Have a quick look through
the newspaper on your desk.
How much of the news is criminal?
How much of the news is deviant?
What are the main types of crime that you can
find?
Ericson et als (1991) study of Toronto found that 45-71% of quality press
and radio news was about various forms of deviance and its control.
Williams + Dickinson (1993) British newspapers devote up to 30% of their
news space to crime.
Ditton and Duffy (1983) found that 46% of media reports were about violent
or sexual crimes, these made up only 3% of all crimes recorded by the
police.
Marsh (1991) of studies of news reporting in America found that a violent
crime 36 times more likely to be reported than a property crime.
Objectives / Outcomes
Identify the different proportions of crime reported in the media
Apply Cohens 5 step process to a current news article
Examine the way in which crime is reported in the media
Is the crime reported in the news:
socially constructed, a reflection of
reality or a cause of crime?
Why? How can you support your answer?
Main Sociologist: Stanley Cohen
Cohen was the first sociologist to realise that the mass
media has something to do with our perceptions of crime in
the way that crime is reported to us.
His famous study is entitled Folk Devils and Moral Panics.
He studied the mods and rockers in 1964.
The news is not discovered but manufactured.
Folk Devil - something which is said to be a bad influence on
society
Who is the folk devil in that video?
What was the moral panic?
The step by step media process according to Cohen:
1. Something happens (the problem is identified)
2. People get worried
3. The government and the police respond (they do
something)
4. More people are caught
5. Self fulfilling prophecy happens.
Knives - 1. Something happens
The media identify knife crimes as a problem, more people are
being stabbed therefore knives are a problem.
Knives - 2. People get worried
Because the media are constantly showing knives in the news,
people start to protest against knives and talk about it in
groups. This then makes people more worried about knives.
Knives 3. The government respond
Because the people are worried,
the government have to do something
about what the people are scared of.
Knife amnesty - hand in your knives at the police station.
The media then comes in to photograph what has been
handed in which creates more of a panic.
Is the problem the knives which have been handed in?
Knives - 4. More people are caught
Metal detectors are placed around major places (shops, police
stations, events etc). This leads to more people being caught.
Because more people are being caught the statistics change
which are then reported in the media.
This then feeds back to step 2 where people get worried.
Knives - 5. Self Fulfilling Prophecy
Because people are worried, they start to carry a knife as
they feel that they need to to ensure that they are safe.
Everybody else has a knife, I know this because its in the
papers so I need a knife to keep safe.
This process relates to two
things we have touched upon
earlier in the unit. What are
they?
If I showed
you this
headline,
what do you
think the
story would
be?
Over to you...
In the newspaper I have given you, find at least one
example of a moral panic / deviance amplification and
explain it in terms of Cohens five steps you have learnt.
1. Something happens (the problem is identified)
2. People get worried
3. The government and the police respond (they do
something)
4. More people are caught
Point
Evidence
Explain
Evaluate
Link
Is the crime reported in newspapers:
socially constructed, a reflection of
reality or a cause of more crime?
Why? How can you support your answer?
News is a social construction
As we learnt last lesson, crime is socially constructed.
Some stories are selected whilst other arent therefore as Cohen states the news
is manufactured.
Stories are selected based upon news values
Immediacy (when it happened)
Dramatisation (action and excitement)
Personalisation (human interest in stories)
Higher Status (celebrities)
Simplification (getting rid of unknown areas)
Novelty or unexpectedness
In your Newspapers
Find a story / example for each of these values.
What else makes the story newsworthy?
Our idea of crime doesnt just come
from the news
Where else do you get the idea of crime from?
Is that idea always realistic?
Does it support any stereotypes?
Can you think of any examples?
Evidence
Ernest Mandel (1984) between 1945 and 1984 more than 10 billion crime thrillers
were sold worldwide, 25% of prime TV were crime shows and 20% of films are
crime movies.
Surette (1998) - the law of opposites. Representations of crime in the films are
the opposite of the official statistics but very similar to news coverage.
There is not a lot of property crime in tv / films / news but there is a lot of
violence, sex and drug crimes.
Murders are portrayed to be mainly pre planned but in reality they are as a result
of fights or domestic violence.
Fictional villains tend to be portrayed as white middle class males
Sex crimes are shown to be by psychopaths and not people you know.
Causes of Crime
Imitation - copycat behaviour
Arousal - viewing violent or sexual images / videos
Desensitisation - being shown violence too often skews your view of reality.
Transmitting of knowledge - the criminal techniques being passed around
Advertising - making people want the American Dream more when they cannot
afford it
Portraying police as incompetent and unlikely to catch the criminals
Making offending look cool and glamerous
Video Game debate
Schramm et al (1961)
For some children, under some conditions, some television
is harmful. For some children, under the same conditions,
it may be beneficial. For most children, under most
conditions, most television is probably neither particularly
harmful nor particularly beneficial.
Activity on page 121.
In pairs design your questionnaire.
Test them on as many people as you can
before Friday 17th.
moral panics
