Media and Crime

Medias picture of crime vs offical stats

media over-represents violent/sexual crime: Ditton and Duffy: 6 % of media reports on this but only 3% of all recorded crime

media portrays criminals as older and MC

media exaggerates police success

media exaggerates the risk of victimisation

media overplays extraordinary crimes

News values: how journalists decide if a story is news worthy

Immediacy

dramatisation

personalisation

higher-status

simplification

novelty/ unexpectedness

risk

violence

Shift in what crime the media covers

Schlesinger and Tumbler

60’s focus was murder and petty crime, but 90’s reporting widened to drugs, child abuse, terrorism and more

Fictional representations of crime: Mandel

10 billion crime thrillers were sold worldwide between 1945-84: 25% of prime time TV crime shows/movies.

This tells us that fictional representations are an important source of our knowledge on crime.

Fictional representation of crime: Surette

Property crime is under-represented while violence/drugs/sex crimes are over represented.

Real life homicides happen due to brawls/domestic disputes, while fictional ones come from greed/calculation.

Fictional sex crimes are committed by strangers/psychopaths, while in reality it is acquaintances. 

Fictional cops usually get their man.

The media can cause crime through:

Imitation: copycat crimes

Arousal: viewing of violent/sexual imagery

Desensitisation: repeated view of violence

Transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques

A target for theft of TV’s

Stimulating unaffordable goods through advertising

Portraying the police as incompetent

Glamourising offending

However, studies show exposure to violent media has a small negative impact

Livingstone: our major concern about the media impacting children is because we regard childhood as a time of innocence in the private sphere

How does the media cause a fear of crime

The media exaggerate how much violent crime there is in society, and exaggerate the risk of certain groups being victims. Therefore, the media is distorting the public's impression of crime, giving them an unrealistic fear of it.

Evidence to show the media causes fear of crime

Gerbner et al: found heavy users of TV has higher levels of fear of crime

However, this doesn't mean that the media is causing an increased fear, as those already afraid of going out at night, watch more TV simply because they’re home more

How does the media stimulate relative deprivation

Left realists argue that the mass media is increasing the sense of relative deprivation among marginalised groups.

In today's society, even the poorest groups have media access, where they see the image of a materialistic ‘good’ life of leisure and consumer goods as the norm.

This stimulates marginalised groups' sense of relative deprivation and social exclusion, which may be what pushes them to commit crime.

Fenwick and Hayward and Young, the commodification of crime

Fenwick and Hayward: crime is packaged and marketed to young people as an exciting, cool and fashionable cultural symbol

Hayward and Young: argue that mainstream products do this too, like car ads with pyromania/joy riding/ street riots. Imagery of the forbidden (brands like Opium, Poison, Obsession).

what does cultural criminology argue about the media

Cultural criminology argues that the media makes crime itself a commodity that the people desire.

The media encourages people to consume crime

Hayward and Young: late modernity is media saturated with crime

This causes the image and reality of crime to be indistinguishable EG gang assaults aren't caught on camera, they are staged for it be released as underground fight videos

what happens in a moral panic

• Media identifies group as folk devils/threat to societal values

• Media presents this group in a negative light, exaggerating the scale of the problem

• Moral entrepreneurs, editors, politicians, police chiefs and other respectable authorities condemn the group and their behaviour.

• Here a ‘crackdown’ on the group is called, but this can create a self-fulfilling prophecy that then amplifies the problem.

Cohen: Mods and rockers

 He focused on the media’s responses to disturbances between the mods and rockers, 2 young WC groups who had different dress senses and modes of transport.

• The initial confrontations were on Clacton beach in 1964, they were little more than scuffles

• In response, the media over reacted to the minor disorder. Cohen argues they have an ‘inventory of 3 elements’:

1. Exaggeration and distortion: the media exaggerated numbers involved and the extent of violence/damage using sensational headlines like ‘Days of Terror’. Non-events such as the ‘town held their breath’ for invasions that didn't happen.

2. Prediction: the media regularly assumed and predicted further violence/conflict from the group

3. Symbolisation: the symbols of the mods and rockers, clothes, bikes, scooters, hairstyles, music etc were all negatively labelled and associated with deviance.

How does the moral panic about the mods and rockers lead to a deviance amplfication spiral

Cohen  argues that the media’s portrayal of events causes a deviance amplification spiral by making it seem like the problem was getting out of hand. This led to more calls for harsher responses from the police/courts and only caused further stigmatisation and marginalisation of the mods and rockers.

The media emphasised their differences into 2 distinct identities, transforming 2 loose-knit groupings to  tight-knit gangs.

Here we can see how the call for more punishment and control of the situation caused a spiral of more deviance/ calls for action instead of resolving the issue.

the wider context of moral panics

Moral panics usually happen at a time of social change, which reflect the anxieties people feel about accepted values being undermined. Moral panics are therefore a result of boundary crisis and folk devils the media symbolises give a focus to worries about social disorder.

what do functionalists say about moral panics

moral panics are a way of responding to anomies, that change brings. Dramatising the threat of a folk devil gives the media a collective conscience and allows them to reassert social control

Hall et all on moral panics

1970 black muggings moral panic to distract from the crisis of capitalism

Criticisms of the idea of a moral panic

assumes society over-reacts, but who decides what’s a disproportionate reaction?

why can the media cause some moral panics about some things and not other

How do Thomas and Loader define cyber crime

computer mediated activities that are considered illegal/illicit, and are conducted through global electronic networks

Wall defines 5 categories of cyber crime

Cyber trespass: hacking, sabotage and spreading viruses

Cyber deception and theft: identity theft, violation of property rights

Cyber porn: porn involving minors and children accessing porn

Cyber violence: psychological harm or threats: cyber stalking, hate crimes and bullying

Global cyber crime: policing is hard because of the sheer size of the internet, harder to crackdown. Issues with where the charge the person