Media Representations of Crime 1

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  • Media Representations of Crime 1
    • How the Media Distorts the Image of Crime, Criminals and Policing
      • Overrepresent Violent and Sexual Crimes
        • Ditton and Duffy (1983) found that 46% of media reports were about violent or sexual crimes yet these only made up 3% of crimes recorded by police
      • Portrays Criminals and Victims as Older and More Middle Class
        • Felson (1998) points that official stats show criminals and victims to be younger and more WC then what the media shows and he calls this "age fallacy"
      • Media Overplays Extraordinary Crimes and Underplays Ordinary Crimes
        • Felson (1998) refers to this as "dramatic fallacy"
          • Similarly, the media leads us to believe that to commit crime and solve it a person needs to be daring and clever (the "ingenuity fallacy")
      • Media Coverage Exaggerates Police Success in Solving Crime
        • Partly because the police over represent violent crime and partly because the police want to be painted in a good light
      • Media Exaggerates the Risk of Victimisation
        • This is especially true for women, white people and higher status people
      • Media Reports Crime as a Series of Separate Events
        • Suggests crime is without structure and does not examine underlying causes of crime
    • There is some evidence of changes in news coverage in the media
      • Schlesinger and Tumber (1994) found that in the 60s the focus was on petty crimes and murders but in the 90s the focus was on drugs, child abuse terrorism etc
        • Also evidence of increasing preoccupation with sex crime, as shown by Soothill and Walby (1991) as they found that newspaper reporting of **** cases increased from under a quarter of all cases in 41 to over a third in 85
    • News Values and Crime Coverage
      • Reiner (2007) suggests media coverage of C&D is filtered through the values and assumptions of journalists about what makes a story 'newsworthy'
      • Stan Cohen and Jack Young (1973) note that news is not discovered, but manufactured
      • Jewkes (2011) suggests stories are more likely to be reported if they contain the following news values:
        • Dramatisation
          • If the event is significant or dramatic enough to be news worthy
        • Proximity
          • If the event has cultural meaning or is physically close
        • Simplification
          • Whether events are easily understood
        • Risk
          • If the event can be presented as sufficiently serious
        • Spectacle
          • If there are graphic images or footage
        • Status
          • Events that involve celebrity or high status individuals
        • Sex and Violence
          • Events that have a sexual or violent element are considered more interesting
        • Children
          • Events involving children as either offenders or victims are considered more significant to report

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