Crime As A Social Construction Essay

Another example of crime as a social construction is the media and it’s role in informing the public about what’s happening on a local, state, and national level. In Constructing Crime: Media, Crime, and Popular Culture the authors write, “Our knowledge acquisition has changed dramatically in the past 200 years, from first-hand knowledge of crime and deviance in rural communities and small urban centres to a society in which we are inundated with so much information that it is difficult to assess what specific impacts media have on our ideas and attitudes” (Dowler, Fleming, & Muzzatti, 837). What the authors mean is that the way we’ve socially constructed crime has changed throughout time and with media being more accessible today through different forms of social media and multiple television news …show more content…
With more outlets for news, the likelihood that an individual, idea, or group of people are misrepresented or portrayed in a negative manner is seemingly higher. A TV show such as TMZ, an example of infotainment media, can construct our views on various celebrities without us even knowing the private details of their lives. This can be said the same for politicians or even people who committed crimes and are on the 6 O’clock news; we may not know someone personally but we do know what crimes they committed or things they said, but our opinion on them and the crimes they committed are formed and spread.
First we can look at traditional crime genre versus tabloid style shows; the media can use both these highly stylized forms of entertainment to try and influence public perception on crime. The overrepresentation of different types of crime can directly lead to an increase fear of crime amongst viewers. This is what we would consider to be a form of social construction so much so that these shows provide us with different perceptions of what different groups of people are like. In tabloid style shows criminals are portrayed like aliens meaning that