The Media and Crime Flashcards
What is agenda setting?
The influence that the media has on impressions and knowledge about crime and deviance
Who found that British newspapers devote up to 30% of news space to crime but give a distorted image of crime?(2)
Williams and Dickinson
According to Williamson and Dickinson, what % of news space is devoted to crime?
30%
Who talked about the backwards law?(1)
Surette
What is the backwards law?
The media’s construction of crime and justice are opposite to the reality shown through official statistics
In what 7 ways can the backwards law be seen?
- Media overrepresents violent and sexual crime
- Media portrays victims as older and middle class
- Media coverage exaggerates police success
- Media exaggerates the risk of victimisation
- Crime is reported as a series of separate events
- Media overplays extraordinary crimes and underplays ordinary ones
- Media portray youth as those committing crimes
What % of newspaper reports are based on violence by children ?
40%
Give an example of media portraying youth as those committing crimes
40% of newspaper reports are based on violence by children
What did Ditton and Duffy say about media overrepresenting violent and sexual crime?
46% of media reports are about violent or sexual crimes but these account for only 3% of all crime reported to police
What % of media reports are about violent and sexual crime?
46%
Violent and sexual crimes account for what % of all crimes reported?
3%
Who found that 46% of media reports are about violent or sexual crimes but these account for only 3% of all crime reported to police?(2)
Ditton and Duffy
What does Felson call the media’s portrayal of victims as older and middle class?
Age fallacy
Who talks about age fallacy?(1)
Felson
What is age fallacy?
the media’s portrayal of victims as older and middle class
Why does media coverage exaggerate police success?
- The police are a major source of crime stories
- The media’s focus on violent crimes which have a higher clear up rate than property crime
What is dramatic fallacy? Who talks about it?
Media overplays extraordinary crimes and underplay ordinary crimes
Felson
What % of crime is committed by adults?
90%
Why is it not true that crime is mostly committed by children?
90% of crime is committed by adults
Who talked talked about changes in crime focus over time? (2)
Schlesinger and Tumber
According to Schlesinger and Tumber, how did crime focus change over time?
1960s - murder and petty crime was of less interest than during the 1900s due to the end of the death penalty
1990s - reported had widened to include drugs, child abuse, terrorism, football hooliganism and mugging. There was an increasing focus on sex crime
What did Soothill and Walby say about newspaper reporting on rape cases?
It rose from less than 1/4 in 1951 to over 1/3 in 1985
What did coverage on rape cases focus on? What did this result in?
Sex fiend or beast resulting in a distorted picture of rapists as serial psychopathic strangers
Who talked about newspaper coverage on rape cases? (2)
Soothill and Walby
The media’s portrayal of crime reflects what?
The fact that news is a social construction
What do Cohen and Young say about the media’s portrayal of crime being a social construction?
News is not discovered but manufactured
Who said that news is not discovered but manufactured?2
Cohen and Young
How does Flatley et al show that media’s coverage of crime has very little in connection with the real world?
Although all crime in England and Wales had been falling or steady between 1995-2010, between 3/4 and 2/3 of the population wrongly thought it was rising
Who found that although crime rates were falling, many thought they were rising?
Flatley et al
Who talked about news values?
Jewkes
What are news values?
Criteria by which journalists and editors decide whether a story is newsworthy
Give examples of news values?
Immediacy, dramatization, personalisation, high status, novelty or unexpectedness, risk, violence, sex, celebrity or high status individuals, children
Who talks about the number of crime thrillers sold?
Mandel
According to Mandel, how many crime thrillers were sold between 1945-1984?
10 billion
What % of prime time TV is crime related?
25%
What % of films are crime related?
20%
What does Surtte say about fictional representations of crime?
they follow ‘the law of opposites’ or backwards law - they are opposite to official statistics and very similar to news coverage
3 new trends in fictional representations of crime?
- new genre of ‘reality infotainment shows’ non-white underclass offenders
- increased tendency to show people as corrupt, brutal and less successful
- victims have become more central, with audiences invited to identify with their suffering, with law enforcers portrayed as the avengers
How has teh media been seen as a cause of crime overtime?
1920s - cinema was blamed for corrupting youth
1950s - horror comics were blamed for moral decline
1980s - ‘video nasties’ were blamed for moral decline
6 ways in which the media may cause crime and deviance
Imitation (deviant role models), arousal (through viewing violent or sexual imagery), desensitisation (through repeated viewing of violence), glamorising offending, stimulating desire for unaffordable goods through advertising, portraying the police as incompetent
What studies have found that media exposure to violence and crime only has a small limited negative impact?
Schramm - 1961 - in relation to the impact of watching TV ‘most television is neither particularly harmful nor particularly beneficial’
Livingston 1996 - people are preoccupied with the effects of media on children as they see childhood as a time of innocence
What reason did Livingston give for people’s concern with the effects of media on children?
people are preoccupied with the effects of media on children as they see childhood as a time of innocence
What studies have found that there could be a link between exposure to media violence and crime?
Newson - 1994 - violent videos could lead to violent actions
Anderson et al - 2003 - research showed indisputable evidence that media violence increased the likelihood of aggressive and violent behaviour
What does Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality suggest about the media and crime?
the media does not reflect reality but actively create it
According to Gerber, who has a higher fear of crime?
Heavy users of TV
According to Schlinger and Tumber, who has a higher fear of crime?
Tabloid and heavy TV users
What to interpretivists say about fear of crime?
If we want to understand the effects of the media we must look at the meanings that people give to what they see and read. People may give very different meanings to violence in cartoons, horror films and news bulletins
Which cities are most scared of crime?
Leicester, Preston and Liverpool
What cities are least scared of crime?
Brighton, Cambridge, Oxford
Who discusses how mass media creates a sense of relative deprivation which encourages people to commit crime?
Lea and Young / Merton
What do Lea and Young say about mass media?
It increases a sense of relative deprivation among poor and marginalised groups. The media portrays the ‘good life’ of leisure, fun and consumer goods as the norm
What does Merton say about relative deprivation and pressure to conform?
Pressure to conform to the norm can cause deviant behaviour when legitimate opportunities are blocked - the media is instrumental in setting the norm and promoting crime
How can the media turn crime into a commodity?
- Rather than simply producing crime for their audiences, the media encourages them to consume it in a form of crime images
- Hayward and Young - late modern society is a media saturated ‘mediascape’ of fluid digital images including those of crime e.g gang assaults are not just caught on camera but staged for the camera and later packaged as underground fight videos
- Police camera don’t just record police activity; they alter how police work e.g US police use reality TV
- Hayward and Young - corporations and advertisers use media images of crime to sell products especially to the youth market
- Fenwick and Haywood - ‘crime is packaged and marketed to young people as romantic, exciting, cool and fashionable cultural symbol’
- Fashion industry trades on images of the forbidden e.g opium, poison, obsession, heroin chic, sadomasochism, violence against women
- Designer labels valued as a badge of identity now function as a symbol of deviance and brands have become tools of classification for constructing profiles of potential criminals
Who calls late modern society as media saturated ‘mediascape’?
Hayward and Young
Give an example of the media putting pressure on authorities to bring about change and the negative labelling of behaviours?
Marijuana Tax Act in the USA
What is an important part of the process of putting pressure on authorities to negatively label behaviours and change the law?
Creation of a moral panic
What is a moral panic?
It is the exaggerated overreaction by society to a perceived problem
What do moral panics often lead to?
Crackdowns (but these can be self-fulfilling prophecies)
Who did a study of ‘folk devils and moral panics’?
Cohen
Which group did Cohen’s study of folk devils and moral panics focus on?
Mods and rockers in the 1960s
What 3 elements of the inventory or stock taking of moral panics does Cohen focus on?
Exaggeration and distortion, prediction and symbolisation
Who talks about the deviancy amplification spiral?
Cohen
What are the stages of a deviancy amplification spiral?
1.a small group of people commit some act of deviance
2. the media’s news values pick up on an interesting story of a problem group identified
3. the media produce headlines, stories and photographs to interest readers and viewers
4. to maintain reader’s interest, original deviance is amplified through exaggeration and sensationalised reporting, causes of the original deviance are simplified for easy explanation
5. the group is labelled as folk devils and stereotyping occurs. More deviance occurs as people become aware of it
According to Cohen, how are media definitions crucial in creating moral panics?
In large scale societies, most people don’t have a direct experience of the events themselves. They therefore rely on the media for information
What does Cohen say about the wider context of moral panics?
They occur at times of social change when accepted values seem to be undermined
- Moral panics were the result of a ‘boundary crisis’ where there is uncertainty about where the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour lies. By dramatizing the threat to society as a form of a folk devil, the media raises the collective consciousness and reasserts social controls when central values are threatened
- The panic surrounding mods and rockers was in post-war Britain where newfound affluence, consumerism and hedonism of the young challenged the values of the older generation who had lived through the hardships of the 1930s and 1940s
What did Cohen say about the wider context of the mods and rockers moral panic?
The panic surrounding mods and rockers was in post-war Britain where newfound affluence, consumerism and hedonism of the young challenged the values of the older generation who had lived through the hardships of the 1930s and 1940s
Who takes a neo-marxist approach to moral panics?
Hall
What does Hall say about moral panics?
He sees moral panics within the context of capitalism e.g moral panic of mugging in the 1970s served to distract attention from the crisis of capitalism, divide the working class and legitimise a more authoritarian style of rule
5 criticisms of moral panics?
- It assumes that societal reaction is disproportionate - who decides if it is? - this relates to the LR view that people’s fear of crime is rational especially for disadvantaged communities (Hall)
- What turns the amplifier on or off? Why are some problems amplified and not others? Why don’t panics continue indefinitely?
- Late modernity - McRobbie and Thornton argue that moral panics are now routine and therefore have less impact. 24/7 news reporting through different forms of media means that people are more sceptical
- Hall dismisses the whole concept of moral panics. He argues that the media do sensationalise specific crimes and this does cause concern amongst the public but the media also overstate the CJS’ ability to solve these crimes and bring criminals to justice. Therefore, public concern is generated only to be soothed by the media in a way that increases the public’s faith in the existing political and administrative system which creates complacency, the opposite to panic
- There is now less consensus about what is deviant vs 40 years ago e.g single motherhood no longer seen as deviant by most and therefore, todaay it si harder for the media to create panics
Who argues that moral panics have less impact as they have become routine?
McRobbie and Thornton
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