Crime And Deviance: Mass Media And Crime

Front 1

Mass media and crime

Back 1

Williams and Dickinson: British newspapers devote up to 30% news space to crime

Front 2

How the media distorts crime

Back 2

1. Ditton and Duffy (1983):Over representation of violent/ sexual crimes

- 46% of media reports were about violence/sexual crimes yet these only made up 3% of all crime (leads to fear)

2. Media coverage exaggerates police success

- (perhaps soften the fear of crime)

3. Media exaggerate the risk of victimization

4. Media overplay extraordinary events

- (e.g. graphic, horrific stories)

Front 3

Shifts in media coverage of crime over time

Back 3

> Schlesinger and Tumber (1994): found changes in coverage over time

- 1960’s: focus on murders and petty crime

- 1990’s: drugs, child abuse, hooliganism, muggings

- Recent: pre-occupation with sex crime ( & terrorism)

+ may be due to abolishment of the death penalty, crimes had to be special to be of interest, raising awareness of human rights

Front 4

Fictional crime

Back 4

> fictional representations of crime are important sources of our knowledge on crime

> Mandel:estimated that from 1945-1984:

- over 10 billion crime thrillers sold worldwide

- 25% of prime time TV & 20% of films were crime related

Front 5

Fictional representations of crime compared with reality

Back 5

> Surette (1998): Fictional representations follow the Law of opposites

-Property crime underrepresented,sexual/violent over represented

-Real life homicides mainly result from brawls & domestic disputes: fictional ones due to greed, calculation

-Fictional crimes committed bypsychopathic strangers: not acquaintances

-Fictional villains higher status, middle aged white male

-Fictional cops are usually successful

× more recent trends: 'New reality' undercover shows often show young w/c offenders, new corruption of the police on victims

× based on official stats: maybe MC men do commit crime but aren't caught

Front 6

News values

( the media decides what stories to publish depending on certain factors)

Back 6

> Young (1973): News not discovered but manufactured to please audience

> Distorted pictures of crimeportrayed by media reflect that news is a social construction

> Part of this social construction is led by news values:

-Immediacy

-Dramatization

-Personification

-Higher status

-Simplifications

-Novelty

-Risk

-Violence

> Stories are more likely tobe read if they match these categories, known as profit motive

Front 7

Media as a cause of crime

Back 7

> Natural born killers: a film about copy cat killers which resulted in copy cat killings in real life

> other examples:

• 20's-30's: cinema blamed for corrupting the youth
• 50's: horror comics blamed for moral decline
• 80's: "video nasties" i.e. x rated horror movies (Mary whitehouse focused on censorship of this)
• 90's: Chucky; child's play (caused jamie Bulgers death), WM3,
• 2000's: rap lyrics and violent video games
• 2010's coronation st re-enactment, breaking bad copy cats

A02:

- do we need to ban simple dramas and news too?

- above examples are generally scapegoats for horrific incidents rather than actual causes

Front 8

how might media cause crime and deviance ?

Back 8

• imitation ( copy cat violence)

• Arousal

• Desensitization (to violence)

• transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques (how to make a bomb)

• As a target for crime

• by stimulating desires for unaffordable goods (relative deprivation)
• portraying the police as incompetent

• glamorizing offending (gangster elements, breaking bad)

Front 9

study on how the media is the cause of violence: Hypodermic syringe theory

Back 9

> media has a direct and powerful effect on the passive audience ( injected with a daily dose of images)

- deterministic: audience may not be passive

- people can be decoders and interpret violence differently

Front 10

study on how the media is the cause of violence: Bandura experiment

Back 10

> experiment: adult beats the bobo doll and the child copies when left alone with it

- Hawthorne effect: the child may have acted differently under surveillance

- lab experiment: artificial nature can't translate directly to real life

Front 11

conclusive arguments for media being the cause of violence

Back 11

> schramm: for some children, some TV is harmful but for most children, most TV is neither harmful or beneficial

> Livingstone: people are still preoccupied with effects of media on children as they want to regard childhood as an age of innocence

Front 12

problems with the idea that media causes violence (A02)

Back 12

× some naturally fascinated by violence + other crimes/ gravitate towards certain programs

× it merely reflects their personality i.e. pre-disposition to violence)

× millions view violence (entertainment or news) and majority don't consider enacting what they see

× more people are repulsed by violence and reject it are never tempted to enact it

Front 13

Fear of crime

Back 13

> Gebner: heavy users of TV had higher levels of fear of crime

> Schlesinger and Tumber: Found correlation between media consumption and fear of crime e.g. muggings

× Not cause and effect: e.g. individuals may already fear crime and the outside and therefore stay in and watch more TV which heightens fear

> Terrorism and fear mongering from media/TV

Front 14

Moral panics

Back 14

> Moral panic: the media can cause crime through labeling

• Coined by Cohen
  
• An exaggerated over reaction by society to aperceived problem usually driven by the media
  
• The reaction enlarges the problem out ofproportion to its real seriousness
  

Front 15

Contemporary examples of moral panics

Back 15

Youths and Hoodies: Fawbert

- 2008 hoodies: shopping centers ban hoodies- enters press

- reality: drop in youth crime

- fear of youths and outcry from public/police created

- chief constable: longer sentencing for hoodies

1. Terrorism: leading to more hate/ violence and islamaphobia
2. Binge drinking
3. Immigrants: fear of losing jobs and hatred towards immigrants

Folk devils: groups or individuals who are the focus of moral panics

Front 16

How a moral panic occurs

Back 16

1. Media identify group as folk devil/ threat tovalues

2.Media present the group negatively and exaggerate the problem

3.Moral entrepreneurs condemn the group/ behaviour( police, politicians, editors)

4.Crackdown on this group

5.Labelling leads to SFP and Deviancy amplification

A02: selective reporting leads to more interest and morecrime being found

Front 17

Main example of a moral panic - Cohen

Back 17

• Mods and Rockers gangs in the60’s
• Boredom lead to violence andvandalism in Clacton
• Small fights and scuffles tookplace and caught media’s attention on organised fights

Consequences:

Was a demand for more police action = morereporting

Polarized reaction occurred from the groupsthemselves = deviancy amplification

> Cohen: used participation to interview M&R and Magistrates, non-participant obs and content analysis of newspaper reports

> Found the press exaggerated theimpact

Front 18

why do moral panics occur: Functionalism

Back 18

Cohen:occurs at times of social change (anomie)

• 60’s: Britain was undergoing rapid change and youths were gaining power
  
• Resulted in moral panic due to boundary crisis (uncertainty between unacceptable and acceptable behaviour)
  

Front 19

why do moral panics occur: Marxism

Back 19

> Profit motive on behalf of the press

(Neo-Marxist) Hall: Policing the crisis

- blacks portrayed asmuggers in the media

- Served to distract attention from the crisis ofcapitalism and were used as scape-goats for societal problems

-media in conjunction with the elite create moral panics to perpetuate fear/maintain control over society

- fear = demand for more policing = more control over w/c

Front 20

criticisms of moral panic theory

Back 20

- doesn't discuss the initial cause for the events that take place (e.g. the fights in clacton)

- Right realism: MPT assumes the reaction is disproportionate (maybe it isn't who decides that?)

- why are the media able to amplify some events but not others ?

- Postmodernist -outdated: hard to create panics as

1. little consensus about what is deviant

2. today's audience are accustomed to shock stories

- no agreement on the cause: due to anomie or powerful groups trying to control others