1. Get you thinking Crime in the media
Jot down as many examples of crime in media that you can think of, these can be real & fictional

2. Know: that there is a relationship between the media and crime
Understand: explain the ways in which the media distorts the reality of crime and deviance.
Skills: Evaluate view that the media creates a distorted view of crime and can cause crime.

3. Crime as consumer spectacle
What do you think this means? What evidence do you have that crime has become a consumer spectacle?

4. Crime as consumer spectacle
Evidence:
Crime is a major theme in popular culture.
Fictional and non-fictional crime stories have provided significant sources of spectacle and mass entertainment.
In fiction, comic books, thrillers and films often have acts of crime and violence as central features.
Media news is full of stories of crime and deviance – info about crime is packaged to entertain, for example Crimewatch.
Hayward and Young (2012) argue that advertisers have turned images of crime and deviance into tools for selling products.

5. A distorted image of crime
Over represent violent and sexual crime
Portrays victims as older and middle class
Exaggerates police success
Exaggerate the risk of victimisation
Crime is reported as a series of separate events
Overplays extraordinary crime

6. What did these sociologists say about media representations of crime?
Ditton and Duffy (1983)
Marsh (1991)
Schlesinger and Tumber (1994)
Soothill and Walby (1991)
What evidence do we have that the media presents a distorted image of crime?

7. News values and crime coverage
News is a social construction. It does not simply exist ‘out there’ waiting to be gathered in and written up by a journalist. Instead, it is the outcome of a social process in which some stories are selected while others are rejected. According to Cohen and Young (1973), news is not discovered but manufactured. News values are the criteria by which journalists and editors decide whether a story is newsworthy enough to make it into a newspaper or bulletin.

8. Novelty or unexpectedness
News values
Immediacy
Dramatisation
Personalisation
Higher status
Simplification
Novelty or unexpectedness
Risk
Violence
What are these?

9. News Values
Greer and Reiner (2012) point out that the media are always seeking out newsworthy stories of crime and deviance, and they exploit the possibilities for a ‘good story’ by dramatizing, exaggerating, over-reporting and sensationalising some crimes out of all proportion to their actual extent in society. Jewkes (2011) suggests that news values guide the choices writers, editors and journalists make when they decide what stories are newsworthy to report and what to leave out. Greer (2005) suggests that it is these news values that explain why all mainstream media tend to exaggerate the extent of violent crime.

10. The backwards law
Surveys show that the majority of people base their knowledge of crime and the CJS on the media rather than direct experience. However, Surette (2010) suggests that there is what he calls a ‘backwards law’, with the media constructing images of crime and justice which are an opposite or backwards version of reality.

11. The backwards law
Greer and Reiner (2012) suggest this backwards law is shown by media news and fiction misrepresenting the reality of crime in the following ways:
By hugely over-representing and exaggerating sex, drug and serious violence related crimes, and by under-representing the risks of the most common offence of property crime.
By portraying property crime as far more serious and violent than most recorded offences, which are fairly routine and trivial.
By over-exaggerating police effectiveness in solving crimes.
By exaggerating the risks of becoming victims faced by higher-status white people, older people, women and children.
By emphasising individual incidents of crime, rather than providing and understanding or analysis of crime patterns or the causes of crime.

12. Left realists suggest media reporting of crime disguises the reality that both offenders and victims are mainly from the working class and poor. Marxists point to the concealment of the significance of white collar and corporate crimes, such as widespread tax and other frauds, environmental pollution, and the manufacture of harmful drugs, which rarely get reported

13. Outline three media news values (6 marks)

14. Media as a cause of crime
There are a number of ways in which the media might cause crime and deviance. These include:
Imitation – by providing deviant role models, resulting in copycat behaviour.
Arousal, e.g. through viewing violent or sexual imagery.
Desensitisation, e.g. through repeated viewing of violence.
By transmitting knowledge of criminal techniques.
As a target for crime, e.g. theft of TVs.
By stimulating desires for unaffordable goods, e.g. through advertising.
By glamourising offending.

15. The media as a cause of crime and fear of crime
Views on the media causing crime or a fear of crime
Livingstone (1996)
Despite limited evidence to support the idea of media being harmful for children society is pre occupied by this idea
Gerbner et al
Those who watched more that 4 hours of TV per day had a higher levels of fear of crime
Schlesinger and Tumber (1992)
Correlation between media consumption and fear of crime tabloid readers and those who watch lots of television were scared of becoming a victim of violent crime, especially muggings.
Greer and Reiner (2012)
Most research on the effect of media ignores the meanings viewers give to violence in the media. How we perceive cartoon and game violence is different to violence in the news
Lea and Young (Left Realists)
The media presents and image of a lifestyle of ‘must haves’ this intensifies the sense of relative deprivation for the most marginalised in society, the media set the success goals and the legitimate opportunity to achieve these is not available for all
Hayward and Young (2012)
The ‘mediascape’ of constant images blurs the lines between the image and reality of crime. Gang assaults may be staged for the camera, police body and car cameras change the way the police behave and are used as promotional material for the police
Fenwick and Haywood
Crime is ‘commodified’ it is packaged as and marketed to young people as a romantic, exciting, cool and fashionable cultural symbol.

16. Moral Panics
All students will identify aspects of moral panics. Most students will be able to analyse the role of the media in creating moral panics. Some students will evaluate the impact of moral panics in today’s society.

17. Exam Question
Item A Some sociologists claim that the media do not just report criminal and deviant behaviour, but may actually be a cause of crime and deviance. Some media portrayals of crime may appear to be very realistic. The media also present a number of different lifestyles in a wide range of types of programmes, such as ‘reality’ TV, advertising, documentary and fiction, which some audiences may see as attractive. The same or similar crime storylines and images may be constantly repeated. Applying material from Item A, analyse two ways in which the media may cause crime. (10 marks)

18. Moral Panics
A moral panic is an exaggerated over-reaction by society to a perceived problem – usually driven or inspired by the media – where the reaction enlarges the problem out of all proportion to its real seriousness.

19. Examples of moral panics
Teddy boys and Beatniks
1960s
Mods and Rockers
Drug abusers
1970s
Mugging
Youth culture – punks and skinheads
1980s
Acid house parties
Drug abuse – glue sniffing
1990s
Ecstasy
Joy-riding
Football hooligans
2000s
Asylum seekers
Muslim terrorists

20. https://www. youtube. com/watch
Watch the clip and discuss the following questions:
1. What was the moral panic of the 1980s? 2. Why did Sarah Thornton find the clubs so alien? 3. How did the first ‘acid house’ album predict moral panic? 4. How did the clubbers use the term ‘moral panic’? 5. Give examples of the positive and negative coverage given to acid house. 6. Why is negative coverage more popular for those involved in a culture? 7. What was the impact on legislation of the moral panic surrounding acid house? 8. How did the clubbers react? 9. How does the police officer describe the clubs? 10. What was the impact of media exposure on this subculture by 1995?

21. Cohen – Folk Devils and Moral Panics
Watch the video clip Use this and your textbook to complete the following:
Produce a flow diagram to show the sequence of events that led to this moral panic.
How does Cohen put this moral panic into a wider social context?
How do functionalists view moral panics?
How have neo-Marxists used the concept of a moral panic?

22. Summary - explaining moral panics
Briefly outline how the following theories and concepts can be used to explain moral panics:
Interactionism – labelling and SFP
Boundary crisis
Functionalism – response to anomie
Neo-Marxism – capitalist crisis
Which explanation to you think is most successful? Why?

23. How relevant is the concept of a moral panic today?

24. Different views on moral panics
McRobbie and Thornton (1995)
Pluralists and postmodernists
Beck (1992) – late modernists
Steve Hall (2012) – critical theorists

25. Different views on moral panic
McRobbie and Thornton (1995) The concept of a moral panic is no longer useful for understanding crime, and is outdated in the age of the new media. New media technology, the growing sophistication of media audiences in a media-saturated society, 24/7 news, competition between media organisations and different types of media have changed the reporting of, and reaction to, events that once might have caused a moral panic.

26. Different views on moral panic
Pluralist and postmodernist views There is now such a huge diversity of media reports and interpretations of events, and of opinions and reactions to these events that people today are much more sceptical of media reports and are less likely to believe them. This means that it is more difficult for the media to define issues or events in such a way that they can develop into a moral panic. News is also updated and reported on almost minute-by-minute. As a result, most criminal and deviant events now have such a short shelf-life that they are unlikely to be newsworthy for long enough to become a moral panic.

27. Different views on moral panic
Beck (1992) – late modernist In contemporary ‘risk society’ there are now so many risks and uncertainties that many of the things that used to generate moral panics have become a normal part of daily life. The concept is now too vague to explain a situation in which daily life is routinely marked by new crises of some kind, and where ‘crime consciousness’ is a part of normal, every day life. It is therefore now less easy to define what a moral panic might be.

28. Different views on moral panic
Steve Hall (2012) – critical theorist Dismisses the whole concept of moral panics. He says that the media do sensationalise specific crimes but they also overstate the CJS ability to solve the crimes! Therefore, any public concern is soothed away. Also, Hall argues that there are rational concerns about real crimes, particularly in disadvantaged communities. Crime produces real and distressing harm to all sorts of victims. Sociologists who dismiss this as a moral panic are denying the anxieties that people have. Moral panic are a zombie concept.

29. Key terms Folk devil Moral entrepreneur Self-fulfilling prophecy
Moral entrepreneur
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Deviant career
Master status
Deviancy amplification spiral

30. Exam Practice
Item B A media-generated moral panic occurs when the media present an exaggerated over-reaction to an issue which as a result makes the issue seem a much greater problem than it actually is. Usually, a group is represented as a ‘folk devil’ – a threat to society. The media amplification initiates a spiral of distortion, stereotypical representation and condemnation by powerful groups in society. However, this approach has been criticised for failing to explain why moral panics develop in the first place. Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate sociological explanations of media-generated moral panics. (30 marks)

31. What is the relationship between new information media and crime and social control?

32. Cyber-crime
Thomas and Loader (2000) define cyber-crime as computer-mediated activities that are either illegal or considered illicit by some, and that are conducted through global electronic networks. Jewkes (2003) notes, the internet creates opportunities to commit both conventional crimes, such as fraud, and new crimes, such as software piracy.

33. What are these types of cyber-crime?
Wall (2001): 4 types of cyber crime
Cyber-trespass
Cyber-deception and theft
Cyber-pornography
Cyber-violence
What are these types of cyber-crime?

34. What positives have new information and communications technologies provided?

35. Exam Question
Item A In late modern society, the mass media are at the centre of culture, and the media are obsessed with crime. As a result, they are our main source of knowledge about crime. However, the media present us with a distorted picture. For example, crime fiction, whether TV ‘cop shows’ or the individual genius of a Sherlock Holmes, offers a false image of policing. Similarly, many sociologists accuse the news media of creating folk devils and of promoting unrealistic fears of crime. Many people also blame the media for encouraging criminal behaviour in the young and the poorly educated. Others note both the criminal opportunities and the scope for surveillance offered by the new media. Using material from Item A and elsewhere, evaluate sociological views of the relationship between crime and the mass media. (30 marks)