media and crime

• media representations of crime

  Fictional media

  • Criminals: supervillain, stupid, psychopaths, rational/planner
  • victims: female - helpless, male - vigilante, ethnic majority
  • police: super-intelligent, bumbling idiots, always succeed
• media representations of crime

  Factual media

  • criminals: under class, ethnic minorities, young, men
  • victims: missing white woman syndrome, selective reporting
  • police: corrupt, brutality, racists, incompetent
• news values

  • the immediacy of the story
  • dramatisation
  • personalisation
  • higher status of the focus of the story
  • simplification
  • novelty / unexpectedness
  • risk
  • violence
• media distortion of crime

  • KIDD-HEWITT and OSBORNE
  • POSTMAN
  • SURETTE
• media distortion of crime

  KIDD-HEWITT AND OSBORNE

  • media reporting of crime as increasingly driven by the need for a spectacle - dramatisation
  • spectacles are engaging because audiences become both repelled by the activities but fascinated at the same time
• media distortion of crime

  POSTMAN

  • media coverage of crime is increasingly a mixture of entertainment and sensationalism
  • leading to 'infotainment'
• media distortion of crime

  SURETTE

  • law of opposites - media shows the direct opposite of official statistics
  • media focuses on murders and violent crimes when most crimes are property based crimes
  • media shows victims to be more likely to be female - statistics show young men are more likely to be victim
• perspectives on media influence and crime

  FUNCTIONALISM / PLURALISM

  • reporting crime - media helps to keep social solidarity
  • crimes reported tend to reflect the things people are most concerned about and most want to see reported - create demand which is met by the media
  • different forms of media report different crimes in different ways - not all dominated by a single ideology or small group of owners pushing same agenda
• perspectives on media influence and crime

  MARXISM

  • reporting of crime reflects the ideology of the ruling class
  • crimes of the ruling class - under-reported
  • media's emphasis on sexual and violent crimes means less importance is attached to large and serious white-collar crimes and corporate crime
  • crimes of working class - over-reported
  • reporting of crime is used as a way of maintaining control over powerless groups
• perspectives on media influence and crime

  FEMINISM

  • crime reporting reinforces the stereotyping and oppression of women
  • women = victims
  • under-reporting of violence against women - domestic violence
  • highly critical of reporting of sex crimes against women as a way to provide entertainment
• perspectives on media influence and crime

  interpretivism

  • media is a social construction as is crime
  • look at the labels attached to people who are determined to be deviant and see the media as a moral entrepreneur which determines who are deviant and who are not
• perspectives on media influence and crime

  POSTMODERNISM

  BAUDRILLARD - media creates reality - people have no understanding of crime only the representations of crime they experience through the mass media
• media as a cause of crime:

  • THE HYPODERMIC SYRINGE MODEL =
  • that media audiences are passive recipients of the messages from the media without critical thought - messages are acted upon mindlessly by audiences

  1. imitation
  2. school of crime
  3. arousal
  4. desensitisation
  5. deprivation
  6. glamorisation
• media as a cause of crime: THE HYPODERMIC SYRINGE MODEL =

  Imitation

  • the idea people will act out the crimes and the violence that they view via the media
  • college student who acted out scenes from GTA
• media as a cause of crime: THE HYPODERMIC SYRINGE MODEL =

  School of crime

  • watching crime shows and news can help criminals to hone their skills and learn how to be less detectable in their crime
  • shows them how to commit crime
• media as a cause of crime: THE HYPODERMIC SYRINGE MODEL =

  Arousal

  • increased adrenaline and endorphins lead to people engaging in risky and criminal behaviour
  • increase in traffic crimes on opening weekends of the Fast and Furious films
• media as a cause of crime: THE HYPODERMIC SYRINGE MODEL =

  Desensitisation

  • watching violence in the media can lead to the lowering of peoples level of shock value - no longer horrified by it and can be more likely to commit the act themselves
• media as a cause of crime: THE HYPODERMIC SYRINGE MODEL =

  DEPRIVATION

  • links to left realism and strain theory
  • the idea media provides unobtainable ideas of lifestyles of the rich and famous which can lead to people committing crime to achieve these lifestyles
  • Made in Chelsea
• media as a cause of crime: THE HYPODERMIC SYRINGE MODEL =

  Glamorisation

  • Tv shows - Sopranos and Marcos
  • provide a glamorised view of the criminal lifestyle which can lead to people wanting to emulate it and be involve d
• missing white woman syndrome

  that the type of victim that is likely to make the news cycle or the media is a

  white middle class woman as she will fit the stereotype of what they want a

  victim to be.
• moral panic

  an instance of public anxiety or alarm in response to a problem regarded as threatening the moral standards of society.
• fear of crime cycle - media

  A) fear

  B) victim

  C) time

  D) consume

  E) generates

  F) fear

  
• moral panic cycle -

  A) media

  B) attention

  C) agencies

  D) amplified

  E) esaggeration

  F) symbolisation

  G) redefined

  
• examples of moral panics

  • black mugging 1970
  • HIV and AIDS 1980
  • Satanic child abuse 1980
  • knife crime (current)
• AO3 Moral panic theory - MCROBBIE AND THORNTON

  • frequency - increase so no longer noteworthy
  • context - moral panics would scapegoat a group 'folk devils' - now there are too many viewpoints
  • reflectivity - concept well-known - create one for own benefit
  • difficulty - less certainty about what is unambiguously 'bad' so harder to start
  • Rebound - more wary about moral panics - possibility of it rebounding on them