Media and Crime #7

Dickinson found 30% of news space on newspaper was on crime

The media tends to over represent violent crime, exaggerate police success and exaggerate victimisation

News is a social construct wherein ultimately certain stories are picked over others by journalists (this is called 'news value')

Things affect news value such as action and excitement (dramatisation), immediacy, celebrities, unexpectedness, violence etc.

Mandel estimated 10 billion crime thrillers were sol from 1945-1984, and roughly 20% of movies are crime related

Property crime is underrepresented, fictional sex crimes are by pyscopaths, fictional cops are usually the hero (these fictional representations are polar opposite of real life)

Media has recently gained criticisms of its negative effect, for instance movies and rap music glamorising violence

Imitation by the young, arousal, desensitisation of violence, transmitting knowledge such as The Real Hustle and glamourification of crimes are examples

The media can tend to exaggerate risks of certain groups such as young women

Tumber found heavy TV users feared going out at night for instance

Lea and Young argue media increases relative depravation 

^ working class people now have access to TV are are exposed to materialistic goals, it marginalises them 

Moral panic is exagerration and over reaction to a percieved problem... It enlarges the severity of the problem to society

1. the media identifies a folk devil (threat to social values)

2. media negatively stereotypes this group

3. politicians etc. condemn the behavior of the folk devils, calling for a crackdown

This amplifies the initial perceived problem due to self fulfilling prophecy ^

STAN COHEN examined how media responded to mods and rockers, and how a moral panic was birthed

The initial minor confrontations between mods and rockers led to media exagerration and predicting further conflict

Media portrayed this conflict as getting out of hand increasing police and further stigmitising these two groups

ALSO more youths adopted one of those indentities (mods or rockers)

This further led to a self fulfiling prohecy, acting in the manner the media branded them

FUNCTIONALISTS see moral panics as the media raising collective concious and reasserting values when threatened by change

NEO-MARXISTS saw moral panic as a way of distracting people of capatalisms failiures in the 1970s