Media

• The Backwards Law-


  Age Fallacy- all age groups are involved in crime

  Class Fallacy- suggests M/C are most likely to be victims

  Ingenuity Fallacy- portray offenders as clever but most crime is opportunistic

  Police Fallacy- overexaggerate the effectiveness of police

  Dramatic Fallacy- overexaggerating the risk of becoming a victim
• Evaluation of the Backwards Law-


  Flatley - respondents to the CSEW report the feeling of crime rising, when it has in fact been going down
• Agenda Setting


  The media cant report everything so they choose what to report
• Green and Reiner-


  'news value' filters the media coverage of crime
• How does the media portray crime?

  Interactionists- media rarely represents crime objectively, the news is socially constructed

  Ditton and Duffy- found 46% of media reports were about violent or sexual crimes, despite them only accounting for 3% of crime

  Soothill and Duffy- found newspaper of reporting rape cases increased from under a quarter in 1951 to over one third in 1998
• Hyperreality-


  Backwards law and agenda combined leads to a disorted view. For people who rely on media as their sole source of info it creates a hyperreality for them.

  Felson - suggests that such fallacies in the media are reinforced by books, TV and film
• The media as a cause of crime-


  Secondary socialisation- people often imitate what they see/hear in the media

  Exposure to violence- persuades children that violence is a legitimate way to solve their problems

  Desentising- Newson- argues that exposure to violence desentises the audience

  Glamourizing crime

  Transmitting knowledge- people learn criminal techniques from the media
• Moral Panics and Folk Devils (Cohen)-


  -Based on the false exaggerated idea that some groups (folk devils) behaviour is deviant leading to a moral panic
• A02-


  Buckingham- children are able to differentiate between media and real life

  Jewkes- new types of media has led to new types of crime