To what extent
does the fear of crime outweigh reality? How can this be explored?
There
are 3 academic disciplines that can aid us in our quest to investigating this
question:
MEDIA
STUDIES
CRIMINOLOGY
SOCIOLOGY
Does
the mass media construct and present our social world in ways that distort
reality?
Does
the mass media engender moral panics and cause people to be overfearful by
over-reporting criminal and violent events and looking primarily for sensation
above accuracy?
The
issue of mass media generated fear as a specific domain of concern has, for
some, become a free-standing area within its own right. In recent years criminology + media studies
have concentrated on debating the realism or otherwise of fear which is seen to
derive from the portrayal of crime in the mass media.
MEDIA STUDIES: DEALING WITH
THE MEDIA & CRIME.
Writers
on media coverage of crime have for many years been virtuously unanimous in
their contention that media coverage of crime is biased; distortions in the
reporting of crime are believed to contribute to misconceptions about the
prevalence of different sorts of crime and lead to exaggerated public fear of
crime.
Alongside the themes of the ‘underclass’ in media representations there is always the problem of identity and race, the threat of the other. the stereotypical association of young black men with crime and violence is well enough reported and runs through crime fiction narratives as well as news reporting. This deep rooted phobia was mobilised in the defence of the police who were videoed beating Rodney King: they felt threatened by him as he lay on the floor and although despite real life video evidence, they were acquitted. Reactions to crime representations are deeply irrational and that is what makes the media's love of crime so dangerous. This fear of crime and the cynicism that underlies this crime fest in the media breeds further erosion of the public sphere and repressive surveillance of the underclasses.
The
spectacular collapse of Bearings bank further emphasised the electronic media's
obsessions and its active role in creating crime stories. Before any evidence was to hand the world’s
electronic media had created the story of Nick Leeson, the man who broke the bank
of Bearings.
The
economic and symbolic power of the media obviously constrain and delimit
the kinds of crime that are
portrayed and discussed within the media agenda and that agenda is itself the
key issue in theorising crime and the media.
In television’s endless search for profitable narratives, real life
constructions of crime come high on the list of post-modern possibilities. Live footage and real life reconstructions are
actually very cheap television and one must be blind not to see the economy
driving the telemarket towards even more technology led downmarket
broadcasting. The live televising of
trials, and documentaries of the police in action are only the start of what
will ultimately lead to live arrests and perhaps live executions in the USA.
Crime
is rampant, but when the media is studied at academic levels the link between
crime and media is pretty much ignored.
Instead, researchers are largely concerned with ownership.
What
about media effects? Well in terms of crime violence takes the central role,
and experiments such as that of Bandura, and instances such as the Bulger
killing (and its explicit link to video effects) help to obscure the analysis
about real representations of crime.
What
we see is that research is too much text and narrative bound. It has discovered
things such as the fear of crime, but it does not develop the tools for
explorations of say, women and the fear of crime.
Critics have emphasised the failure of the media to place reports of major crimes in a proper historical or statistical perspective. Prominent coverage of serious violent crimes made sensational copy but could also produce inflated public perceptions of the frequency of what in reality are the least frequent of crimes. media reports seldom present information on victimisation rates or trends so that the public, lacking this essential contextual background, are often unintentionally misled by the media to believe that the world is a far more dangerous place than it really
CRIMINOLOGY: DEALING WITH
MEDIA & CRIME
The
aim of post war sociologists was to wrest criminology from its pre-war
determinist framework of analytical individualism, and to turn criminology from
the study of mere law infraction to that of law and norm infraction. They
became concerned with revealing the attitudes that the media might generate or
reinforce amongst its viewers or readers as a whole, i.e.: anxiety and fear. It
also became a concern to demystify the process of media selection and
presentation in order to expose the simplistic view that the media merely
report facts, show society as it really is.
Stan
Cohen later provided a clear account of the agenda for a transition into a new
Criminology.
1.
A reconstitution of criminology as part of the sociology of deviance and its
reintegration into mainstream sociology.
2.
An elevation of social control as a question of central concern, and a
consequent adoption of a structurally and politically informed version of
labeling theory.
3.
A determination to appreciate deviance in the sense of granting recognition to
the deviants own subjective meaning and of not taking for granted the control
systems aim of eradicating deviance.
4.
An emphasis on the political nature of defining and studying crime and
deviance.
Developing
key concepts such as 'moral panics' and 'deviancy amplification' the British
criminologists made substantial ground in recognising the media's
overconstruction of social reality.
As
a result of this agenda much was accomplished in the rethinking of criminology.
In the case of crime and media the 1970 saw a key collection of texts emerging,
which confronted the selection, presentation + effects of media portrayals of
crime, deviance + social problems. This was often recognised as the beginning
of new criminology, these authors were influenced by there American allies such
as Edwin Lemert, Howard Becker and David Matza.
If
we look at two of the texts we can see this agenda.
J
Young 'The role of the police as amplifiers of deviancy, negotiators of reality
and translators of fantasy', developed the key concepts of 'newsworthiness' and
'deviancy amplification'. it demonstrate
the relationship that exists between social control agencies and media
'fantasies' that trigger such agencies to overreact and further stereotype deviants.
It demonstrates that 'moral panics' engendered by media fantasies amplify the
deviant act until there is: a translation of fantasy into reality.
It
becomes clear from Young's study the ability of the media to present a moral
panic which leads to increased social control action from the police.
S
Cohen 'Folk Devils and Moral Panics'.
His study strengthened the growing tradition of unpacking the media's
role in reporting certain events and revealing how they are able to construct
their own version of reality.
It
is clear from Cohen's work that sociological concern within criminological
studies was now firmly directed towards exposing the media as purveyors of
particular social constructions of social reality rather than as objective
reporters.
However,
despite sociology's bid to rescue Criminology, there were many unanswered
criticisms that made this discipline an insufficient avenue to explore when
questioning the links between crime and the media. . . .
1.
The simple definition of crime as wrongdoing was in disarray, particularly in relation
to the powerful and political classes. Definitions of crime are simply socially
constructed norms and realities enforced by symbolic and legal powers.
2.
The criminalization of the poor in Britain and America, the refusal of
sociological critiques of neo-conservative antistate policies and the inherent
individualism of much Criminology has lead to a situation in which criminology
seems to have little to say about a complex transformation in the social
definitions of crime and criminality.
3.
In response the notion of the underclass was created by criminology. In the
1960s and 70s the outsider criminal would have stood as the folk devil in media
stereotypes. Now whole sections have to be symbolically expelled in order to
maintain a normative model of society. This makes a nonsense of media
objectivity-media discourses about crime now constitute all viewers as equal,
subject to the fragmented and random danger of criminality. In doing so this
provide the preconditions for endless narratives of criminality that rehearse
this ever-present danger.
4.
Classical criminology and positivism have proved unable to deal with the post
70s implosion of criminality, popular culture and media transformation.
5.
Crime is still seen as a tactic of subjection, political control and a tool
through which the underclass can be legitimately policed.
6.
Concern is with causes of, and measures to alleviate crime. Thus the issue of
the mass media has not been taken on board. Essentially this discipline has not
moved forward, but has stagnated in its positivistic beliefs and theories.
Society has changed but it has not.
On
observing these two key avenues that are vital to the exploration of the
question we set out to answer, we found that both fail at various levels.
However, they do have a grey area that overlaps. . . .
What
is the favourite target of most burglars? Answer - tvs and video recorders.
Here we can acknowledge that the medium is no longer the message, but the means
of barter.
At
this point we can see that neither Criminology nor the study of the media
provide us with any conclusive evidence that explicitly links the fear of crime
to the reality of crime. Criminology seems to have lost pace in acknowledging
the pace of changes in society, and is instead still looking for the age old
answers to the causes and prevention of crime. On the other hand studies
directed towards the mass media lose sight of the relationship between crime
and the media, and any links to this area has only resulted in the effects of
violent crime. Instead media studies are focused more on ownership and theories
of representation, images and symbols; but not at a criminal level.
What
we are left with is three key questions that may, when answered, provide us
with an answer.
What
is reality?
What
is the part played by the media in the formation of our reality?
How
do they use crime in this equation?
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