NCJ Number
218890
Date Published
2007
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This chapter focuses on the way in which the media are consistently attributed a causal role in the construction of crime, specifically cyberstalking and celebrity stalking.
Abstract
Construction of crime has always been according to power. Now, beauty is power. The owning of it and means of producing it are sites of power. Celebrities are the visible elite apex of the new beauty, servicing industries. Stalking is a crime constructed in a new paradigm of globally industrialized, celebrity aesthetics that is mediated largely through cyber culture. It may be a new paradigm but it is also, arguably, simply a new metaphor for old power that remains resolutely underpinned by access to media, money, and law. New media have always attracted popular, policy, and journalistic attention. Film, television, video, and computer games were each subject to similar anxiety when introduced. Since the mid-1990s the Internet has increased every aspect of that potential infinitely and surprisingly subject to similar panicky debates around effect, damage, and control. The Internet has not only been accused of reproducing undesirable material as a possible cause of crime, but also of generating new forms of crime. Cyberstalking is one example. Both stalking and cyberstalking are both activities on the edge of criminal and in some jurisdictions are not criminalized at all. They are activities that are suitable for exploring how and why certain behaviors become criminalized. References