...Christopher McCormick’s (2010), Constructing Danger: Emotions and the Mis/ Representations of Crime in the News, is a collection of news media excerpts that McCormick analyses in relation to archived police reports and statistics, victimization and self-report surveys, along with condensed versions of ‘professional’ lectures given at a conference about how the media reports crime. Before I elaborate on how McCormick structured his analyses throughout his book and its relevance to his critiques, I will begin by discussing his main arguments. From this, I am able expand on the pedagogical relevance of his work to my own feminist critiques regarding some problems I found in the organization of his book and his methodologies. I argue, that we also need to question where McCormick got his ‘facts’ to make comparisons and the implications that individual subjectivities have in the ‘knowledge(s)’ about crime and articulations of identity. McCormick argues that Constructing Danger is a pedagogical piece that encourages readers to think critically about the ways in which crime is represented in the news media. McCormick focuses on the use of emotion in the ideological and discursive production of crime in the news and the implications it has on how individuals, see, hear and read the news. McCormick suggests, that the news media is not free from ‘bias’, for the news represents crime in a way that simultaneously exorcises and triggers emotion, which in turn, effects the ways in which individuals...
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...Topics Is the nature of crime in our society accurately presented in the media? Is the majority of crime in our society violent in nature? Topic 1: Is the nature of crime in our society accurately presented in the media? Word Count: 774 Over the course of the 20th century and the transition into the 21st century, media has played a pinnacle point in society. It has developed from not only a means of information but also as a source of entertainment and consequently the line between information and entertainment can be distorted. This paper aims to conclude whether or not the nature of crime in society is accurately portrayed in media. As a result, this paper will include information that demonstrates the differences between crime in society and crime in media. Furthermore, the nature in which media crime framed will be examined. Finally, this paper will demonstrate how media crime distorts public perception in relation to how crime is in reality. It is through an examination of these points that a conclusion will be met, one that projects the crime in media as a false representation of crime in society. A criminal justice system plays a key role in the functioning of modern societies around world and despite this most people only have the portrayal of media sources to give context to the idea. According to Shrum, the only exposure to a criminal justice system that people perceive is through the media (Tapscott, 2011). Corroboratively, research conducted by the Australian...
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...For this project, you will need to observe the amount and type of crime being reported, as well as the characteristics of those individuals involved in the crime. In your write up, you should identify the dates and networks of your media sources. First, you should report: 1. The percentage of stories dealing with crime 2. The proportion of different categories of crime presented (violent vs. non-violent, street crime vs. white-collar, et cetera) 3. Pertinent demographic characteristics of the offender(s) and victim(s) Next, you should assess and critically reflect on the representation of crime in the media: 1. Do the media present an accurate picture of the overall crime rate? 2. Do the media tend to focus on a particular type of crime? If so, why might this be the case? 3. Do the media present an accurate picture of offenders? Of victims? What notable differences exist between media representations and official data for these two groups? 4. What are the possible implications of media (mis)representations of crime in society? You may choose to review official statistics on crime here: http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook. This is a resource to be used in writing your response, at your discretion. It is not required. GRADING Your project will be graded on the strength and clarity with which you communicate your analysis of the data. This will be broken down the following ways: · Use of course material · Organization of ideas · Formatting of paper · Quality of conceptual...
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...Media coverage of crime is always accurate. The view of Media representing crime as an accurate one is not entirely true, since the dawn of time people have wanted to learn about what’s going on around them, within their streets and communities as well as further afield nationally and internationally, crime in particular in all its guises is probably the most fascinating and main topic for discussion and exploration by the general public, the Media institutions are only too happy to help out in this reporting , of course with a financial cost to the public, but not necessarily with reporting truths or with integrity, within this essay I will demonstrate instances of inaccuracy through the research. There are many on-going debates into Mass Medias influences on crime and violent crime in particular, but is this a true reflection of the current culture crisis or a fabrication to sell copy, taking for instance the Murder case of James Bulger in 1993, after the then 10year old boys Robert Thompson and Jon Venable led 2year old James away from a shopping centre in Liverpool to a brutal /senseless and pointless murder the Media was instantly ‘all over’ the case , even though a murder of children by children was extremely rare the reporting of and style of reporting throughout the case was reflecting to the public all that was now wrong in Britain, The Sun instantly called for ‘a crusade to rescue a sick society’, a ‘breed’ of violent children , single mother parenting , and...
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...1 COM 3702 MEDIA STUDIES Policy management and media representation Semester 1,2014 Student number : 3356-7514 2 I, the undersigned, hereby declare that this is my own and personal work, except where the works or publications of others have been acknowledged by mean of reference techniques. I have read and understood Tutorial Letter CMNALLE/301, regarding technical and presentation requirements, referencing techniques and plagiarism. Name: Bonita Europa Student Number: 33567514 Date: 2014/05/06 Assignment Number: PORTFOLIO EXAM 892092 Witness: Clint Newkirk 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 MEDIA POLICY AND REGULATION 1.1 History of communication policy 1.1.1 Emerging communications industry policy 1.1.2 Public service media policy 1.1.3 New communications policy 1.2 Freedom of the media 1.2.1 The need for freedom of speech 1.2.2 Threats to it 1.2.3 If, how and why such threats can or cannot be motivate 2 MEDIA MANAGEMENT AND MEDIA MARKETS 2.1 Media concentration 2.1.1 The relationship of competition to concentration 2.1.2 The dual nature of the media industry 2.1.3 The four forms of concentration 2.1.4 The dangers of concentration 2.1.5 Positive externalities of the media 3 REPRESENTATION AND THE MEDIA 3.1 Media representation of race 3.1.1 Discussion 3.1.2 Brief explanation of the meaning whiteness 3.2 Media representation of violence 3.2.1 An introductory thesis (argument) 3.2.2 Define and explain representation, violence and moral panics 3.2.3...
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...hundred years and helps with many current issues in the Black community. The celebration of Black History Month improves representation of Black accomplishments, recognizes achievements and successes rather than crimes and offenses, and brings awareness to lesser known Black History. Representation and false representation of Black Americans is highlighted by Black History Month. Bernard Grant, PhD, states “Black representation is still lacking today, though this has improved in some areas over the last few years. In the 1920’s, however, very few media outlets, corporations, and universities included Black Americans.” This introduces the fact of less representation for Black Americans compared to that of White Americans....
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...seem to be more worried by crime, the research evidence suggests crime rates are not increasing. How can we explain this apparent contradiction? In a democratic society such as Australia, crime trends largely influence parliaments and ministries in crime policy management. If the media are found to be reporting an upward trend in crime figures, enough to unease the public, policy makers are put under pressure to increase punishment and change rules relating to procedures of criminal prosecution. Judicial decisions are intended to reflect public opinion; therefore a judge would then feel obliged to hand down harsher sentences (Pfeiffer, Windzio & Kleinmann, 2005). This, in turn, confirms it is imperative to address the substantial difference between the public’s perception of crime rates, and accurate crime statistics. As previous Australian and international research has indicated, a large majority of the public perceives crime rates to be increasing; they also have inaccurate views on the severity of sentencing. “The Australian Public overestimates the proportion of crime that involves violence and underestimates the proportion of charged persons who go on to be convicted and imprisoned” (Roberts & Indermaur, 2009). To help explain this contradiction in Australia, crime statistics have been analyzed and factors that could influence these inaccurate perceptions have been discovered. Two significant factors that influence the perception that crime rates are increasing, is...
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...Reality in Legal Dramas Introduction: The public relies on television as its primary source of information about the legal system. Many American’s turn to television media for general entertainment, but watch certain genres for informative purposes. Watching crime based shows is one example of this theory. People look to crime shows to gain knowledge of how crime solving works and what kind of job duties each person has, when what is shown on television is not always reality. Take the shows Law and Order: SVU and Hawaii 5-0. These shows reveal the aspects of detectives’ everyday lives inside the job. They have a high tolerance for violence and depict an unrealistic representation of certain occupations. Methodology: Reading two essays, researching television media and genres, observing two shows and participating in a Roundtable Discussion on American Media Images (RDAMI) were the steps I took in putting together my ideas on television media. “Superman and Me” by Sherman Alexie and “Where Have All the Parents Gone” by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead were the two essays I read for this paper. They develop ideas on what has an impact on American people and culture. I observed two episodes of two different television shows. Law and Order: SVU was one of the shows. Law and Order: SVU is a show about sexually based crimes, SVU meaning “Special Victims Unit”. “Friending Emily” and “Manhattan Vigil” were the two episodes with the main characters being senior detectives Olivia Benson and...
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...“The media are more of a hindrance than a help to the police in combating crime”. Discuss. The relationship between the police and the mass media have long been the subject of intense debate. The mass media and the police have different roles in the public eye causing the media to be of concern to the police. Historically and in the contemporary era the police have had to meet high expectations of being the public’s crime-fighter. It is the police’s role to prevent crime, maintain order and protect the public (Carrabine, 2009) whilst, the media fulfil a role that is supposed to challenge the state institutions on behalf of the public. Media handling in serious crime investigations is a complex issue. On the one hand, they provide the public with access to information and help generate important information for an enquiry. For example, since its first broadcast in 1984, Crimewatch UK has sought help and information from the public in order to solve crime (Carter and Branston et al., 2002). On the other hand, the media can mislead the public and interfere with the investigative legal processes. As a whole the media plays a critical role in shaping the public’s views by exposing corruption and the activities of the powerful and of agencies of control such as the police (Croall, 2005). More to the point the media are there to maximise audience revenue to get money and to entertain via means of print, audio, visual and social media. Whereas, the police are the primary protection...
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...involvement enhanced cultivation. Shrum and Bischak (2001) used experience with crime as a moderating variable and noticed that those with more direct experience had greater cultivation. This experience may build a “richer and more accessible representation of crime available in memory”, which would less likely be disregarded as television crime. This cognitive explanation is consistent with the concept of resonance. Numerous studies expanded cultivation research into new areas and many areas of earlier work have been updated to show changes that have occurred in media messages. Frequent portrayals of drug usage that are shown on television have an influence on heavy television viewers. According to Minnebo and Eggermont (2007), heavy viewers are inclined to believe that most young people use drugs. The analysis revealed that the effects of education were lowered among heavier viewers. This pattern is a trademark of mainstreaming. For decades, mental illness has been consistently distorted in the media. In many cases, those with a metal illness are portrayed as violent criminals. According to Diefenbach and West (2007), heavy viewers believe that placing mental health services in residential areas poses a danger to residents. Granello and Pauly (2000) found that heavy viewers do not have much tolerance for those with mental illnesses. In contrast to the stable image of mental illness, the representation of gay and lesbian characters became more positive and more normalised since...
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...built on the premise of everyone having equal rights. After years of British tyranny our forefathers felt they wanted a system where they will not be improperly punished without facts. In fact the framers of the Constitution felt they needed a system where everyone gets a fair shot. In America everyone who is accused of a crime is supposed to have a fair trial and is assumed innocent until proven guilty. Sadly, however, some would argue America’s criminal justice system has become more twisted and unfair than ever and that the rule of law has basically been vanquished in America’s criminal justice system. Outcomes of cases are generally decided now by the prosecutors and more plea bargaining is the norm over trial by jury. Yet so many people in our society today feels that people in the system gets equal opportunities. Although some people end up with different sentences and punishments people say that the American court system is a fair system. America has slowly turned into a system where justice and fairness is overruled by money and power. In the media today many people are committing crimes and walking away with a slap on the wrist. Many social media and news shows the bias in court systems through their broadcasts of issues. The American justice system is biased in their convictions and sentencing through racial disproportion, social structure, and economic standing. Our criminal justice system in biased in convictions and sentencing through racial disproportion...
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...1. Is the nature of crime in our society accurately presented by the media? Discuss. Like every society, Australia has always had its share of criminal activity, from the founding of our country as a penal colony in the 18th century, bushrangers in the 19th century, underworld violence in the 20th century to recent youth violence on our city streets in the 21st century. In this essay, I will be discussing how the media presents crime in Australian society and how this does not necessarily reflect crime statistics. The media presents us with the idea that the majority of crime in Australia is violent, and it is only getting worse. In contrast, statistics show that Australia’s crime rate has remained relatively steady. In fact, most reported crimes are actually non violent, with the majority of crimes actually being property related. It should also be noted that we are exposed to high levels of media coverage on specific types of crime, for example the “Missing White Woman Syndrome” whilst under reporting on similar occurrences that involve males, and females of different culture and social standings. Lastly, I would like to discuss recent television programs such as Underbelly and true crime films that glamorise the criminal sub-culture which in itself causes the media to report even more on Australia’s underworld, violent crimes and infamous criminal cases. The media portrays our crime rate as rapidly escalating, however statistics collected by the Australian Institute...
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...Why crime is a contested subject A crime in a broad understanding is an act that violates a political or moral law of any one person or social grouping. In the narrow sense, a crime is a violation of criminal law; in many nations, there are criminal standards of bad behaviour. However, a crime can be the action of violating or breaking a law. According to Western system of law, there must be a simultaneous concurrence of both guilty action and guilty mind for a crime to have been committed; Some people will say that manslaughter is not the case, for example if an individual hits someone he did not mean to kill them, however the intent to cause harm was there. In order for prosecution, some laws require proof of cause and effect relating the defendant's actions to the criminal event in question. In addition, some laws require that attendant circumstances have occurred, in order for a crime to have taken place. Also, in order for a crime to be prosecuted, proof of a crime must be established. There are six dominant constructions of crime as we see it; * Crime as a social construct * Crime as a violation of moral codes * Crime as ideological censure * Crime as a criminal law violation * Crime as historical invention * Crime as social harm There are different theories of criminology as these are as follows Positivism, Conservatism, Strain theory; new deviancy theory and Marxism, these theories each have a view on what crime should be defined as. Crime as...
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...According to official statistics in 2000, 26 white people were arrested per 1000 of the population, with 113 per 1000 for ‘blacks’. According to the British Crime Survey the majority of crime is intra-racial, with 88% of white victims stating that white offenders where involved, 3% claiming the offenders were black, 1% Asian and 5% ‘mixed’. In British prisons, the number of African-Caribbean prisoners is proportionately, 8 times higher than would be expected. Hall et al.’s study of street crime (‘mugging’), known as policing the crisis, shows a particular kind of Marxist approach. According to Hall, the late 1970s were a time of crisis for British capitalism. The country was undergoing industrial arrest, there was a collapse in the economy and the political unrest in Northern Ireland was harsh. When capitalism is in crisis the normal methods of control of the population may be to a unsatisfactory standard, and it’s sometimes necessary to use force. However, using obvious repression needs some form of reason. It was in these circumstances that the media, basing their reports on police briefings, highlighted a huge increase in ‘mugging’. According to Hall, the focus on a relatively small problem, caused by a group who were already viewed negatively, served the purpose of drawing attention away from the crisis and focusing blame on young African-Caribbean males. This ‘moral panic’ then increased numbers of police on the streets, acting in a more repressive manner. Therefore,...
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...The Influence of Pornography on Human Behavior According to Yafee et al. in 1982, pornography is the delineation of the life of a prostitute through graphic representation of sexual conduct whose deliberate intentions is to arouse sexual desires and to facilitate its expression. Whereas, the subsections 159 (1) and 152 (2) of the constitution of Canada refers pornography as an ‘obscene’ matter, i.e. crime, horror, cruelty, violence, and exploitation (Fraser, 1985). Yafee’s definition states pornography as a depiction of sexual pleasures, but on the other hand, the Canadian constitutional definition of pornography reflects the idea of violence and sexual exploitation. The paper centralized on the theme that modern pornographic depiction is a...
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