the media and crime

Question 1

WILLIAMS AND DICKINSON - newspapers

Answer 1

• british newspapers devote up to 30% of their news space to crime
• the media gives us a distorted view of crime, criminals and policing

Question 2

HAYWARD AND YOUNG - media saturated society

Answer 2

• late modern society is now media-saturated
• immersed in the ‘mediascape’
• blurring between image and reality of crime
• crime is packaged and marketed to young people as romantic, cool and fashionable

Question 3

COHEN AND YOUNG - construction of crime

Answer 3

• news is not discovered, but manufactured
• news is a social construction
• use of ‘news values’ e.g. dramatisation, immediacy, higher status and personalisation

Question 4

SCHLESINGER AND TUMBER - how the media creates a fear of crime

Answer 4

• exaggerations
• programmes such as crime watch
• tabloids make headlines more dramatic
• found that tabloid readers and heavy users of TV were more fearful of being a victim

Question 5

LEA AND YOUNG - relative deprivation

Answer 5

• media creates relative deprivation and social exclusion
• marginalized groups cannot afford advertised goods
• (MERTONS STRAIN THEORY)

Question 6

HALL (marxism) - labelling

Answer 6

• media can cause crime and deviance through labelling
• present the group in a negative light and exaggerate the problem
• exaggeration and distortion
• predictions
• symbolisation
• deviancy amplification spiral
• these moral panics distract attention from crisis of capitalism

Question 7

JEWKES - new crimes

Answer 7

• internet creates opportunities to commit both conventional crimes and ‘new crimes using new tools’
• e.g. GARY MCKINNON hacking into NASA

Question 8

WALL - four categories of cyber crime

Answer 8

1. cyber trespass - hacking
2. cyber deception/theft - identity stealing / file sharing
3. cyber pornography - children can access porn
4. cyber violence - harm, stalking, threatening

Question 9

MCROBBIE + THORNTON - criticisms of moral panics

Answer 9

• overreaction
• moral panics are routine now so have less impact
• late modern society has little consensus on what’s deviant behaviour
• now harder for the media to create moral panics