Criminal Justice System

925 Words2 Pages

Introduction and background:
The media impact on the criminal justice system is enormous from the way they portray police officers to what is televised. There are a lot of positives and negatives when it comes to social media and the criminal justice system the media can raise awareness and shine light on issues. Or they can do the complete opposite and make police officers look like villains by showing clips of them using excessive force and racial profiling incidents.
Thesis:
The relationship between social media and the criminal justice system is very complex there are many disadvantages such as the false portrayal of police officers to showing clips of horrific encounters but it also has its advantages such as raising awareness for things …show more content…

Because members of the public lack information they usually rely very heavily on Mass media for a source to gain extensive knowledge. But the media can be very misleading and bias towards the criminal justice system sometimes even known as “notouriously innacurate and biased towards centrazlized accounts” (Dorfman & Schiraldi, 2001). The way crime is being portrayed by media can be very misleading studies done have proven this “The results indicated that the consumption of local television news significantly increased perceptions of risk and fear of crime for all examined racial groups”. Callahan (2016). As you can see the media can be very bias when it comes to talking about the criminal justice system they will show things on tv that will raise their television views even if the information is false “The media typically depict crime rates as escalating regardless of actual trends in offending and portray the criminal justice system as inefficient, ineffectual, and toothless”. (Beckett & Sasson, 2004, p. 118). Even though the media tries to convince you into believing these things they shouldn’t be considered accurate due to the fact that media isn’t regulated and anything can be …show more content…

Police officers cannot be everywhere at all times and that’s why social media has the capability to spread messages and alert each other about potential dangers. Social media can also help solve cases and find pieces of evidence online which can lead to arrests. In 2011 when the Stanley cup riot happened in Vancouver many people decided to post videos and images of them partaking in these events which then led to internet users working together to capture and report culprits to the police who then made arrests. (Arvanitidis, T. 2016). The police would not have been able to identify the culprits due to mass amount of people involved in the riot so this is a instance where social media was very

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