Media as a cause of crime

• Williams and Dickson


  Media gives distorted image of crime, over presenting violence and exaggerating police success on cases
• Social construction of news - Cohen and Young

  • News isn't discovered it's manufactured
  • Values whether a story is news worthy
  • News isn't out there, it's an outcome of a social process with some real stories
• News values influencing selection of crime stories

  • Dramatisation
  • High status celebrities
  • The unexpected
• Fictional representation of crime

  • Fictional sex crimes committed by psychopathic strangers not acquaintances
  • Fictional police always succeed
  • Property crime under-represented, violence and sex over-presented
• Relevant trends

  • Reality shows show young, non-white, working class as offenders
  • Police = corrupt, brutal and unsuccessful
  • Victims more central, police shown as avengers
• Media causes crime by:

  • Desensitisation = repeatedly viewing violence
  • Arousal through seeing violent imagery
  • Stimulating desire for unattainable goods
• Fear of crime

  • Media exaggerates amount of violence and crime risks to certain people (e.g. women and elderly)
  • Schlesinger and Tumbler = tabloid readers and people who watched lots of TV expressed greater fear of going out at night
  • Afraid of going out at night > watch more TV > fear of crime = greater media use
• Relative deprivation and crime

  • Lea and Young = argue media increased relative deprivation amongst marginalised groups
  • Poor have access to media > bombed with images of 'good life' in capitalist society > simulates sense of relative deprivation and social exclusion > turn to crime
• Metron (functionalist)

  • Pressure to pursue cultural goods > cause deviance > sets goal to pursue material goods and promote crime
• Hayward and Young

  • Late modern society is media saturated, emphasizing consumption and excitement
  • Media turned crime into a commodity/style to be consumed and corporations use images of crime to sell goods targeted to young people
• Global cybercrime

  • Thomas and Loader = cybercrime = computer mediated activities that are conducted through global electronic networks
  • Jewkes = internet creates opportunities to commit conventional crime (e.g. fraud) and new crimes like software privacy
  • Policing cybercrime is difficult due to size of internet
  • Surveillance = IT provides police and state with greater opportunities for surveillance control (e.g. finger print)
• Moral panic

  Media may cuase crime and deciance, exaggerated and irrational over-reaction by society to a percieved problem where reaction enlarges the problem
• Cohen's mods and rockers

  1. Distinctions between groups weren't clear
  2. Initial confrontation had minor scuffles
  3. Media exaggerated numbers, portraying both groups as folk devils and creating a moral panic
  4. Media predicted further conflict, caused a worse conflict
  5. Clothes and bikes negatively labelled
• Cohen

  Media's definition of situation created a moral panic > most people had no experience of events and relied on media for information

  Folk devil gave a focus to popular anxieties about disorder
• Deviance amplification spiral

  • Media identifies group as a threat of societal values
  • Negativelly stereotypes group and exaggerates problem
  • Moral entrepreneurs condemn behaviour of group, calls for crackdown
  • Created SFP amplifying the problem that caused the panic
  • Crackdown identifies more deviants, tougher action is called for
• Analysis of moral panics

  • Functionalism = view moral panics as responding to sense of anomie created by change > dramatises threat to society in form of a folk devil > media media raise collective consciousness > reassert social control when values are threatened
  • Neo Marxism, Hall