Media Representation Of Crime

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The media portrayal of crime has been a topic of inter-disciplinary debate, with criminologists, psychologists, and sociologists, amongst others, all taking an interest in the effects of media representations of crime. Globally, our consumption of mass media on a daily basis is ever growing, resulting in increasing concerns regarding the consequences of mass media on both the individual and society as a whole.
One of the most contentious and perpetual debates in the history of media representation of crime, is 'effects research,' concerned with the extent in which the media actually causes deviant or criminal behaviour, whether situational or through a process of socialisation. It may be easiest to understand media crime as fictional entertainment, …show more content…

Equally, media anti-crime drives such as appeals to bring offenders to justice and campaigns to encourage viewers to adopt preventative anti-crime measures have also been cited as pro-social consequences of crime in the media.
Effects research is often referred to as the 'hypodermic syringe model,' conceiving the relationship between media and its audience to be of a one-sided passive, unresisting nature, with the media 'injecting' content directly into the mind of individuals. The hypodermic syringe model, however, has been criticised for being too crude, and reductionist in that it does not take into account any other factors that may influence an individual's 'intake' of such information and thus any resulting determinative …show more content…

The media have been accused of 'rebranding' a crime that is older than the defining laws themselves – robbery -and marketing it as a race specific crime. Mugging, however, is not a crime, and no legal definition exists in English law, yet the media were able to cause widespread panic by the publication of such content. This is in stark contrast to the reporting of burglary in the media. The Home Office Research Study 223 showed that just 3% of burglars were black compared to 89% of the offenders being white. Despite this, the media nor the police have branded burglary as a 'white crime,' neither have these findings inspired any 'special measures' for prevention. (Smith,

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