Media And Crime Research Paper

Criminology in the beginning was ruled as the classical school of thought and was looked at as crime being a product of rational choice that can be controlled with some form of deterrence method. Since then it has been expanded on with new developed ideas of why crime is committed, including theories that say that biological, psychological and sociological issues are the causes for crime.

This essay will outline how crime theories are able to assist in recognizing the causes of criminal activity, as well as demonstrating two criminological theories to two particular crimes. Overviews of trends, dimensions and victim/offenders characteristics of both crime groups will be specified. The two particular crimes that will be demonstrated throughout this essay are; Violent Crime (focusing on Assault) being linked with social learning theory and White Collar crime (focusing on terrorism) being linked to General Strain theory. In criminology, determining the motive of why people commit crimes is crucial. Over the years, many theories have been developed and they continue to be studied as criminologists pursue the best answers in eventually diminishing certain types of crime including assaults and terrorism, which will be focused on.

I believe the media plays an important role of shape understanding of crime and the criminal justice system when we were young. When we were just children, everything new could affect and change us easily, just like writing on a blank paper. I saw some cruel crime cases on news and sometimes it really made me afraid. For example, when I was only 10, there was a news bout trafficking children and their tragic stories, I was nervous every time when I was alone outside. However, when I grew up and learned more about crime from education, the media is hard to affect me anymore. The media we saw must be filtered and add lots of literary elements

A large number of articles nowadays consistently debates about the way crime is shown throughout the media is in fact incredibly different from what official research and other records tell us, this is showing how the media misrepresents the nature of crime. Below will provide an overview of how the media misrepresent evidence for real-life crime and how they do this. It is seen that the media is the public’s primary source about crime and this has helped to the exploitation of the inaccuracy with presenting the nature of crime.

It 's not difficult to gauge what the popular notions of crime in the United States are. Engage in any polite conversation over dinner or cocktails and one is likely to hear similar themes: "crime is out of control, it 's just not the same world we grew up in, it 's not safe to walk down the street anymore, it 's a mean world out there," etc. The underlying theme that can be drawn from these notions is fear. There is a widespread conception that crime is a rampant problem in this country and that violent crime and others are on the rise. However, these beliefs are not supported at all by the facts, even those put forth by our own law enforcement agencies. So why then, are most

The news media as most other print, radio, and television media are in a constant competition for ratings. A direct result of this rating competition is the sensationalizing of the media reports received by the general public. One of the most significant problems resulting from the news media’s misrepresentation of crime is the mistrust it creates between the general public and the criminal justice system. If the public were only to believe what is reported by the various news media, then the assumption would have to be that all the crime in this country is at the felonious level in which someone is usually killed with a gun. According to Bohm and Haley (2011), the distribution of police calls indicates that the majority of crime is anything

The media tends to favour crimes that are uncommon and typically shocking, Roberts and Grossman (2016) explained further “to be worthy of coverage, a crime must meet a certain threshold of significance, and violent crimes are the most likely to meet that threshold” (p. 30). I find this interesting because presenting more extreme crimes to the public tends to skew the view of crimes in general and can breed fear by making it seem like violent crimes are happening more often and crime rates are on the rise, when that is not necessarily the case. According to Roberts and Grossman (2016), the media often tend to report stranger-on-stranger crimes (p. 32). This specifically stood out to me because the media is portraying strangers as the ones who are dangerous when in reality violent crimes are mostly committed by people from our personal lives. I find that over reporting stranger violence causes the public to be uneducated about domestic violence, as Roberts and Grossman stated “92 percent of female homicide victims knew their killer, and in upwards of 60 percent of theses cases the killer was a current spouse, or ex-spouse or a boyfriend of the victim” (p. 32). These statistics are shockingly high and the media should be reporting on this to help raise awareness to violence against

Desensitization to violence is a big issue around the world. This is where people see and hear about violence and we become used to it so we thing it is normal. We don’t just see violence once or twice a month but 100 of times a day. This almost constant report of violence has a very large impact on how we see violence. For Example. The School Shooting that happed a few weeks ago is a bad and very negative subject, when something like this happens we feel sympathy for the people that lost their lives and angry at the person that committed the crime and we almost want to know why this happened. But the way to report on a shooting is not the ‘Blanket coverage’ 24/7 updates. And we should not focused on the person that committed the crime. Because this turns them into sort

As with most controversial issues, it is clear that the media play a strong role in people’s perception and fear of crime. Psychologists have proven that cognitive biases can skew our perceptions (Fogg, 2013). Crime is very prominent is all media and Robert Reiner (1997) claims:

In chapter six “Police, Offenders and Victims in the Media”, it discusses the relationship between what the media portrays and puts out and the fears the public gets from it. The media tends to cover crime stores, but they selectively distort it so they can manipulate the public’s perception of the issue. This results in a false picture of crime that fuels the public’s fears and anxieties. When we talk about the publics fear we find that it is polarized along theoretical lines, which come from critical criminologist and left realists. We can also see that the media misrepresents victimization. This is because they present certain types of people to be more at risk of being a victim of a crime.

Social Media plays a big role is emphasizing the daily events that occur. Media covers the daily events that occur throughout the world, and it completely up to them how they want to showcase an event (Gold, 2003). A lot of the information provided by media is anecdotal, meaning it is not necessarily true or reliable as it is based on personal accounts rather than facts of research (Gold, 2003). Looking through a theoretical perspective, and from a social constructionist approach, one can assume there is a problem because the public sees it as such, but the problem does not necessarily exists in an objective reality (Graziano et al, 2010). For example, take a look at the saying “there is more than meets the eye”, basically stating that though the media presents a situation, there is probably more to that story. Media acts as a frame to provide a story line or plot introduction coherence to discrete pieces of information for the public but does not clearly state the whole situation (Graziano et al, 2010). Media easily relies on police as a source for information to make quick and creditable statements

According to Gavin, in the text Criminological and Forensic Psychology, many psychologists have attempted to explain crime by coming up with multiple social theories. Gavin states that psychologist suggest that those who commit crimes have “individual differences” that “make it more likely than some people to commit crimes…” and that these social theories say that these crimes are a result of “the breakdown in social structures”. One of the first social theories that was introduced came about in 1938 by Merton, his theory is known as Strain Theory. Gavin goes on to define Strain Theory as the “social structures exert pressures which may lead an individual to commit crime”. His theory was a result of determining the “relationship between society and the values and behavior of members of that society was pivotal in the sociological examination of crime” (Gavin, 54). What strain theory attempts to explain is that crime is a result of instability or problems; for example, pressures of society and societal goals can influence an individual to commit a crime (Gavin, 54).

One of the most significant news stories that have occurred recently is the David Petraeus affair. The scandal broke all over the major news networks as well as social media and has been at the forefront of the nightly news programs for the last several days. In order to understand the issue, though, one has to look at it from a criminology standpoint. There are concerns that Petraeus may have done something criminal in his actions because of the classified nature of so much of the information he had available to him. There are three different theories that can be considered here under the guise of social process. These are differential association theory, differential reinforcement theory, and neutralization theory.

Crime is considered to be some breech or violation of behaviors which stand in opposition of rules or norms instituted by some governing body. Some actions are considered to be crimes throughout most societies in history; murder or physical abuse can serve as an example as an example. However, the majorities of things that are considered crimes are more of a subjective nature and vary widely in different societies. In many societies it is a crime to be an atheist or to be homosexual for example, while in other societies these items are tolerated and in some cases are considered social norms. Furthermore, when an individual is considered to have committed a crime, the punishments for these crimes also can vary widely depending on the culture, the social norms, the position of the authority figure, as well as a plethora of other factors. This paper will analyze some of the different forms of crime and they develop and how they are treated in different societies.

Since ancient times, males have always gone against laws in the society. The beliefs of sociological criminology in the environment have prevented its attempts to prove this theory. The neurohormonal changes between male and female individuals tell more about behavioral differences as they apply to crime and defiance. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation research in 1992, men constituted 89% of the violent arrest crimes and 76% of the property crimes arrests. Up to date, the trend has not changed as men continue to be found on the wrong side of the law compared to their female counterparts. Despite the research found, sociological criminology has failed to provide enough evidence on its emphasis on environmentalism.