Crime, Justice, and the Media
Media and its Relationship to Crime and Justice
Key Terms to Remember:
Moral Panics: Waves of public concern about a perceived threat to societal values.
Folk Devils: Groups or individuals identified as the source of a moral panic.
Social Control: Organized societal responses to deviant or problematic behavior.
Media Framing: The way the media selects and highlights certain aspects of a story to influence perception.
Social Construction of Reality: The idea that our perception of reality is shaped by social interactions and cultural influences, including media.
Narratives: Pre-established storylines or frameworks used to present information.
Types of Media:
News Media: Traditional sources reporting on current events.
Entertainment Media: Media primarily for leisure and amusement.
Infotainment: A blend of news and entertainment, often sensationalized.
Media's Symbolic Relationship: The media maintains a symbiotic relationship with corporations and politicians, influencing and being influenced by them.
Social Problems: Issues framed by media as undesirable and in need of a solution.
The Problem Frame:
Narrative Structure: A specific way stories are told.
Morality Plays: Presents an issue with clear good and evil, often implying moral failings.
Specific Time and Place: Situates the problem within a particular context.
Implications of a Problem Frame: Suggests something is undesirable, its parts are easily identifiable, it can be changed or "fixed," and a "repair agent" (often the government) is responsible for the solution.
Real Policy Consequences: Examples include policies arising from concerns about missing children.
Claims Making/Claims Makers (Cyclical Process):
A social problem is identified.
It gains attention from a mass audience.
It competes with other problems for public and media attention.
A new angle or a related new problem emerges.
The problem is broadcasted widely.
Information about the topic is provided.
The cycle repeats.
Media Objective and Neutrality: Questions are raised about whether media can or should be truly objective.
Media Logic and Formats
Perception vs. Reality: Despite being generally safer than ever, society often feels fearful, largely due to media promotion of dangers.
Media Logic: Refers to the assumptions, patterns, and format dictating how various media operate. It has deeply infiltrated our lives and culture.
Media Formats:
Definition: How events are packaged, selected, organized, and presented by the media, shaping the audience's perceptions and assumptions.
Components: Communication format, frame, theme, and discourse.
Claims Making/Claims Makers (Detailed)
Definition: Prompters, activists, professional experts, and spokespersons involved in advancing specific claims about a social condition (e.g., social, individual, racial issues).
Function: They report on both problems and potential solutions.
Types of Claims:
Factual Claims: Statements presented as objective truths (e.g., "Crime is out of control; courts are too lenient").
Interpretive Claims: Focus on the underlying meanings behind events and often demand public policy changes (e.g., social campaigns around phenomena like "Candy Lighters" and DUI create problems and seek solutions).
Narratives
Definition: Less encompassing than frames, these are pre-established mini-constructions utilized throughout criminal justice and media.
Characteristics: Ready-made storylines for TV, symbolic crimes, and formulaic approaches to crime narratives. Reporting styles have evolved over time.
Media and Crime – Framing
Core Idea: Framing dictates where attention and resources are focused regarding a problem.
Framing (Definition): A multifaceted way to make sense of a problem, involving the selection of certain aspects of perceived reality and making them more salient.
Example: The "juvenile super predator" framing in the 1990s depicted a group of young individuals committing extreme crimes, influencing punitive approaches after events like the Columbine shooting and the Central Park 5 case.
Frame Changing: How events are framed evolves across past, present, and future, and in terms of their impact on communities and individuals (local vs. national).
Common Media Narratives/Frames:
Violent popular culture
Faulty Criminal Justice frame (suggesting the system is failing)
Blocked opportunities frame (linking crime to lack of social mobility)
Social breakdown frame (attributing crime to societal decay)
Violent media frame (blaming media for crime)
Racist system frame (highlighting systemic bias in justice)
Moral Panics and Social Control (Stanley Cohen)
Social Control:
Definition: The organized ways society responds to behavior and individuals deemed deviant, problematic, worrying, threatening, troublesome, or undesirable.
Mechanisms: Inducing control, punishment for violating social or legal norms.
Characteristics: Often accompanied by strong emotions, classifies behavior, responds to specific actions, and focuses on those society deems "outsiders."
Moral Panics:
Facilitation: Primarily facilitated by media.
Definition: A condition, episode, person, or group emerges to be defined as a real threat to societal values and interests.
Key Elements:
Emergence of a Folk Devil: A scapegoat figure blamed for the panic.
Socially Accredited Experts: Figures (e.g., police, politicians, academics) who validate the threat and offer solutions.
Coping Mechanisms: Focus shifts to individual morals over structural issues, leading to the criminalization of targeted groups.
Targeting Politically Weak Groups: Historically, this includes groups like Mods/Rockers, single mothers, juveniles, devil worshippers, and drug addicts.
Distortions by Moral Panics: Often involve missing crime data, sensational headlines and images, and exaggerated claims-making, leading to a "tough on crime" rhetoric.
Interlinked Concepts: Social construction, moral panics, and social control are deeply interconnected.
Stanley Cohen – Characteristics of a Moral Panic:
Concern: Heightened public anxiety about the issue.
Hostility: Increased antagonism towards the "folk devils."
Consensus: Broad agreement that the threat is serious.
Disproportionality: The reaction is often out of proportion to the actual threat.
Volatility: The panic can emerge and subside quickly.
Other Characteristics: Predictable, lying dormant, building on tradition of well-known evils, transparent and opaque aspects.
Moral Panics and Risks:
Claims Makers' Role: Can be either noisy (publicly vocal) or quiet (working behind the scenes).
Impact: Generate anxiety, worry, and fear.
Risk Management: Public perception and acceptance of risk are shaped by claims makers and criminal justice agents.
Moral Panics as a Social Construct: Deviance and social control test and reinforce moral boundaries, with dangers being socially determined.
Symbolic Interactionism and Social Construction
Symbolic Interactionism:
Process: Involved in constructing slogans and various narratives, supported by advocates, critics, and others.
Example: The trajectory of specific symbolic laws, like the "three strikes law."
Symbolic Laws:
Laws passed with significant symbolic meaning, often in response to public outcry rather than comprehensive data.
Example: Megan's Law (1990s) was designed to address stranger-child sexual abuse, despite most child sexual abuse occurring with known perpetrators. It inspired the sex offender registry to make communities aware of offenders.
Another Example: Thurman V. Torrington (1985) in Connecticut highlighted issues of domestic abuse.
Symbolic Interactionism - Core Beliefs:
People respond to their interpretation of reality, not reality itself.
People act based on the meaning they ascribe to things (objects, actions, symbols).
When action occurs, individuals use symbols and their interpretations to re-evaluate their behavior based on others' responses.
Mechanism: Involves imposing meaning onto objects through social interaction.
Social Construction of Crime:
Origin: Derives from the broader social construction of reality, as described by Berger and Luckman (implied reference to their work, likely The Social Construction of Reality, published in 1966).
3-$Step Process (Berger and Luckman):
Typification: Categorizing experiences and developing shared meanings for them.
Habituation: Repeated actions become routines, which become habits.
Institutionalization: Habits become formalized into social institutions with established roles and norms.
Role of Media: Plays a significant role in deciding who is labeled "criminal" and who is not.
Trial by Media
Characteristic: Information presented is often sensationalized or a "spectacle" rather than true, objective details.
Examples: Cases like Casey Anthony, and media personalities like Nancy Grace, Anderson Cooper vs. Bill O'Reilly.
Focus: Often centers on street crimes, sex crimes, and terrorism.
Critique: Media often criticizes the criminal justice system, including judges, attorneys, and juries.
Sterilization of Crime:
Predictability: Crime is often presented as predictable.
Cyclical Nature: Crime stories are often cyclical, reappearing with similar themes.
Cultural Seriality: Multiple episodes create a "hook," leading to phenomena like "forensic fandom" or "digital detectives" (e.g., The Keepers investigating the murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik).
Storytelling Structure: Features revelation, twist, and cliffhanger elements, common in true crime narratives.
Discussion of True Crime: Encourages research and uncovering corruption.
Crime in the News:
Focus: Emphasizes "crazy," bizarre, and violent crimes.
Binary View: Presents a simplistic good vs. evil narrative.
Oversimplification: Leads to an inaccurate representation of the criminal justice system.
"Wall to Wall Coverage": Extensive and often repetitive reporting.
Utilizing CJ Agents: Law enforcement, prosecutors, and politicians are often featured, reinforcing the status quo.
Irrelevant Cases: National news frequently focuses on non-relevant cases that are sensational.
News Organization: Primarily relies on a narrative structure, telling a story.
Implications of Trial by Media: Leads to speculation of guilt, potentially undermining the 6^{th} Amendment right to a fair trial.
Creating Fear and Victimization (David Altheide)
Symbolic Awareness: Communication shapes the expectation of danger and risk.
Mass Media and Identity: Media influences identity formation through a reflexive process (reflecting on research and revising).
Symbolic Interactionism: Fear becomes part of narrative and identity.
Fear and Popular Culture: News media, as formal agents of social control, often caters to audience demands for fear-inducing content. Popular culture also teaches through participation and communicates through symbols.
Marketing and Identity: Fear is integrated into marketing, product placement, and iconography, creating a "mapping" and "tracking" discourse.
Social Construction and Typification: How fear is understood and categorized.
Risk vs. Fear: While related, perceived risk can be distinct from actual fear.
Fear as a Resource:
Reactive Fear: Responding to an immediate threat.
Proactive Fear: Policies designed to prevent victimization but often increase public fear (e.g., zero-tolerance policies in Arizona after the 1999 Columbine shooting).
Fear as a Topic: Often becomes a subject of public discourse.
Realism of Fear-Hysteria: Media often focuses on dramatic details without providing background information or context.
Context of Fear (Historical Examples): Fear directed at Japanese immigrants, the homeless, and gang members.
Victimhood:
Status, Not a Person: Victim is often portrayed as a status rather than a complex individual.
Indirect Victims: Close family and friends are also impacted.
Requirement: Fear narratives require identifiable victims.
Victim Status Types: Society is obsessed with victims, even discussing "victimless crimes" or "indirect victims."
Link to Fear: Fear and victimhood are intrinsically linked.
Victim's Script: Victims are often expected to follow a certain narrative or 'script' as portrayed by media or society.
Formal Agents of Social Control: Influence the understanding of victimhood.
Deserving vs. Undeserving Victim Status: Society often distinguishes between legitimate victims (e.g., children, who are not blamed for their victimization) and those deemed less deserving, highlighting societal biases.