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Mass media and crime - Coggle Diagram
Mass media and crime
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Media effects on crime
Copycat arguments
McCabe and Martin:
- copycat violence / copycat crime, coping crimes you see in media
- disinhibition effect of media violence
- inhibitions = learn behaviour via socialisation, controlling impulses
- disinhibition effect = exposed to things via the media, breaks down inhibitions, makes you think impulses (e.g. sexual abuse) is okay
Arousal argument:
- seeing something in media triggers something predisposed in you, arouses it
- tendency in a person brought out
Desensitisation argument:
- breaking down what is initially a sensitised reaction & event
- become numb to previously shocking things, desensitised to it
- it is constantly exposed to crime in media, no longer sensitive to it
Fenwick and Hayward:
commodification of crime
- crime & gangsters are cool & exciting, so products associate with this
- need image of 'deviant urban cool' to sell products
- street criminal looks
- this is guerrilla marketing, selling products with an association with deviant to get it to sell e.g. hip-hop gangster rap culture, used in marketing due to association with criminality
- all of this adds to glamorisation of crime
Mass media provides info on crime:
- helps inform criminals how to commit crime
- gives tips on how to succeed & get away with it
Lea and Young:
- relative deprivation causes crime
- media contributes to the feeling of relative deprivation (e.g. celebrities, holidays etc), cannot afford many products, media makes it appear these things are accessible
- utilitarian crime as believe they should be able to access these things
- non-utilitarian crime due to frustration e.g. drug taking
Fear of crime:
left & right realist
- amount of crime reporting, exacerbating
- leads to fear of crime, believe they will be a victim of these horrific things
Criticisms:
- copycat crime itself is a media myth
- correlation doesnt mean causation e.g. James Bulger & Child's Play 2
- media portrayal of violence can actually result in sensitisation
- same arguments apply with the commodification of crime
Cyber-crime
- arrival of new types of media is often met with a moral panic, e.g. computer games undermining public morality and corrupting young
- same is true of the Internet because of the speed it has developed and its scale: 2/3 world’s population now online
Douglas Thomas and Brian Loader:
- arrival of the Internet has led to fears of cyber-crime
- they define as computer-mediated activities that are either illegal or considered illicit by some, and that are conducted through global electronic networks
Yvonne Jewkes:
- Internet creates opportunities to commit ‘conventional crimes’, e.g. fraud, and ‘new crimes using new tools’, e.g. software piracy
Wall identifies 4 categories of cybercrime:
1) cyber-tresspass (crossing boundaries into others’ cyberproperty e.g. hacking such as spreading viruses)
2) cyber-deception and theft (e.g. identity theft, 'phishing', violation of intellectual property rights)
3) cyber-pornography (included porn with minors & opportunities for children to access porn online)
4) cyber-violence (doing psychological & inciting physical harm, included cyber-stalking and hate crimes against minority groups, as well as bulling by text or on social media)
Policing & global cyber-crime:
- policing cyber-crime is difficult partly because of the sheer scale of the Internet and the limited resources of the police, and also because of its globalised nature, which poses problems of jurisdiction (e.g. in which country should someone be prosecuted?)
- also big problem of anonymity
- police culture also gives cyber-crime a low priority, seen as lacking the excitement of more conventional policing
- however, new information and communication technology (ICT) also provides the police and state with greater opportunities for surveillance and control of the population
- Jewkes argues, ICT permits routine surveillance through the use of CCTV cameras, electronic databases, digital fingerprinting and ‘smart’ identity cards, as well as the installation of listening devices called ‘carnivores’ at Internet service providers to monitor email traffic
Moral panics
Stan Cohen:
- invented moral panics, macro-scale labelling theory, panic something deviant is happening
- folk devils = menice amongst society
'mods and rockers':
- print media, moral panic in the 1960s of teenage 'mods and rockers'
- played on fear of teenagers having money & freedom like never before
- fuelled by clothes & music like The Beatles
- narrative of young people that smashed windows on motorbikes in Clacton-on-sea, quiet weekend in politics so blew up
- youngsters began to embrace 'mod' and 'rocker' labels
- excitement of scene, more people heading down to seaside towns & joining in
- what began as nothing, turned into a moral panic
- began ideas of 'mods' vs 'rockers', they weren't but caused fighting
- societal reaction, fear of moral breakdown
media inventory (to create moral panic):
- exaggeration & distortion (clacton)
- prediction (prediction of more problems, e.g. more problems in next half term holiday in location so more go down there)
- symbolisation (images of Mods & Rockers, music, language, clothes - makes it real in peoples minds)
Criticisms:
- societal over-reaction is a value judgement, shouldn't society react to fear of child abuse etc
- application still doesnt explain initial deviant act
McRobbie and Thornton:
- media is now interactive, dont passively accept media messages as claimed in the hypodermic syringe model
- bigger range of media to find other explanations of a crime issue
- moral panics have become so routine that they have less impact
- societal reaction to a moral is never uniform anymore as no single value consensus
Medium of communication
- talking to eachother
- now, it is mass media
- first form was written e.g. newspapers
- now, we are bombarded with info daily