Week Twenty Four - Media as Criminogenic? and the rest Flashcards
Criminogenic…
Producing or tending to produce crime/criminality
Two competing perspectives…
Media models of crime as direct causes of crime/crime triggers
Media crime models as crime forming catalysts or rudders
Surette, 2012
“The media remains best perceived as a rudder for crime more than as a trigger” (Surette, 2012)
General…
Federal Communications Commission (1951) – burglary found to increase in the 34 cities into which TV had been introduced relative to the 34 where it hadn’t.
The increase (5%) came in the other cities in 1955, when TV was introduced
Several explanations possible (see Newburn, 2013: 94)
TV watching leads to increase in crime
TV increases materialism and acquisitiveness
Broader change in culture (TV a part) involved increased awareness of crime and willingness to report it
Police became more crime conscious
Another, unaccounted for, factor responsible.
Fear of Crime…
Heavy viewing of TV closely associated with devt of higher levels of fear of crime, also tabloid papers (Schlesinger and Tumber, 1992)
But cause and effect cannot be assumed.
The existence of media effects is not really contested any more.
But we are not sure how these effects really work.
We are not able to predict how individuals will be effected by media consumption.
Language of crime reporting…
Brown, (2003) – the reporting of criminal events distinguishes law abiding citizens from criminals
For example, “cold blooded murderer”; “sick”; crime as a “plague” or “epidemic”
Response: the ‘war’ on drugs, ‘attack’ on civil society.
Criminals as ‘others’ – evil, provoked, mentally unstable – not part of ‘normal society’
Moral panics…
Thompson’s five key elements (1998)
“…involve heightened concern about some behaviour or group, and that this also involves, or results in, increased hostility toward the group concerned” (Newburn, 2013: 97)
Classic moral panic: Mods and rockers (1960s)
Exaggeration and distortion
Prediction
Symbolisation
Drug use and deviancy amplification – West London, 1960s
Action taken by the police increased both the organisation and cohesion of drug takers (Young, 1973, cited by Newburn, 2013:99)
Moral panic: mugging…
Stuart Hall, Policing the Crisis (1978)
News as the end product of a complex process
Reproduction of elite interests, not a conspiracy
Primary and secondary definers of social events
Primary definers – opinion givers
Secondary definers – media professionals as translators into headlines, highlighting and editing.
Representation of Policing…
Policing in Great Britain has always been as much a matter of image as substance” (Reiner, 1994, in Newburn, 2013)
Legitimacy of the police – peaked in 1955-60 Social order vs. crime control Dixon of Dock Green Z-Cars The Sweeney The Bill Crimewatch UK Cops
Media and the Police…
Police urge TV stations to scale back live coverage of any London terrorist siege
Police called meeting with broadcasters following Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris
Planners of the Mumbai attack, based in Pakistan, watched live TV coverage of the crisis andgave instructions via mobile phones to the terrorists who were holding hostages. Indian intelligence intercepted those calls and recorded them.
Scotland Yard: “We have regular dialogue with news organisations and broadcasters about policing matters. These can cover a wide range of issues, including the security of police operations where a risk to life is involved.
“Images giving the bad guys prior warning can impact on the fate of the hostages inside, and get hostages or officers killed.”
“You can ask broadcasters to use discretion, you can’t do the same with social media.”
Representing Terror…
Thatcher’s broadcasting ban on Sinn Fein to “starve the terrorists and hijackers of the oxygen of publicity”
9/11 – World Trade Centre – political communication on the global stage
Role of media transformed in the ‘new wars’
Rolling news of Iraq – independent media?
Insurgent groups taking hostages and filming
Ban on coverage of US soldiers returning dead
Trying to win the image war.
