Media and Crime

CSI, Law and Order, Fox News, Making a Murderer, Nancy Grace and Cops: these shows have large audiences and high ratings, showing that western society is obsessed and mesmerized with crime and criminal activity. Crime and media go hand in hand, as the media frames crime as a major social problem, due to the lack of policy and policing certain behaviors. The media and the criminal justice system go together, like peanut butter and jelly, a sandwich of chaotic fruits and nuts. The media is quite concerned with policing, but much less about the court system, consequences, and the punishment received by the offender, devising misconceptions of the judicial processes. There are several different sociological perspectives pertaining to the media

In the book, “Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice” by Ray Surette he defines the predatory criminality portrait by the media who construct them as “criminals who are animalistic, irrational, and innately evil and who commit violent, sensational and senseless crimes-as the dominant crime problem in the nation”. Research shows that predators or serial killers are few compared to homicides or domestic violence but because of the media and its coverages when a serial killer is uncovered they imply that the serial killer is something other than a human and is everywhere, and in every town.

When it comes to the media and its relations to victims, the media can and should be viewed as a form of victimization. This is because victims want privacy and the media threatens that or rather disregards it whoever. In terms of law, it can be seen as a violation of there basic right to privacy. Although the general public has the right to what is occurring in their neighborhood, the real question is how much detail should the public get to know? The public should be satisfied knowing the crime and a general description of victims, but the media broadcasts personal details of the

Does the sound of the city ring a bell as a place filled with violence and gruesome stories? That’s what I have always noticed with the reports involving the city of Oakland. To news media everything has to have just the right amount of darkness to it in order for that news channel to have a good amount of viewers. Like it or not we all have that little dark side within us that is more curious and interested to see something terrible happen in news reports; because for some reason it’s entertaining to us. During my critical thinking class with my professor Larry Salomon, I learned that this is why most news channels like to show gruesome and tragic stories more often, because we as human beings find some sort of interest and satisfaction hearing about these stories; and this makes work for news channels more easier to gain more viewers. Some people are more eager to learn about a tragic story unlike the other reports that have a more hopeful and cheerful description. How is this linked to violence in Oakland? News reporters know that Oakland is the place to go when you need a story that will help you get viewers. I have talked to some residents in my community of Oakland and they stated that they were tired of being the notebook of bad stories to be told on live television; the only reason why violence seems to continue in this community is because reporters always point the finger at the city as being a place filled with

There is the crime pattern theory that explains how individual’s routine activities affect their knowledge of criminal activities and the above leads to spatial concentrations of crimes in some places. Individual developmental maps determine their regular activities and spaces that are represented as topological features. The routine operations act as nodes or sites where people spend time most of time and criminals will move there depending on the level of security anticipated. The offenders will decide where to attack depending on how well they understand the routine activities of their clients (Carlo, and Marie-Noële, 15). On that note, it is not possible for criminals to just attack a place without evaluating the dynamics of the

We’ve all heard it hundreds of times from people that the news and media is overdramatic. That is one of the biggest complaints about the media, but is it true? Scholarly articles have found that the news is in fact over dramatic about crime which induces public fear and may produce many myths about how much crime is actually happening in our society. As a broadcasting major, it is easy for me to see why the news would cover stories in such a dramatic way. These types of stories capture the users attention which means more people will watch your station resulting in advertising spots being worth more which in the end benefits the stations because they will make more money. Popular examples such as the “knockout game” and the Central Park jogger case both show just how much the media has an effect on society, copycat criminals and other crimes. Is the media overdramatic? Does the media cause higher public fear? What myths does the media create?

Assess sociological explanations of the role of the mass media in creating moral panics about crime and deviance:

Most people use second hand information as their core source of information about crime, this source of information usually being the media. When carrying out sample research in Birmingham, Susan Smith (1984) discovered that 52% of people obtained most of their information about crime from the media, 36% obtained it from hearsay or alleged experiences of friends and neighbours, 3% from their own experiences, and 1% from the police service themselves (cited in Jones, 2001; 8). However the media tend to exaggerate upon areas of criminal activity causing a moral panic. ‘A moral panic is a semi- spontaneous or media generated mass movement based on the perception that some individual or group,

A current most spoken issue among the public media is gun violence or mass shooting however the crime is not as many as it was twenty years ago. The term mass shooting does not have an official set of definition yet, but the term indicates crime which is killing as many people as possible in a short time frame. The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines it as “actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area” (Sam Brock, Rachel Witte, and Joe Rojas). A mass shooting can begin due to several reasons: it could be background history, media, despair, or something else. Nico Lang, the author of America’s White Masculinity Complex and The Myth of The “Senseless” Mass Shooting says, mass shooting can also be related to mental “functions like the specter of ‘mental illness.’” A number of mass shooters have serious, often undiagnosed mental problems. Are the mass media addressing the basic issue clearly? Of course, the media address the issue more than the violence expects to be addressed, but it is not overt enough. ….. By examining a variety of news media coverage on the subject of mass shooting, this essay concludes that when choosing stories to cover, the news media must take the general audience into consideration. Ultimately, what is at stake here is the media exaggerate the crime and report it disproportionally, and the distortion of reality can have variety of effects on the viewer or the general audience.

As constantly repeated in many interdisciplinary areas, particularly criminology, one who is victimized is likely to be familiar with the offender or had encountered the offender at a time prior to the attack (Rossmo, 1998). This is possible for many reasons, but more specific to the central idea of this assignment is due to the environment. An investigative strategy that examines environmental influences —time, space, and setting —on criminal behavior is Geographic Profiling. Geographic profiling is an integration of behavioral psychology and environmental psychology used initially, to examine violent series of crimes (e.g., murder, rape, and arson) and the area surrounding to establish a link to the proximity of the offender. Essentially,

The public depends on the news media for its understanding of crime. Reportedly three quarters (76%) of the public say, they form their opinions about crime from what they see or read in the news (Dorfman & Schiraldi, 2001). After reviewing five hours of reality crime television shows, one is left with a very dismal look on society and a prejudice towards minorities as they are largely depicted as the perpetrators of crime. This new genre commonly referred to as reality television appears to be sweeping the nation by storm. Opinions vary, depending on whom you ask, to what extent reality plays a role versus the selling of a product. Sensationalism, advertising, ratings hype, profiling and fear all comprise the mass

This research paper’s purpose is to examine how the media is received, based on an audience analysis on the Orlando nightclub shooting in June 2016. His follows on from the findings of a content analysis on the same topic and used to understand how both the public and the media represent the shooter, Omar Mateen. An audience analysis is used to determine how the public and viewers responded to media content and is used to shape media content (Napoli, 2012, pp.79). A survey responded by peers was used to gather the results, which will be analysed and compared throughout this paper with the findings of the content analysis, and used to understand, not only the representation of Omar Mateen, but also the relationship between the public and the media.

The mass media is a vehicle for delivering information and to entertain. But implications that the media do more harm than good concerning its practices and its effects on the public. The two main categories of mass media are print media and electronic media. Although they overlap in some areas, they differ mostly in the subject matter they cover and in their delivery methods. Research had been conducted in using both these forms to gauge the impact that each one has on the public. Print media tends to be more factual based whereas electronic media tend to focus more on visual aids to help relay the information. The public’s fear of crime has an impact on the public agenda of policy makers. Fear of crime not only affects individual but may

In the late Victorian era, eastern London’s Whitechapel district was rich with misfortune. In 1888, the highly impoverished area was diseased with rampant crime, homelessness, and prostitution, and due to the murders it historically took a hit in reputation. The area was looked upon as severe lower class and no recorded attempt was made to help relieve the community. As suggested, “the Ripper case not only makes evident the ways in which Victorian society policed sexual difference and mental deviance, but it also demonstrates related attitudes toward ethnicity and social class” (Cohen). This caused degrading attitudes towards the residents, specifically prostitutes, of Whitechapel. The nature of these murders were considered inconceivable and the world’s first international news coverage of a crime followed. Because of this, “as the killings unfolded, fear gripped the East End, a near riotous situation developed, and hundreds of extra police were drafted in to patrol the streets of Whitechapel” (Rubinstein 11). One of the more intriguing aspects of the murders is the amount of worldwide newspaper coverage that immediately prompted. People were outraged with the lack of competence the policed seemed to have, which led to journalist themselves investigating these cases extensively. Local residents were thoroughly interviewed, the police were followed, and for what was not proven, much embellishment was used in order to sell more newspapers. In consequence, the wide coverage

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.