The Media and Crime

According to Ericson et al (1991), what percentage of quality press and radio news was about crime and deviance?

45-71%

What percentage of space in British newspapers is devoted to crime?

30%

Who found that the media over-represents violent and sexual crimes?

Ditton and Duffy (1983)

What did Ditton and Duffy (1983) say about media representations of crime?

46% of media reports were about violent or sexual crimes but these only make up 3% of all crimes reported.

According to Marsh (1991) how many times more likely are the American news to report violent crimes than property crimes?

36 times more

Who said that there is an age fallacy, dramatic fallacy and ingenuity fallacy?

Felson (1998)

What are the ways in whcih the media creates a distorted image of crime? [6]

• Over-representation of violent and sexual crimes.

• Criminals and victims are older and more middle-class.

• Media coverage exaggerates police success.

• The media exaggerate the risk of victimisation.

• Crime is reported as a series of separate events.

• The media overplays extraordinary crimes.

What did Schlesinger and Tumber (1994) say about the types of crime that the media focused on?

• They found that in the 60s, the media focused on murders and petty crime.

• But in the 90s this was no longer of interest to the media.

  • This change was due to the abolition of the death penalty.

  • Also because rising crime rates meant that crime had to be special to gain attraction.

• In the 90s, there was more reporting on drugs, child abuse, terrorism, football hooliganism and mugging.

How does the media present sex crimes?

• Their reporting of rape cases increased from less than a quarter to over a third of all cases between 1951 and 1985.

• Coverage also focuses on identifying a sex fiend through the use of labels.

• They present rapes as one of serial attacks carried out by psychopathic strangers.

Who talks about how the news is manufactured?

Cohen and Young (1973)

What does Cohen and Young (1973) say about the news?

• The news isn’t discovered, it’s manufactured.

• Editors decide on which stories to publish based on their news values.

What is news values?

The criteria by which journalists and editors decide whether a story is newsworthy enough to make it to the newspaper.

What are the key news values that influence the selection of crime stories?

• Immediacy

• Dramatization

• Personalisation

• Higher-status

• Simplification

• Novelty or unexpectedness

• Risk

• Violence

Who talks about the law of opposites?

Surette (1998)

What did Surette (1998) say about fictional representations of crime?

• Fictional representations of crime are the law of opposites.

• This is because they are the opposite of official statistics.

How do fictional representations of crime follow the law of opposites? [5]

• Property crime is under-represented, while violence, drugs and sex crimes are over-represented.

• Fictional homicide is a result of greed and calculation, whereas in real-life they result from brawls and domestic abuse.

• Fictional sex crimes are commited by psychopathic strangers, not acquaintances.

• Fictional criminals tend to be of higher status, middle-aged white males.

• Fictional cops usually catch the criminals.

AO3: What new trends have arised in the fictional presentations of crime? [3]

• The new genre of reality infotainment shows feature young, non-white underclass offenders.

• There is an increasing tendency to show the police as corrupt, brutal and less successful.

• Victims have become more central and law enforcers are portrayed as avengers with audiences being invited to identify with their suffering.

What are the ways in whcih the media may cause crime and deviance? [7]

• Imitation and providing deviant role models.

• Arousal, e.g. through viewing violent or sexual imagery.

• Desensitisation through the repeated viewing of violence.

• Transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques.

• By stimulating desires for unaffordable goods.

• By portraying the police as incompetent.

• By glamourising offending.

Who argues that the media doesn’t always have a negative effect on children?

Schramm et al (1961)

What does Schramm et al (1961) say about the influence of the media on children?

Argues that television doesn’t always have a negative impact on children.

What does Livingstone (1996) say about the media and children?

Despite the fact that the media doesn’t actually have a negative effect on children, people are still worried about the effects of the media on children due to this desire to regard childhood as a time of uncontaminated innocence in a private sphere.

Who found that poeple who watched television for more than four hours a day were more scared of crime?

Gerbner et al

What did Gerbner et al find?

That people who watched television for more than four hours a day had higher levels of fear of crime.

How can the idea that consuming more media leads to a greater fear of crime be evaluated? [2]

• Those who already fear crime stay indoors more and thereore consume more media.

• Greer and Reiner (2012): it ignores the meanings viewers give to media violence.

Who argues that the mass media creates a sense of relative deprivation?

Lea and Young (1996)

What do Lea and Young (1996) argue?

The media spreads an image of a lifestyle that for those living in poverty creates a sense of relative deprivation.

What other theory does left realists ideas of relative deprivation link to?

Merton’s strain theory.

What do cultural criminologists say about the media and crime?

• The media turns crime into a commodity that poeple desire.

• Rather than producing crime in their audiences, the media encourages people to consume crime in the form of images.

Who argues that in our late modern society, it is hard to distinguish reality from images of crime?

Hayward and Young (2012)

What do Hayward and Young (2012) say about the media and crime?

• Late modern society is a media-saturated society that immerses us in the mediascape.

• In the mediascape, there isn’t a clear distinction between images and the reality of crime.

• The way the media represents crime and control actually dictates or creates crime itself.

Who says that crime has become commoditised and sold to young people as cool and fashionable?

Fenwick and Hayward (2000)

What do Fenwick and Hayward (2000) say about the commodification of crime?

Crime and deviance become a style to be consumed that is “packaged and marketed to young people as a romantic, exciting, cool, and fashionable cultural symbol.”

What is a moral panic?

The exaggerated over-reaction by society to a perceived problem that is usally inspired by the media, causing the problem to worsen.

What is the result of a moral panic?

A self-fulfilling prophecy and deviance amplification spiral.

Who examines the media’s role in causing crime and deviance through the conflict between the Mods and Rockers?

Cohen (1972)

What three things did the media do in response to the Mods and Rockers?

• Exaggeration and distortion - exaggerating the event through sensational reporting, e.g. Day of Terror by Scooter Gangs.

• Prediction - the media often assumed and predicted further conflict.

• Symbolisation - making the Mods and Rockers more identifiable.

What is the wider context of the moral panic about the Mods and Rockers?

It took place at a time where a newfound affluence, consumerism and hedonism of the young had emerged and threatened to change the values of the older generation.

When does Cohen (1972) argue that moral panics occur?

• They happen at times of social change as people feel as though their values are being undermined.

• This makes moral panics a result of a boundary crisis.

• The folk devil created by the media symbolises and gievs focus to popular anxieties.

How do functionalists view moral panics?

They see moral panics as a way of responding to anomie created by social change.

What is a boundary crisis?

Uncertainty about where the boundary lay between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in a time of change.

How can the idea of moral panics be evaluated?

• Who decides what is proportionate reaction to crime?

• Left realists would argue that people’s fear of crime is rational.

• They don’t explain why and how the media are able to amplify some problems but not others.

• McRobbie and Thornton (1995): argue that moral panics are now normalised in our late modern society and have less impact.

• In late modern society, there is less consensus about what is deviant, so it is harder for the media to create panics about deviant behaviour.

What is cyber-crime?

Computer-mediated activities that are either illegal or considered illicit by some, and that are conducted through global electronic networks.

What are the two types of cyber-crime?

• Cyber-dependent crime

• Cyber-enabled crime

What is cyber-dependent crime?

Crimes which can only take place over computer networks, e.g. hacking.

What are cyber-enabled crimes?

All cyber-crimes, including old types of crimes that have been made easier with the internet, e.g. identity theft, fraud and child pornography.

Who says that the internet creates opportunities to commit both conventional and new crimes?

Jewkes (2003)

What did Jewkes (2003) say about cyber-crime?

The Internet creates opportunities to commit both conventional crimes and new crimes using new tools.

Who idenitified the four categories of cyber-crime?

Wall (2001)

What are the four categories of cybercrime that Wall (2001) identified?

• Cyber-trespass - crossing boundaries into others’ cyber-property.

• Cyber-deception and theft

• Cyber-pornography - porn involving minors and giving children the opportunity to access porn online.

• Cyber-violence - psychological harm or inciting harm.

Why is policing cyber-crime difficult?

• The vast scale of the internet in comparison to the limited resources of the police.

• Problems of who has jurisdiction.

• Police culture doesn’t prioritise cyber-crime as it lacks the excitement of conventional policing.

AO3: How can the issue of technology leading to new crime be evaluated?

Jewkes (2003): ICT permits routine surveillance through the use of CCTV cameras, electronic databases etc.