ESSAY EXAMPLE B GRADE ~ A2 SOCIOLOGY ~ MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS OF CRIME 21 MARKER

Question: Using material from Item B and elsewhere, assess sociological explanations of media representations of crime and their effects. (21 marks)

Item B suggests that "sociologists are very interested in the media and their effects they have on deviant behaviour". Today we live in a media saturated society, where their main focus is crime and deviance, both fiction and non-fiction.

Not only do the media distort views of crime they also exaggerate and over-represent certain crimes, for example the media portray most criminals as older middle-class people, which Felson calls the 'age fallacy'. The media also over-represent mainly violent and sexual crimes. They are also in favour of 'extraordinary' crimes, which Felson calles the 'dramatic fallacy'.

The news is seen as a social construction by many sociologists. Cohen and Young suggest that news is not discovered but manufactured. This links to the idea of "news values", which is when a decision is made about whether a story is newsworthy enough.

Fictional representations of crime are also…