Media and crime Flashcards
(13 cards)
How does the media contribute to the our understanding of crime?
The media is one of our main sources of finding out about crime, so our perceptions and stereotypes of crime are widely based on the stereotypes seen in the media.
How does the media cause crime?
Glamourising offending, highlighting desires and goods and passing on criminal techniques.
What is the fear of crime, and what do Schlesinger and Tumbler find to support this?
Instead of causing crime, the media amplifies and distorts the amount of crime happening so causes an increased fear of crime in society.
They found a correlation between media consumption and fear of crime, with tabloid readers and heavy users of TV expressing greater fear of becoming a victim.
What does Left Realists Lea and Young state about relative derivation and crime?
They argue that the media amplifies the deprivation among the poor and marginalised, normalising crime and encourages them to commit crime.
What does Hayward and Jock state regarding cultural criminology, the media and crime?
The media encourages people to ‘consume’ crime in the form of images of crime.
This is due to the public loving to rad about and view images of crime, so they are constructed for our viewing, so immersed in a ‘mediascape’, blurring reality.
What does Fenwick and Heywood state about the commodification of crime?
That crime is packaged and marketed to young people as a romantic, exciting, cool and fashionable cultural symbol.
E.g. Nike and Puma and romanticising gangs.
What does Cohen state about the mods and rockers are and how this links to the media?
The media has played a part in constructing moral panic, embarking on a ‘moral crusade’ against the identified ‘folk devils’.
The mods and rockers case was a minor array in Clacton that the media portrayed as ‘folk devils’.
The media created a moral panic over a small argument between gang groups. The media then encouraged more coverage/ interviews with each group to encourage the rivalry and exaggerating the violence.
That caused more violence and more people to commit crimes.
Creating a moral panic using three elements:
- exaggeration and distortion.
- Prediction
- Symbolism
What is a criticism of the idea of moral panics?
It assumes that societal reaction is disproportionate and an overreaction.
Left realists viewing the fear as rational.
What is the functionalism view on the media and crime?
They believe that the media reflects a true and real picture of crime.
What is the Marxist view of the media and crime?
The media only highlight w/c crime, ignoring white collar/ corporate crime.
Althusser: would describe the media as an ideological state apparatus.
What is the feminist view of the media and crime?
The media plays done the extent of women as victims of crime.
Thy argue that the sexually explicit representation of women in all forms of pornography renders all some potentially unsafe since they encourage predatory attitudes among men.
How does the new media and crime affect crime?
The arrival of the internet lead to fears of cyber crime due to the speed and scale of it.
What does Wall state about the new media and crime?
There has been a rise in cyber crime Wall put into four categories:
- Cyber-trespass
- Cyber-deception and theft
- Cyber-pornography
- Cyber-violence
