Topic 7 Crime and The Media

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  • Created by: Abbie
  • Created on: 11-06-13 15:15
how does the media give a distorted image of crime?
Over represents violent and sexual crime, portrays criminals and victims as older and more middle-class, Exaggerates police success, Exaggerate risk of victimisation, overplay extrodinary crimes.
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What did Jock Young note about News?
News is not discovered but manufactured. news does not simply 'exist out there' waiting to be gathered and written up, it is the outcome of social processes in which some stories are selected while others rejected.
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what are news values?
The criteria by which journalists and editors decide whether a story is newsworthy enough to make it into the news.
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What are key news values?
Immediacy, Dramatisation - action/excitment, Personalisations - human interest stories, Higher-status - celebs. Risk, Violence.
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What is the fictional representation of crime?
Fictional representations from TV, cinema and novels are important sources of our knowledge of crime because so much of their output is crime related.
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fictional representations of crime follow the 'law of opposite' what si this?
Surette - they are the opposite to official statistics - and similar to news coverage. property crime underestimated, violence drugs over represented. fictionalvillians tend to be high status middle aged white.
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how can media be the cause of crime?
Imitation - 'copy cat' behaviour. Arousal, Desensitisation e.g. through repeated viewing of violence. Transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques, glamorising offending,portrating police as incompetent, stimulating desires for unaffordable goods
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how does media create a fear of crime?
media exaggerates amount of violent and unusual crime and risks to certain groups such as young and women.
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What did Gerbner et al find?
heavy users of T.V had higher levels of fear of crime .
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What is a counter argument for Gerbner et al?
such correlations doesn't prove that media viewing causes fear. e.g. it may be that those who are already afraid of going out at night watch more TV because they stay in more.
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what do left realist argue about media?
mass media help to increase the sense of relative depravation among poor and marginalised social groups. presenting everyone with the image of materialistic 'good life' to which they should conform.
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What is a moral panic?
an exaggerated over reaction by society to a percieved problem - usually driven or inspired by the media - where the reaction enlarges the problem out of all proportion to its real seriousness.
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in a moral panic:
The media identify a group as folk devils or threat to societal values, the media present the group in a negative fashion and exaggerate the scale of problem. moral entepeneurs, editors, politicians and other respectable people condem the group
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what does this lead to?
A 'crackdown' on the group. this may create a Self fulfilling prophecy that amplifies the problem that caused the panic. creating a deviance amplification spiral.
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what was the name of Stanley Cohens Sbooktudy?
Folk devils and moral panics
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what 3 things did the media do in the fdmp study?
Exaggeration and distortion - exagerate amount involved and extent of viollence. Prediction - asuming further conflict would result. Symbolisation - symbols of mods/rockers, there clothes etc labelled allowing media to link unconected events
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what did cohen argue the medias portrayal of events led to?
deviance amplification spiral by making it seem as if the problem was spreading and out of hand. led to calls for increased policing, prouduced further marginilisation of mods/rockers as deviants and less tolerence of them on in an upward spiral.
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when does cohen state moral panics often occur?
at times of social change, reflecting anxieties people feel when accepted values seem to be undermined. Moral panic was result of boundary crisis where there was uncertinity about where the boundry lay between aceptable and unaceptable behaviour.
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What do functionalist see moral panics as a result of?
responding to the sense of anomie or normlessness created by change. by dramatising the threat to society in the form of a folk devil the media raises the collective consiense when values are threatened.
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critisisms of the idea of moral panics?
what turns the amplifier on/off? why are the media able to amplify problemss into panic but not others? assumes that the societal reaction is over reaction - but whose to decide what is a proportionate reaction?
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Card 2

Front

What did Jock Young note about News?

Back

News is not discovered but manufactured. news does not simply 'exist out there' waiting to be gathered and written up, it is the outcome of social processes in which some stories are selected while others rejected.

Card 3

Front

what are news values?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

What are key news values?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

What is the fictional representation of crime?

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Preview of the front of card 5
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