Media and Crime
Media representation of Crime
Ericson et al’s study in Toronto- found that 45-71% of quality press and radio news was about various forms of deviance and its control.
Williams and Dickinson- British newspapers devote up to 30% of their news space to crime.
Though news media show a keen interest in crime, they give a distorted image of crime, criminals and policing.
The media over-represent violent and smexual crime- Ditton and Duffy (1983) found that 46% of media reports were about violent or smexual crimes, yet these made up only 3% of all crimes recorded by the police.
One review by Marsh of studies of news reporting in America found that a violent crime was 36x more likely to be reported than a property crime.
The media portray criminals and victims as older and more middle class- Felson calls this the “age fallacy”.
Media coverage exaggerates police success in clearing up cases- the media want to present the police in a good light as they are their main source of crime stories, and partly because the media over-represents violent crime, which has a higher clear up rate than property crime.
The media exaggerates the risk of victimisation- stating that women, White people and higher status individuals are more a risk of being a victim of crime.
There is some evidence of changes in the type of coverage of crime by the news media.
Schlesinger and Tumber found that in the 1960s the focus had been on murders and petty crime, but by the 1990s murder and petty crime were of less interest to the media.
By the 1990s, reporting had also widened to include drugs, child abuse, terrorism, football hooliganism and “mugging”.
There is also evidence of increasing preoccupation with smex crimes.
Soothill and Walby found that newspaper reporting of grape cases increased from under a quarter of all cases in 1951 to over a third in 1985.
News values and crime coverage
The distorted picture of crime painted by the news media reflects the fact that news is a social construction.
Cohen and Young- news is not discovered but manufactured.
A central aspect of the manufacture of news in the notion of “news value”.
News values are the criteria by which journalists and editors decide whether a story is newsworthy enough to make it into the newspaper or news bulletin.
Key values influencing the selection of crime stories include:
Immediacy- “breaking news.
Dramatisation- action and excitement
Personalisation- human interest stories about individuals
Higher-status- persons and “celebrities”
Simplification- eliminating shades of grey
Novelty or unexpectedness- an new angle
Risk- victim-centred stories about vulnerability and fear
Violence- especially visible and spectacular acts.
Functional representation of crime
Mandel- estimates that from 1940 to 1984, over 10 billion crime thrillers were sold worldwide while about 25% of prime time TV and 20% of films are crime shows or movies.
Surette- Fictional representations of crime, criminals and victims follow “the law of opposites”- they are opposite of the official statistics, and strikingly similar to news coverage.
Property crime is under-represented, while violence, drugs and smex crimes are over-represented.
While real-life homicides mainly results from brawls and domestic disputes, fictional ones are the product of greed and calculation.
Fictional smex crimes are committed by psychopathic strangers, not acquaintances.
However, recent trends have led to offenders in “reality” infotainment shows being young, non-White “underclass” offenders, and police to be depicted as corrupt and brutal, and less successful.
Media as a cause of crime
Ways in which media might possibly cause crime and deviance:
Imitation- by providing deviant role models, resulting in “copycat” behaviour.
Arousal- e.g. through viewing violent or smexual imagery.
Desensitisation- e.g. through repeated viewing of violence.
By transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques.
As a target for crime e.g. theft of TVs.
By stimulating desires for unaffordable goods e.g. through advertising.
By portraying the police as incompetent.
By glamourising offending.
As a result of fears about possible effects of the media, thousands of studies have been conducted, however, most studies have tended to find that exposure to media violence has at most a small and limited negative effect on audiences.
However, one study- Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment in 1961, observes how children copy aggressive behaviour, meaning the media could cause children to be more violent.
Fear of Crime
There is a concern that the media may be distorting the public’s impression of crime and causing an unrealistic fear of crime, especially among young women and older people.
Gerbner et al- heavy users of television in the US had higher levels of fear of crime.
Schlesinger and Tumber- tabloid readers and heavy users of TV expressed greater fear of becoming a victims, especially of physical attacks and “mugging”.
Evaluation
Greer and Reiner- “effects” research on the media as a cause of crime or fear of crime ignores the meanings that viewers give to media violence.
For example, they may give very different meanings to violence in cartoons, horror films and news bulletins.
This criticism reflects the interpretivist view that if we want to understand the possible effects of the media, we must look at the meanings people give to what they see and read.
The media ,relative deprivation and crime
Laboratory based research has focused on whether media portrayals of crime and deviant lifestyles lead viewers to commit crime themselves.
Left realists argue that the mass media help to increase the sense of relative deprivation among poor and marginalised social groups.
Lea and Young- Mass media has disseminated a standardised image of lifestyle, particularly in the areas of popular culture and recreation.
In today’s society, where even the poorest groups have media access, the media present everyone with images of a materialistic “good life” of leisure, fun and consumer goods as the norm to which they should conform.
The result is to stimulate the sense of relative deprivation and social exclusion felt by marginalisation groups who cannot afford these goods.
As Merton argues, pressure to conform to the morn can cause deviant behaviour when the opportunity to achieve by legitimate means is blocked.
In this instance, the media are instrumental in setting the norms and thus un promoting crime.
Cultural criminology, the media and crime
Cultural criminology argues that the media turn crime itself into the commodity that people desire.
Rather than simply producing crime in their audiences, the media encourage them to consume crime, in the form of images of crime.
Hayward and Young- see late modern society as a media-saturated society, where we are immersed in the “mediascape”- an ever-expanding tangle of fluid digital images, including images of crime.
In this world, there is a blurring between the image and the reality of crime, so that the two are n longer clearly distinct or separable.
The way the media represent crime and crime control now actually constitutes or creates the thing itself. e.g. deepfakes.
For example, gang assaults are not just caught on camera, but staged for the camera and later packaged together in “underground fight videos”.
Similarly, police car cameras don’t just record police activity, they actually alter the way in which the police work, with US police forces for example using reality TV shows like “Cops” as promo videos.
Media and the commodification of crime
A further feature of late modernity is the emphasis on consumption, excitement and immediacy.
Hayward and Young- crime and its thrills become commodified.
Corporations and advertisers use media images of crime to sell products, especially in the youth market. E.g. hip hop combines images of street hustler criminality with images of consumerist success, with leading hip hop stars parading designer chic clothing, jewellery etc.
Crime and deviance thus becomes a style to be consumed.
Fenwick and Hayward- crime is packaged and marketed to young people as romantic, exciting, cool and fashionable cultural symbol.
Hayward and Young also note this is true of mainstream products- some car ads feature street riots, joyriding, suicide bombing graffiti and pyromania.
Cyber-crime
The arrival of new types of media is often met with a poral panic, for example, horror comics, cinema, television, video and computer games have all been accused of undermining public morality and corrupting the young.
The same is true for the internet with 2/3 0f the population now online.
The arrival of the internet has led to fears of cyber-crime- Douglas and Loader define as computer-mediated activities that are either illegal or considered illicit by some, and that are conducted through global electronic networkers.
Jewkes- the internet creates opportunities to commit both “conventional crimes”, such as fraud, and “new crimes using new tools”, such as software piracy.
Wall identifies 4 categories of cybercrime:
Cyber-trespass- crossing boundaries into others’ cyber-property.
it includes hacking and sabotage, such as spreading viruses.
Cyber-deception and theft- including identity theft, “phishing” and violation of intellectual property rights e.g. software piracy.
Cyber-pawnography- including pawn involving minors, and opportunities for children to access related resources online.
Cyber-violence- doing psychological harm inciting physical harm.
Cyber-violence includes cyber-stalking and hate crimes against minority groups, as well as bullying by text or social media.
Global cyber- crime
Policing cyber crime is difficult partly because of the sheer scale of the internet and the limited resources of the police, and also because of its globalised nature, which poses problems of jurisdiction. e.g. in which country should someone be prosecuted for an internet offence?
Police culture also gives cyber-crime a low priority because it is seen as lacking the excitement of more conventional crime.
However, new information and communication technology (ICT) also provides the police and state with greater opportunities for surveillance and control of the population.
Jewkes argues that ICT permits routine surveillance through the use of CCTV cameras, electronic databases, digital fingerprinting and “smart” identity cards, as well as the installation of listening devices called “carnivores” at internet service providers to monitor email traffic.
Links to surveillance of crime.