and corrupting the young. The same is true of the internet

Question 66

How has the internet led to a moral panic?

Answer 66

Due to the speed with which it has developed and its scale: over half the world’s population are now online. The arrival of the internet has led to fear of cyber-crimes

Question 67

How do Thomas and Loader define cyber crime?

Answer 67

Computer-mediated activities that are either illegal or considered illicit by some, and that are conducted through global electronic networks

Question 68

What does Jewkes note about cyber-crime?

Answer 68

The internet creates opportunities to commit both ‘conventional crimes’, such as fraud, and ‘new crimes using new tools’, such as software piracy

Question 69

What does Wall identify?

Answer 69

Four categories of cyber crime: cyber trespass, cyber deception and theft, cyber violence, and cyber-pornography

Question 70

What is cyber-trespass?

Answer 70

Crossing boundaries into others’ cuber property. It includes hacking and sabotage, such as spreading viruses

Question 71

What is cyber-deception and theft?

Answer 71

Including identity theft, phishing, and violation of intellectual property rights

Question 72

What is cyber-violence?

Answer 72

Doing psychological harm or inciting physical harm. Cyber-violence includes cyber stalking and hate crimes against minority groups, as well as bullying by text

Question 73

Why is policing cyber crime hard?

Answer 73

Due to sheer scale of the Internet and limited resources of police. Also because of its globalised nature (global cyber-crime), which poses problems of jurisdiction. Police culture also gives cyber-crime low priority because it is seen as lacking the excitement of more conventional policing

Question 74

However, how has internet and technology been able to help policing?

Answer 74

New ICT also provides police and state with greater opportunities for surveillance and control of the population. Jewkes argues ICT permits routine surveillance through use of CCTV cameras, electronic databases, digital fingerprinting and ‘smart’ identity cards, as well as the installation of listening devices called ‘carnivores’ at internet service providers to monitor email traffic