media

news as a social construction

media gives coverage to crimes which will get more attention = news value

E: Cohen and Young- news is not discovered its manufactured

R: Ditton and Duffy- 46% of media reports were violent or sexual crimes despite being 3% of all police recorded crimes

C: Gauntlet- audiences are not passive → exaggerations may not affect people

fictional representations

E: Mandel- from 1945-84 10 bil crime thrillers were sold

R: Surette- law of opposites = fictional representations of crime and criminals is the opposite of statistics and news coverage e.g poverty crime under represented and violence over represented

C: Fiske- people decode media differently

media as cause

E: Schramm- for some children TV can be harmful

R: Jamie Bulger Case → perpetrators were trying to recreate Chucky movie

C: Livingstone- people over emphasise negative effects of media due to focus on innocence of childhood

fear of crime

E: Gerbner- heavy users of TV (4+ hours per day) had higher fear of crime

R: Tumber- tabloid readers and heavy users of TV expressed greater fear of becoming a victim

C: Greer and Reiner- depends on the meaning people attach to media

relative deprivation

E: Lea and Young- media emphasises relative deprivation by providing images of the ‘perfect lifestyle’

R: Merton- pressure to conform causes deviance when access to legitimate means is blocked

C: Clarke- many experience relative deprivation but don’t get slapped

crime as a commodity

media turns crime into a commodity to consume

E: Hayward and Jock- late modern society is a media saturated society where the image and reality of crime is blurred = how the media represents crime constitutes its reality

R: Fenwick and Hayward- crime is packaged and marketed to young people as a cool cultural symbol

C: Lea and Young- crime is due to structural factors like poverty

moral panic

media over exaggerates crime and creates a scapegoat can = SFP

E: Cohen- study of mods and rockers → media exaggerated a minor fight and created a moral panic

R: produced deviancy amplification spiral by making the problem seem out of hand → calls for increased police response = further marginalisation and therefore more deviance → retreated into subcultures = SFP

C: McRobbie and Thornton- moral panics have less impact today as there’s less consensus on what is deviant

ethnicity

media exaggerates ethnic rates of crime to maintain capitalist control

E: Hall- ruling class scapegoats black youth for high rates of crime to divert attention from its structural causes e.g. poverty → creating fear divides the w/c weakening their opposition to the r/c

R: 1970s moral panic around black muggers → youth were presented as cause for disintegration of social order in Britain rather than the inflation which forced people into crime due to deprivation = prevented revolt against capitalism

C: Downes and Rock- inconsistent in claiming lack street crime wasn’t rising and also that it was due to inflation