Crime and the Media

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  • Created by: Megan
  • Created on: 03-05-15 19:04
Give 4 ways in which the media may cause crime and deviance
1)Imitation resulting in copycat behaviour 2)Desensitization 3)Transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques 4)Glamourising offending
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How may the media distort the public's impression of crime and cause an unrealistic fear of it?
They exaggerate the risks of certain groups of people becoming the victims of crime, such as young women and old people
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What correlations have sociologists found between tv watchers and having a fear of crime?
Heavy users of TV (more than 4 hours a day) had a higher fear of crime.
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How can you argue against the correlation found?
it may be that those who are already afraid of going out at night watch more TV just because they stay in more
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What is the interpretivist view about understanding the effects of the media?
We must look at the meanings people give to what they see and read
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What do Left Realists argue about what the mass media may increase?
It may help increase a sense of relative deprivation among poor and marginalised social groups. In todays society even the poorest people have media access, which presents everyone with the materialistic 'good life'.
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Define News Values
Criteria used by journalists and editors to decide if a story is newsworthy enough to be reported
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What do Cohen and Young say about the news?
That is is not discovered but manufactured, it is a social construction
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Give an example of the media being blamed for a moral decline in the past
In the 1920s and '30s cinema was blamed for corrupting the youth, and in the 50s horror comics were held responsible for a moral decline
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Give 4 news values that journalists and editors would use
1)Immediacy 2)Personalisation (human interest) 3) Violence 4)Higher-Status (celebrity)
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Define Moral Panic
exaggerated over reaction by society to a perceived problem usually driven by the media
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Define Folk Devil
groups/individuals seen as a threat to societal values
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How may the media cause crime and deviance through labelling ?
Moral entrepreneurs who disapprove of a particular behaviour e.g. drug taking may use the media to put pressure on the authorities to do something e.g. make it illigal
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What are the 3 stages of a Moral panic?
1) The media identify a group as the folk devil 2)The media present that group in a negative/stereotypical fashion 3)Respectable people e.g. politicians, police, editors etc condemn the behaviour and the group
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What does a Moral Panic lead to?
A 'crackdown' on the group. However, this may create a self-fulflling prophecy that amplifies the problem that cause the panic in the first place
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What is the most influential study of moral panics and the role of the media?
Stanley Cohen's book, Folk Devils and Moral Panics. In which he examines the medias response to disturbances between two groups known as the mods and rockers
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What is deviance amplification ?
term used by labelling theorists to describe a process which attempts to control deviance but leads to an increase in the level of deviance. This leads to greater attempts to control it and in turn produces higher levels of deviance.
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What does Cohen note is crucial in creating a moral panic? Why?
Media definitions of the situation, because in large-scale modern societies most people have no direct experience of the events themselves and have to rely on the media for information about them.
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When does Cohen argue that moral panics tend to occur?
At times of social change, reflecting the anxieties that many people feel when accepted values seem to be undermined.
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Define Boundary crisis
uncertainty about where the boundary lies between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in a time of change
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From a functionalist perspective, what are moral panics?
A way of responding to the sense of anomie created by change.By dramatising the threat to society in the form of a folk devil, the media raises the collective consciousness and reasserts social controls when values are threatened
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What would neo-marxists argue the purpose of a moral panic is?
It serves as a distraction from the crisis of capitalism, divides the w/c on racial grounds and legitimises a more authoritarian style of rule
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Give a criticism of the idea of moral panics
Do today's media audiences who are accustomed to 'shock horror' stories really react with panic? Also in late modern society there is little consensus about what is deviant, lifestyle choices that people would have condemned are now accepted
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

How may the media distort the public's impression of crime and cause an unrealistic fear of it?

Back

They exaggerate the risks of certain groups of people becoming the victims of crime, such as young women and old people

Card 3

Front

What correlations have sociologists found between tv watchers and having a fear of crime?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

How can you argue against the correlation found?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

What is the interpretivist view about understanding the effects of the media?

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
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