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Summary Criminology Unit 1 AC1.4 model answer
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A model answer for AC1.4 of Unit 1 for Criminology Diploma WJEC, an answer that got full marks by a student who achieved 96/100 in the final exam.
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Unit 1- AC1.4 - Describe media representations of crimeNewspapers:
Newspapers are constantly covering crimes and papers use crime to advertise products. This means
that only topics businesses seem ‘newsworthy’ will get onto the papers. As of this, certain crimes are
often underrepresented like white collar crime and others are overrepresented and dominate the
press. Tabloid papers will often cover more sensational stories in order to sell. Crime in newspapers
highlights the high reported crimes over the less reported important crimes and exaggerates the risk
of victimisation. The more you read newspapers and become involved in crime, the more fearful you
are of crime. Police success in ‘clearing up’ crimes is exaggerated in new reporting, partly because
the police themselves are the source of the stories. General news coverage tends to portray crime as
a series of discrete incidents rather than having pattern or structure. According to Jewkes (2004) the
2009 British Crime Survey found that readers of national broadsheets were more likely to rate the
police as doing a good or excellent job and have more confidence in the police overall than tabloid
readers. Readers of popular newspapers who report crime in a sensationalised way tend to have the
highest levels of fear of crime and victimisation. People watching and reading the news were more
likely to report being particularly worried about a victim of crime and concerned about risk of
physical attacks. Schleisinger and Tumber (1992) found that there were ‘consistent relations’
between individuals' media consumption and their levels of fear of becoming a victim of crime.
TV:
TV statistics show that you are much more likely to be fearful of crime if you watch TV crime than
actually being a victim. People claimed that they got most of their information on crime from TV,
which distorts their personal image of crimes. Some claimed that their fear of crime is increased by
news and documentary coverage of crime. The media reflects a spiralling crime rate and an over
lenient criminal justice system neither of which are true according to studies. Media presents crime
stories (real and fictional) in ways which selectively distort and manipulate public perceptions,
creating a false picture of crime. False pictures promote stereotyping, bias, prejudice and gross
oversimplification of the facts. Fictional representations of crime, criminals and victims follow a ‘law
of opposites’- they are the opposite of official statistics. Criminals are romanticised on TV. actions are
usually justified by the audience. TV crime has a high clear up rate which is not representative of real
life as police are usually better in TV than in reality. An example of this is For example, in criminal
minds, extravagant crimes are really common and over exaggerated to create a good reaction from
the audience. There is a lot of violence in every episode which glamorises these types of inaccurate
representations.
Film:
Most often in films, crime is very glamorised using drugs, sex, violence and prostitution in a positive,
light-hearted way. This exposure can often desensitise the audiences from the real horror of these
crimes portrayed and various studies suggest that children are most receptive to violence through
influence. Films fuel the public's enthusiasm for crime from fictional action films to films which
recreate real crime. Fictional crime films tend to centre around a criminal, a victim and an avenger.
They often incorporate elements which appeal to the audience's own anti-social or deviant
tendencies or to their ambivalence towards the police and other authorities. This can also be
reflected by the number of incompetent or corrupt cops. These films distort the reality of hidden
societies such as the mafia and prisons so much that the version of ‘reality’ is more intense than
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