Media as a Cause for Crime

• How the Media Causes Crime & Deviance:

  Imitation, arousal, desensitisation, transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques, a target for crimes, stimulating desires for unaffordable goods, portraying the police as incompetent, and glamourising offending.
• Media Exposure of Crime, & Its Impact on Children

  There is fear of the possible negative consequences of media- though most studies have only found a small and limited negative effect on audiences. Schramm et al claims that under some conditions, for some children it can have a negative effect, but under those same conditions, the exposure doesn't harm them.
• Media Exposure of Crime, & Its Impact on Children (AO3)

  Livingstone: argues that despite such conclusions, people continue to be preoccupied with the effect of media on children, due to our desire as a society to regard childhood as a time of uncontaminated innocence in the private sphere.
• Fear of Crime:

  Media exaggerate the amount of violent/unusual crime, and the risks of certain groups becoming victims (such as women and elderly). Media distortions may then cause an unrealistic fear of crime. Gerbner et al found that heavy TV users had higher levels of fear (positive correlation). Schlesinger and Tumber found a correlation between media consumption with tabloid readers and heavy TV users expressing a greater fear of becoming victims, especially of physical attack and 'mugging'.
• Fear of Crime: (AO3)

  Correlations don't prove that media viewing causes fear, e.g. it may be those afraid of going out watch more TV as they stay in frequently. Greer and Reiner: note research ignores the meanings that viewers give to media violence. They may have different views towards cartoons, horror films, and newspapers. Interpretivist view- to understand the possible effects of media, we must look at the meanings people give to what they see.
• The Media, Relative Deprivation, & Crime: (1)


  Looking at the ways in which portrayals of 'normal' lifestyles may encourage people to commit. E.g. Left Realists argue that mass media helps to increase a sense of relative deprivation among poor and marginalised groups. Lea and Young: mass media spreads a standardised image of lifestyle, particularly in areas of popular culture and recreation, for those unemployed, it has increased their sense of relative deprivation.
• The Media, Relative Deprivation, & Crime: (2)

  In today's society, poorest groups have access to media, presenting everyone with images of a materialistic life of leisure and consumer goods- making it a norm to which they should conform. Stimulating exclusion. Merton argues pressure to conform, with blocked opportunities, causes deviance. The media are instrumental in setting the norm and promoting crime.
• Cultural Criminology, the Media, & Crime:


  Argues media turn crime into a commodity people desire, rather than producing crime in their audience, they encourage those to consume crime (through images of crime). Hayward and Young: see late modern society as a media-saturated society where we are immersed in the 'mediascape'- tangle of fluid digital images causing a blurring between image and reality of crime, the two aren't separable. The way media represent crime, actually creates crime itself.
• Cultural Criminology, the Media, & Crime: Example


  E.g. gang assaults aren't just caught on camera, they are now staged and later packaged together as 'underground fight videos'. Similarly, police car cameras don't just record police activity, they alter the way in which the police work, with US police forces using reality TV like 'Cops' as promotion.
• Cultural Criminology, the Media, & Crime: Media & Commodification of Crime (1)

  Feature of late modernity is emphasis on consumption, excitement and immediacy. Hayward and Young: argue crimes thrills are commodified as corporations or advertisers use images of crimes to sell products, especially in youth markets (E.g. HipHop artists combine images of street criminality with images of consumerist success like designer clothing/cars).
• Cultural Criminology, the Media, & Crime: Media & Commodification of Crime (2)

  The thrills of crime have been commodified within mainstream products. Car ads featuring street riots; and fashion industry's advertisement on images of the forbidden ('heroin chic', Opium, Poison, Obsession). Fenwick and Hayward: crime is packaged and marketed to young people as romantic, exciting, cool, and a fashionable cultural symbol.
• Cultural Criminology, the Media, & Crime: Media & Commodification of Crime (3)

  Countercultures are packaged and sold; graffiti is a marker of deviant urban cool, but corporations now use it as unauthorised strategies called 'brandalism' to sell, from theme parks to cars. Using moral panics, controversy and scandal to market products. Brands that young people wear are now seen as symbols of deviance- brands have become tools of classification for constructing profiles of potential criminals.