Crime and the Media: A Criminological Perspective (From Crime and the Media: The Post-Modern Spectacle, P 1-24, 1995, David Kidd-Hewitt and Richard Osborne, eds. -- See NCJ-168074)

• NCJ Number: 168075
• Author(s): D Kidd-Hewitt
• Date Published: 1995
• Length: 24 pages
• Sale Source: Pluto Press
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United Kingdom

Annotation

This paper reviews the various approaches that criminological studies have used in examining links between crime and the media.

Abstract

The academic world has pursued interesting and often idiosyncratic struggles with the concept and nature of the mass media, particularly the psychological, sociological, and criminological implications of its presence and influence. Criminological studies of crime and the media have featured four main areas of questioning. One issue examined is whether the mass media, particularly television, through depictions of crime, violence, death, and aggression, can be proven to be a major cause or important contributory factor of criminal or deviant behavior. A second issue that has been examined by researchers is whether the mass media, particularly the press, construct and present the social world in ways that distort reality and unjustly stereotype particular groups or individuals, labeling them as "outsiders," eliminating their credibility, and in the process exploiting and furthering their own privileged access to powerful state institutions. A third issue examined by researchers is whether the mass media engender "moral panics" and cause people to be fearful by over-reporting criminal and violent events and giving priority to sensationalism above accuracy. A fourth issue is whether "real" crime and fictional crime influence the viewer in the same manner, particularly in the electronic media. This paper reviews the criminological work done on each of these issues, particularly in the United Kingdom. 88 notes and references