Media And Mass Media Deviance

Media images may alter ideas of what we considered normal or ideal which can coincide with deviance. If a thought, feeling, or action is out of the social norm it is considered deviant. So media can show deviant actions or non-deviant actions to persuade their audience.

Hollywood scripts and television programming are filled with storylines of crime and criminal justice. The viewing public consumes crime

“Deviance in sociological context describes actions or behaviors that violate cultural norms including formally-enacted rules (e.g., crime) as well as informal violations of social norms.”

The news media has a habit of showing only the sensational crime stories, to draw the public to view, listen, or read their articles (Bohm & Haley, 2011). The unbalanced media coverage causes the criminal justice system a rough time while investigating, prosecuting, and convicting the subjects/defendants of their crimes, by only talking to victims or lay people willing to tell their story whether right or wrong.

Deviance can be defined as an absence of conformity to the social norm. Not all deviant behavior is necessarily illegal or harmful to individuals, these behaviors can range from standing in another’s personal space to murdering another individual. In some cases, it can be looked upon as a positive change or a unique and favorable act. Although, considered deviant because it is not the social norm, it still can have a very positive social aspect or lead to social change. Culture and the societies within these cultures have a significant impact on what is considered deviant and what is acceptable or even lawful behavior. The degree of deviance is measured by society’s reaction towards the action and the lawful sanctions that may take

Different forms of media, such as television, films, books, and newspapers, have similar ways of portraying the criminal justice system. The media constructs representations of crime and justice and in doing this, it presents an often dramatized representation of the criminal justice system; and this does not just influence on the public’s lay view of crime but also for criminal justice experts (Marsh, 2014). In the media it is commonly known that they are a business, and businesses need to make a profit. Because of this, the media’s portrayal of the criminal justice system has been very negative. With the news, their main purpose is to produce what sells. So many of them would edit the information they have gathered and make a story that will sell. Also the media does not show the full process of the criminal justice as a quick process, while in fact it is not. For example, last year, Netflix released a short series called “Making A Murderer”. Most people claimed that they feel like they can solve a crime when they finished watching a series. While that series is very factual, it does not hit every single step of the criminal justice process.

The images portrayed in the media: spoken, written, or visual all have an effect on social constructions, reality and perceptions of the public, and policies of the criminal justice system (Collins, 2011). In today’s society, the public lives of individuals are inundated with media. At any time there are news stories being introduced to the public audience via television, radio, and new media (Surette, 2015). The new media sources are accessible from anywhere via laptops, tablets, and smartphones. The general public is receiving media stories from posts, tweets, blogs, and news websites. Because of this mass market of competing internet news sources, there has been a decline in the newspaper and television audience, resulting in a decrease of the subject content covered by reporters (Gest, 2010). So what

Deviance is a violation of a social norm in a society. In the sociological perspective, it is not one’s individual characteristics that lead to deviant behavior but rather the social interactions, structures, and processes that lead to one’s deviant behavior. In turn, deviance is socially constructed by a society or group itself. A group dictates what is the norm in their community and what is abnormal, or deviant, in their eyes. Deviance is functional in a society.

Reality is the basis for everything covered in the media. The media, unlike any other force, is one of the most essential aspects that comes with effectively shaping the minds and actions of the many. Perhaps Malcolm X said it best, "The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses” (Fontaine). Crime dramas, like all other subcategories in the drama field, act as a reflection of reality. Because of this, one constantly faces the inevitable truth that the crimes conveyed in these shows aren't so far removed from reality as they might hope. Crime dramas take one's deepest fears and lays them out on the

Media has become a powerful source of knowledge, and a great breakthrough in human history. Who can regret that media is a daily need in our lives. Media has the ability and control to adjust to all levels of knowledge in people. Media helps us to escape from our daily lives and our problems in times of stress. Thou Media as proved to be beneficial by educating, entertaining and informing us, it has also have its downfall, to cause many bad influences to the younger audience. Media has influenced us to conduct bad behavior, breed violence among teens and fear to the public, thus causing a lot of negative conflicts among ourselves. Television, Music, Internet, and more, are just some of the media exposure that needs to be censored and

Deviance can be defined as the transgression of social norms. Deviant behavior may not always be criminal behavior. It can be as minor as farting or picking your nose in public to as serious as vandalizing someone's property or murder. Societal expectations provide orderliness that when society finds an act unacceptable or offensive, you would be considered a deviant. Power plays a big role in the construction of a deviant behavior. Power can manipulate the individual and society and how they view deviance. The following discussions apply three sociological theoretical approaches to deviance based on the Fifth Edition Social Problems book.

Media plays a significant role in the United States. What first started as limited information on paper has now transformed into endless amounts of news, data, and entertainment that we can easily reach out of our pockets. Media has evolved into two forms: print media which consists of magazines and newspapers, and there are broadcast media which consists of television, radio, etc. Broadcasting media is now considered the most prominent media outlet out of these two because it is used more frequently, and it is more accessible than ever. Radio media, which started in 1920 with the invention of the radio channels and broadcasts, has now evolved into many different forms like television, movies, video games, and the internet. A very controversial and worrying topic for parents and guardians nowadays is the amount of violence that is now being used and broadcasted in media. Many people believe that violent media is the main reason why there is youth violence in America. Violent media doesn’t precisely contribute to violent youth behavior because research shows that even though the amount of violence in media has increased over the past years, the number of youth homicides and violent events have decreased. There are also broader factors that contribute to youth violence rather than violent media, like a history of violent victimization, low parent involvement, and even living in socially disorganized neighborhoods. And although violent media seems like a bad thing to be

In the first lecture on representation of crime and justice, the main forms and contents of media were discussed in relation to crime. The meaning of media, in a nutshell, is the tools and technologies of communication. However, media can also be identified as the institution of mass communication and the forms of “media,” newspaper, television and radio are the force that creates media content that is viewed and consumed by a large audience locally and globally. Media according to Marshall McLuhan is any technology that “creates extensions of the human body and senses.” The development of the three stages of media and communication including the written word, the printing press and the telegraph, revolutionized the ways people convey messages and ideas to the public. Particularly the printing press and the telegraph primarily focused on the reproduction and distribution of information for larger audiences and instantaneous exchange of information across a vast area.

These past 8 weeks has totally contribute to my understanding of deviant behavior, but at the same time, it changes some of my views toward the word ‘deviant’ as well. Deviance, as mentioned in my first discussion post, varies from people to people, time to time, culture to culture and more. There is no one definite point to define what behavior is deviant and what is not. Besides that, how do we classify one particular action as deviant? Do we classify it because it harms someone? What if that action somehow benefit someone but creates some extent of harm to another person? Throughout this 8 weeks of discussion and short paper, I realized there is no universally accepted deviant behavior like what I discussed in my first discussion post.

TV shows have long been known as agents of socialization that define and expose us to many prevalent concepts in society. This includes deviance, meaning the act, trait or belief that departs from the norm and causes a negative reaction. Certain TV shows expose and define different forms of deviance and its consequences to the viewers, who, in turn, follow these forms even if the show was made to initially entertain. These shows aim to display that most deviance on TV is based on promoting conformity and displaying punishment for those who steer away from it. The viewers then associate deviance with how they should and shouldn’t behave, shaping the way our society runs. One such TV show, the one I chose to analyze, is “The Blacklist.”