Crime and the Media

Ditton and Duffy

Found that 46% of media reports were about violent or sexual crimes, yet these made up only 3% of all crimes recorded by the police

News values

Cohen + Young - the criteria by which journalists and editors decide whether a story is newsworthy enough to make it into a newspaper etc —> news media focuses on crime as deviance is abnormal behaviour (news value)

Surette

Fictional representations of crime follow the “law of opposites” —> they are opposites to official statistics e.g. violence, drugs and sex crimes are over-represented whilst property crimes are under-represented

Media causes of crime

• Imitation - the media provides deviant role models which results in copying their behaviour

• Arousal - viewing violent or sexual imagery

• Desensitisation - repeated viewing of violence

• Transmission of knowledge of criminal techniques

• Glamourising offending

Moral panics

Cohen examined the media’s repsonse to disturbances between mods and rockers in the 60s, the media amplified and exaggerated it —> this caused a deviance amplification spiral

Cyber crime

• Cyber-trespass - hacking

• Cyber-deception - fraud etc

• Cyber-pornography - porn involving minors etc

• Cyber-violence - inciting physical harm