Crime and the Media

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  • Created by: Harriet
  • Created on: 07-06-13 09:21
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  • Crime and the Media
    • Media Representations of Crime
      • The media Over represent crime:Williams and Dickson- newspapers devote 30%
      • The media gives a distorted image of crime
        • Over-represents violent and sexual crimes
        • Portray victims ans criminals as older and more middle-class (Felson-'Age Fallacy')
        • exaggerate police success
        • Exaggerate the risk of victimisation
        • overplay extraordinary crimes
      • News Values- news is socially constructed
        • Immediacy
        • Dramatisaion
        • Personalisation
        • High status person
        • Simplification
        • Novelty
        • Violence
      • Fictional Representation of Crime
        • Mandel- 25% of TV and 20% of films are crime and  are important sources of our knowledge
        • Surette- 'Law of opposites'
          • Property crime is under-represented while violence, drug and sex crimes are over-represented
          • Fictional sex crimes are committed by psychopathic strangers, not aquaintances
    • The Media as a Cause of Crime
      • The Media, Relative Deprivation and Crime
        • Lea and Young- The media increases relative deprivation
          • Even the poorest have access to media
          • Resort to crime to obtain consumer goods
      • Fear Of Crime
        • The media exaggerate the risks to certain groups e,g, women and the elderly
        • Schleinger  and Tumber found Tabloid readers and heavy TV watchers expressed a fear of going out at night
      • The media influences people through 'video nasties', rap lyrics and computer games encouraging violence and criminality
        • Imitation Arousal Desensitisation Transmitting knowldge Stimulating desires and Glamourisingcrime
    • Moral Panics
      • An exaggerated and irrational over-reaction by society to a perceived problem, where the reaction enlarges the problem out of all proportion to its real seriousness
        • The Media identify a group as folk devils
          • moral entrepreneurs call for a 'crackdown'
            • Leads to the SFP and Deviance AmplificationSpiral
      • Mods and Rockers
        • Cohen
          • At the early stages many people did not consider themselves as belonging to a group. A minor incident in Clacton
            • The Media exaggerated, predicted more and negatively labelled the symbols of mods and rockers
              • Lead to police crackdown
                • Led to the SFP
      • Criticisms of Moral panics
        • Marxists- they are designed to distract the attention from the crisis of capitalism and divide the W/C
        • How do we know it is a over-reaction?
        • McRobbie- The are now routine so have less impact

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