{"id":423,"date":"2010-03-12T22:08:08","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T22:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/?p=423"},"modified":"2010-03-12T22:19:28","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T22:19:28","slug":"media-made-criminality-4th-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/2010\/03\/12\/media-made-criminality-4th-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Media made criminality (4th post)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two competing anxieties can be discerned in public debate and both are reflected in a large research literature. On the one hand the media are often seen as fundamentally subversive threat to law, on the other as a more or less subtle form of social control.\u00a0Some researchers tacitly imply that media images of crime do not have significant implications because the establishment of the causal relationship between images and effects is too complicated.<\/p>\n

Content of media images of crime<\/strong><\/p>\n

Deviant news<\/em><\/p>\n

Richard Ericsson and his colleagues: their concern was \u201csocial deviance and how journalists participate in defining and shaping it\u201d. Deviance in its broadest meaning, can be defined as \u201cthe behaviour of a thing or person that strays from the normal\u2026not only..criminal acts, but also..straying from organisational procedures and violations of common-sense knowledge<\/span>\u201d. More importantly, deviance is the essence of news and which journalists consider newsworthy.\u00a0 It can also be questioned on what is included in common-sense knowledge which directly affects the representation of crime reported.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ericsson et al. also found that \u201cpopular\u201d media focused overwhelmingly more often on \u201cinterpersonal\u201d conflicts and deviance, but \u201cquality\u201d ones included many items on such official deviance as rights violations, or on policy debates about criminal justice or corporate conduct.<\/p>\n

The pattern of crime news<\/em><\/p>\n

Content analyses have found systematic differences between the pattern of offences, victims, and offenders represented by the news and in official crime statistics or crime surveys. Whilst statistics and surveys may represent the \u201creal\u201d world of crime, they are open for interpretation, depending on the context.<\/p>\n

An implicit assumption that the gap between media representations of crime and the actuality supposedly disclosed by official statistics causes significant problems \u2013 they are accused of exaggerating the risks of crime, cultivating an image of the world that is \u201cscary\u201d and \u201cmean\u201d<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Fear of crime and the coping strategies it leads to (such as not venturing out at night) are deemed disproportionate to the actual risks, and thus irrational and problematic in themselves (Sparks 1992).<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Success of police and criminal justice<\/strong>: there is also the exaggeration of police success in clearing-up crime (resulting largely from Press reliance on police sources for stories). Summed up in a review of fifty-six content analyses in fifteen different countries between 1960 and 1988, \u201cthe over-representation of violent crime stories was advantageous to the police\u2026because the police are more successful in solving violent crimes than property crimes<\/span>\u201d. The media generally present a very positive image of the success and integrity of the police and criminal justice more generally.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Characteristics of offender<\/strong>: there is a clear pattern to news media portrayal of the characteristics of offenders and victims. Most studies find that offenders featuring in news reports are typically older and higher-status offenders<\/span> than those processed by the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

Characteristics of victims<\/strong>: there is a clear trend for victims to become the pivotal focus of news stories in the last three decades. This parallels the increasing centrality of victims in criminal justice and criminology. News stories exaggerate the risks faced by higher status, white, female adults of becoming victims of crime, although child victims do feature prominently. The most common victims of violence according to official crime statistics and victim surveys are poor, young, black males. However, they figure in news reporting predominantly as perpetrators.<\/p>\n

There is a predominance of stories about criminal incidents, rather than analyses of crime patterns or the possible causes of crime. There is a concentration of events rather than exploration of the underlying causes. As summed up in one survey of the literature, \u201ccrime stories in news papers consist primarily of belief accounts of discrete events<\/span>, with few details and little background material. There are very few attempts to discuss causes of or remedies for crime or to put the problem of crime into a larger perspective\u201d.<\/p>\n

Content of crime fiction<\/em><\/p>\n

Frequency of crime fiction: while there have been important changes over time in how crime is represented in fictional narratives, crime stories have always been a prominent part of popular entertainment, usually accounting for about 25% of output.<\/p>\n

The pattern of crime in fiction<\/em><\/p>\n

While crime fiction presents property crime less frequently than the reality suggested by crime statistics, the crimes it portrays are far more serious than most recorded offences.<\/p>\n

The clear-up rate is also high in fictional crime. Overwhelmingly majority of crimes are cleared up by the police but an increasing majority where they fail.<\/p>\n

Consequences of media images of crime<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most research has sought to measure two possible consequences of media representations: criminal behaviour (especially violence) and fear of crime.<\/p>\n

There are several logically necessary preconditions for a crime to occur and the media play a part in each of these, thus can affect levels of crime in a variety of ways. The preconditions are as follows:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Labelling<\/strong>: for an act to be labelled as \u201ccriminal\u201d, the act has to be perceived as \u201ccriminal\u201d by the citizens and the law enforcement officers. The media plays an important role in shaping the conceptual boundaries and recorded volumes of crime. The role of the media in helping to develop new (and erode old) categories of crime has been emphasised in most classic studies of shifting boundaries of criminal law within the \u201clabelling\u201d tradition. The media shape the boundaries of deviance and criminality, by creating new categories of offence, or changing the perceptions and sensitivities, leading to fluctuations in apparent crime.<\/li>\n
  2. Motive<\/strong>:\n
      \n
    1. Social anomie theory<\/em><\/strong>: the media are pivotal in presenting for universal emulation images of affluent life-styles, which accentuate relative deprivation and generate pressures to acquire ever higher levels of material success<\/span> regardless of the legitimacy of the means used.<\/li>\n
    2. Psychological theory<\/em><\/strong>: it has been claimed that the images of crime and violence presented by the media are a form of social learning, and may encourage crime by imitation or arousal effects<\/span>. It has also been argued that the media erode internalised control by desensitisation through witnessing repeated representations of deviance<\/span>.<\/li>\n
    3. Means<\/strong>: it has been alleged that the media act as an open university of crime, spreading knowledge of criminal techniques. However, the evidence available to support this allegation remains weak.<\/li>\n
    4. Opportunity<\/strong>: the media may increase opportunities to commit offences by contributing to the development of a consumerist ethos. The domestic hardware\/software of mass media use e.g. TVs, radios, PCs, have become common targets of property crime and their increase in popularity has been an important aspect of the spread of criminal opportunities.<\/li>\n
    5. The absence of controls<\/strong>: external control \u2013 police, law-enforcement officers; internal control \u2013 small voice of conscience; both of which may be enough to deter a ready-to-commit offender from offending. A regular recurring theme of respectable anxieties about the consequence of media images of crime is that they erode the efficacy of both external and internal controls<\/span>. E.g. ridiculing law-enforcement agents, negative representation of criminal justice or potential offender\u2019s perception of the probability of sanctions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      The media and fear of crime<\/p>\n

      Signoriello (1990): Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures \u2013 both political and religious. They may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities and other anxieties. That is the deeper problem of violence-laden television.<\/p>\n

      Causes of media images of crime<\/strong><\/p>\n

      The immediate source of news content was the ideology of the reporter, personal and professional and this view is supported by most of the earlier studies. However, a variety of organisational and professional imperatives exerted pressure for the production of news with the characteristics identified by content analyses:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. The political ideology of the Press<\/strong>: majority of the press intend to remain politically neutrality. Traditional crime reporters explicitly saw it as their responsibility to present the police and the criminal justice system in as favourable a light as possible. However, the characteristics of crime reporting were more immediately the product of a professional sense of news values rather than any explicitly political ideology.<\/li>\n
      2. The elements of \u201cnewsworthiness\u201d<\/strong>: the core elements of \u201cnewsworthiness\u201d are: immediacy, dramatisation, personalisation, titillation and novelty (hence, most news are about deviance). This explains the predominant emphasis on violent and sex offences, and the concentration on higher-status offenders and victims, especially celebrities.<\/li>\n
      3. Structural determinants of new-making<\/strong>: \u00a0\u00a0e.g. concentrating personnel on courts is economical use of resources but has the consequence of covering cleared-up cases, creating a misleading sense of police effectiveness. The police and criminal justice system control much of the information on which crime reporters rely and this gives them a degree of power as essential accredited sources.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Relevance to cybercrime<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

        Deviance is the essence of news; it is the key virtue that makes something newsworthy. This means that the selection of reported incidents depend heavily on how the media\u2019s definition of deviance. In addition, the success of police, the characteristics of the offender(s) and victim(s) involved in the incident are major factors that affects the amount of coverage an incident will receive in the media.<\/p>\n

        With regards to cybercrimes, it is interesting to find out the difference between the amount of coverage of cybercrimes in the media and the actual number of incidents in cybercrime statistics. My guess is that cybercrimes are heavily under-reported and the reasons for this under-reporting are made apparent by the findings given above. Cybercrimes are often carried out by more than one offender on a global scale and often anonymous. In some cases, they are carried out by highly-skilled but ordinary looking males (who are usually classified as social excluded or \u201cgeeks\u201d) with little valuable newsworthy characteristics. The victims of cybercrimes most often are not aware they have become victims or the impact is so insignificant that it is not newsworthy. In other words, it is hard for the media to find newsworthy stories to tell with regards to the victims of cybercrimes (with the exception of online child offences). \u00a0In addition, I believe that people are generally not interested in cybercrime-related news items because there is an a-priory assumption that cybercrime issues are too difficult to gain a visualisation in their head, as one would normally see in a picture capturing an act of violence for example.<\/p>\n

        This part has given me new insights into looking at the failure in promoting awareness of cybercrime in a climate where crime is often exaggerated by the media. Traditional crimes such as theft and violence are often exaggerated to an extent that the level of fear is irrational. Yet, the attitude towards cybercrime is opposite. The level of fear and the precautionary measures in response to the fear is not enough for the average internet users to protect themselves sufficiently. I strongly believe that content analysis of news reports is an important area in the research into raising public awareness to cybercrime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Two competing anxieties can be discerned in public debate and both are reflected in a large research literature. On the one hand the media are often seen as fundamentally subversive threat to law, on the other as a more or less subtle form of social control.\u00a0Some researchers tacitly imply that media images of crime do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[258,1],"tags":[243,292],"class_list":["post-423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminology-discipline","category-uncategorized","tag-criminology","tag-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions\/435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/comp6044\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}