- Sociologists look into three things when studying the relationship between media and crime:
- How the media represent, both in fiction and non-fiction.
- The media are a cause of crime and the fear of crime.
- Moral panics and media amplification of deviance
- Cybercrime
Media representation of crime
- Williams and Dickinson found that British Newspapers dedicate 30% of their news space to crime.
- However, the media give a distorted image of crime, criminals and policing e.g. as compared to official statistics:
- They over represent violent and sexual crimes.
- They portray criminals and victims as older and more middle class than those usually found in the CJS, Felson calls this the ‘age fallacy’
- The media exaggerate police success in clearing up cases
- The media exaggerate the risk of victimisation e.g. to women
- The media over play extraordinary crime – Felson calls this the dramatic fallacy.
News values and crime coverage
- The distorted picture of crime painted by the news, media reflects the fact news is a social construction.
- Cohen and Young note, news isn’t discovered by manufactured.
- News doesn’t simply exist ‘out there’ waiting to be gathered in and written up by the journalist.
- Instead, it is the outcome of a social process whereby some potential stories are selected while others are rejected.
- New Values – A key element in the social construction of news is the concept of ‘news values’ – the criteria that journalists and editors use in order to decide whether a story is newsworthy enough to make it into newspaper or news bulletin.
- If a news stories can be told in terms of some of these news values, it has a better chance of making the news. Key news influencing the selection of crime stories include.
- Immediacy
- Dramatization – action and exactment
- Personalisation – human interest stories about individuals
- Higher status persons and ‘celebrities’
- Simplification – eliminating ‘shades of grey’
- Novelty or unexpectedness – a new angle
- Risk – victim-centred stories about vulnerability and fear.
- Violence – especially visible and specular acts.
- Cohen and Young note, news isn’t discovered by manufactured.