Topic 1.5

 Topic 1.5- The impact of media portrayals of crime

The way the media portray the crime and criminals has a big impact on how the public perceives crime. The media coverage can affect how much crime people believe there is, whether they think it is increasing and how much of a threat they feel it to be. This may lead the public to demand that the police, courts, or government take steps to deal with the perceived problem like a 'crackdown' on a particular type of crime or the introduction to new laws.

Moral panic- The medias representations of crime may actually cause more crime by creating a moral panic. Stanley Cohen defines a moral panic as an exaggerated, irrationally over reaction by society to a perceived problem. This starts with the media identifying a group as a folk devil or threat to society's values, exaggerating the problem that caused the panic in the first place. 

The mods and rockers- 

Cohen's book Folk Devil's and Moral panics is a classic study of this process. Cohen examines how the media's response to disturbances between two groups of working class youths, the mods and the rockers created a moral panic. At the start the differences between the two were not clear cut and many young people identified themselves as belonging to ether 'group'. The disturbances started on a wet Easter weekend in 1964 at the resort of Clacton with a few scuffles and some minor property damage.

The medias over reaction triggered moral panic, involving three elements;

Exaggeration and distortion of the numbers involved and the seriousness of the trouble, distorting the picture with sensational headlines. 

Prediction that further conflict and violence would occur.

Symbolisation, the symbols of the mods and rockers like their clothes, hairstyles, bikes and scooters were negatively labelled.

The deviance amplification spiral-

Leslie Wilkins argues that the media can cause a deviance amplification spiral- a process in which attempts by authorities to control deviance actually produce more deviance, not les, leading to further attempts at control and yet more deviance. In the case of the mods and rockers, the media did it in two ways-

The media coverage made it appear that the problem was getting out of hand and this lead to calls for a stronger 'control response' or crackdown from the police and courts. This then increased the the stigmatisation (negative labelling) of the mods and rockers as criminals.

The media emphasised the supposed differences between the two groups. This encouraged more youths to identify with one group and see the other as their enemy, fuelling further clashes. It created a self fulfilling prophecy where youths acted out the roles the media had assigned to them, increasing the scale of the disturbances and producing an even tougher response from the authorities, with more arrests and harsher sentences.

Since the mods and rockers there has been numerous other folk devils and morals panics that share some of the features described by Cohen. The possible examples of this included drug use, homosexuality and HIV/Aids, islamist terrorism, football hooliganism, muggings, child sexual abuse, dangerous dogs, welfare scroungers, refugees and asylum seekers and knife crime.

Changing public concerns and attitudes-

As the mods and rockers case shows, media representations of certain groups can change public attitudes by triggering a moral panic. Media portrayals of the mods and rockers as folk devils led to anxiety among the public that youths were out of control and posed as a threat to society.

Ever since Islamist terror attacks on the United States in 2001 the media reporting Islam and Muslims has been largely negative. This has therefore contributed to a change in public attitudes especially a rise in Islamophobia in the general population. This could also be the reason for rise in hate crimes against Muslims in the recent years.

Newspaper reporting of Muslims- Analysis of 143 million words of British newspaper articles by Paul Baker et al showed an overwhelmingly negative portrayal of Muslims and Islam. They found the following-

Islam and Muslims were often reported using words such as threat, fundamentalism, terrorist, extremist and sexist. The words 'Muslim' and 'Islamic' were often linked with words denoting violence (muslim fanatics. islamic terrorist)

The term 'The Muslim community' was used to portray Muslims as a homogeneous group (all the same) in conflict with the UK and containing dangerous radical elements. This term often was found along side the words like fear, anger, warning, criticism, unrest, outrage, offensive and antagonising. This term helped to create the idea of Muslims belonging to separate groups and also contributed towards the idea and process of 'othering'.

Newspapers often used police mugshots to portray Muslims, Stories focusing on extremism increased over time, whereas stories focusing on attacks on Muslims decreased.

Newspapers also print letters from readers and articles by columnists with extremely negative views of Muslims. This allows the paper to distance itself from such views while still giving them exposure.

Perceptions of crime trends-

Is crime increasing, decreasing or staying the same ? Are particular crimes becoming more or less frequent? In general, the public seem more likely to believe crime is on the increase. An example of this is the Crime Survey for England and Wales found that during 2017/18, 72% of people thought crime nationally had gone up, while 43% thought crime locally increased.

The effect of the media-The difference between the national and local figures is significant. We have first hand knowledge of our own area, but we rely on the media to tell us what is going on nationally. The media gives a lot of coverage to crime, especially violent crime and the tabloids often report it in highly sensationalised and alarmist ways. This gives the impression that there is a great deal of crime and that the problem is growing.

Fear of crime-  One impact of perception that crime is rising is an increased fear of becoming a victim. This can be caused by the media over reporting certain types of crime, like street robberies and violent and sexual attacks, portraying the typical victim as old and/or female. As a result of this women and elderly are more likely to fear becoming victims of violence outside the home. Similarly, over reporting of crimes against children like abductions and sexual abuse or violence by paedophiles may cause parents to be fearful of allowing their children to go out unsupervised. Children are more at risk of harm from family members that from strangers. Research by Schlesinger and Tumber has also shown that tabloid readers and heavy users of TV have greater fear of becoming a victim of crime. This could be because of their greater exposure to media representation of such crimes. But in some cases peoples perception of increased crime is accurate. Certain local areas have rising crime rates and residents may have been victims or know friends or neighbours who have been victims. In this case peoples fear may be based on personal experience rather than media representations.

Stereotyping of criminals- 

A stereotype is an oversimplified generalisation or label that is applied to a whole group of people like 'all young people are lazy' Stereotyping can play a major part in which types of people attract the attention of the criminal justice system. 

Typification- According to Aaron Cicourel, the police, judges, probation officers and prosecutors have stereotypes of 'the typical delinquent.' Cicourel calls these 'typification's' He found that the police officers saw the typical offender as having characteristics like;

young, lower class males, often unemployed

often black or minority ethnic background

from a 'rough' neighbourhood

with a 'bad attitude' to authority

a poor educational record, truanting etc

associating with others known to the police