Media And Social Media Essay

In tune with the worldwide development and popularity of Hip Hop music, “a symbiotic relationship between culture and law”1 has emerged. “Culture shapes the law, and law is a product of culture”.2 Our society is reminded and alerted to daily neighborhood, state and national crimes via not only online and television news forums, but the various social platforms now heavily relied on: YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. However, it can be argued that these new advances in technology and

Media is everywhere nowadays. Whether it’s billboards, radio, commercials, trailers, or product placement, the media has spent the better part of a century perfecting the ability to sway public opinion. How could this not have an impact on the Criminal Justice System? There is an old saying, perception is reality. This clearly applies to the narrative shaping abilities that the media poses. Although not explicitly resulting in an effect on Criminal Justice Policy, Communication Theorist George Gerbner proposed Cultivation Theory, also known as mean world syndrome, which refers to the phenomenon that a viewer experiences when they consume too much violent media content, where in that, they begin to perceive the world as more dangerous than it actually is.

The police and the media have been very closely related to one another for a very long time and they will always have to have a relationship with them. They are so closely related because crime itself is considered news that is valuable to the people of a community. Without the media and law enforcement working together, many people would not know what was going on and/or how to act about certain crimes if there are any within their communities. With that in mind, law enforcement must keep up with all the advancing technologies that involve any kind of media. This includes social media, print, internet, television, and cell phones as well. Keeping up with all these different media platforms, working together with the media, and staying on

Criminology is continuously changing and developing. Advances of technology have made media our primary news source for crime. We believe the stories told by our local news media, not doubting a word because these sources are supposedly reliable. Nevertheless, they sometimes do spread false information. It may be intentional or unintentional. According to Cohen, media presence amplifies a problem which did not previously exist (Steeves and Milford, 2015) thus creating a moral panic. As media influence increases, it is necessary for criminologists to study moral panics, such as the Columbine School shootings or the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.

Pop culture media, like Law and Order, has a way of showing people how crime is portrayed. Case (2013), mentions that past studies about the representation of crime in the media has increasingly shown fear to the public and portraying unrealistic standards of how crime is in the real world. Media likes to exaggerate how things truly are in the real world, which is why people believe what the media portrays. People will believe that everything they see in a television show can truly happen in the real world, which certain things can happen but not everything. If people end up believing in how the media portrays crime then people will be living in fear of their society being more violent than it actually is (Case, 2013).

Since the up-climb of social media began in 2003, law enforcement has greatly adapted to the social media network in order to better communicate with the public and to improve their protocol. Much of police work is unappreciated and unknown of. Therefore, some departments have taken it upon themselves to educate the public via social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook. This is done in order to inform the community of what their department does, and to build confidence and trust towards their agency. Around the country, law enforcement agencies see social media as both beneficial and damaging. Thus, with the awareness that social media is here to stay, law enforcement has chosen to adjust to these social changes and to use them in their benefit.

Police were more advanced in technology in 2015 than they were in 2005. Police officers now use social media websites to monitor criminal activities, especially when criminals are dumb enough to post weapons and talk about crimes they have committed. This can be useful in preventing a crime from occurring when someone gets on social media and makes a threat that they’re going to kill someone.

Customary news outlets, such as the radio or the newspaper, generally will depend on social media to not only scatter details and information regarding a case, but also to utilize as a source of interesting stories. One should also recall how often he or she has looked at crime videos on video websites like YouTube. They surface relatively quickly and gain popularity almost immediately. This aggressive social media manifestation can have a profound effect on the criminal justice system. Because of the presence that social media platforms have in our society today, there are specific social issues that are either discouraged or pushed, which result in the government being forced to behave differently than they used to, as information did not used to be so easily scattered. This is partly why the Vietnam War was so different from past wars; people gained information

1. If it wasn’t for social media the truth of these cases would not be seen and once again silenced by a bias police report. (“Police brutality raises social media shock waves.”)

Though it is refreshing that news coverage is no longer solely focused on offenders, the increased coverage of crime victims can have unintended consequences (notes). The media tends to increase coverage levels for crimes (or perpetrators or victims) that are “unusual, unexpected, strange, or perverse” (Karmen, 2015, p. 47); in turn, increased media coverage levels can lead to additional pain and suffering for crime victims and their

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.

Crime is overwhelmingly present in popular culture, which encompasses the ideas, perspectives, attitudes, images, and other phenomena within the mainstream of a given culture. Behaviors become crimes through a process of social construction. Popular culture reinforces the construction of crime by increasing public awareness certain criminal behavior and associating certain attitudes with crime. In Western culture, for example, sex crimes are perceived as particularly malicious offenses committed by sick and perhaps sociopathic individuals whose actions are inhuman and beyond redemption. The attitude towards individuals who have committed sex crimes, however, is the product of a socially constructed panic stimulated by media depictions.

One of the major roles of the social media in modern policing is acting as an analytical tool. Criminal investigations tend to incorporate use of social media in creating leads towards the suspects . This is mainly because most people have the tendency in updating their whereabouts on social media and even it is possible to know the character of someone by accessing their accounts.

All things considered, what the media covers and how much they chose to cover has significantly changed over the years, the most apparent in crime coverage. This consistent coverage of crime gives the audience an opportunity to interact with the media. They can feel a part of the intensity of an investigation, cheer on the enforcers, become immersed in their stereotypes. On the other hand, they can appreciate deviance for its resilience to overcome and resist

Over the course of the semester, I have learned about numerous aspects of Mass media and crime. We have broken these aspects into nine major topics based on what they focused on. The nine major topics includes theorizing media and crime, construction of crime, media and moral panics, media construction of children, media misogyny, police, offenders, and victims in the media, crime and prison films, role of the internet in crime and crime and surveillance culture. The topics that I found most interesting to me would be media and moral panic, construction of crime news and children and police, offender and victims in the media. I chose these four topics, because they play a role to the overall information that I have been paying close attention to in regards to how the media presents the information and how our Criminal Justice system addresses the concerns in the media. For our final exam, were asked to pick and discuss a topic that interested us, because of my curiosity of those four major topics I decided to pick a historical case that touched basis with all four topic areas. My topic being the historical case of Brown v. Board of Education. My goal of this essay is to give you the back story of the case, explain why I chose this case, discuss how the case is considered newsworthy and how it links to broader social structures.