Unit 4 SCLY4 - Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods; Stratification and Differentiation with Theory and Methods
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Types of Crime and Deviance
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Unit 4 SCLY4 - Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods; Stratification and Differentiation with Theory and Methods
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This document is a summary of a large chunk of the Crime and Deviance course of AQA A-level Sociology. It covers the different types of crime including: Media and Crime, Globalisation and Crime, Green Crime, and State Crime.
Unit 4 SCLY4 - Crime and Deviance with Theory and Methods; Stratification and Differentiation with Theory and Methods
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Paper 3 – Crime and Deviance
Book 3
Media and Crime
The media are influential In affecting our views of deviance and deviants as most of the population
will not have come into contact with murderers, drug addicts, child abusers etc.,
How does the media portray crime and deviance?
Over reports sexual and violent crime.
Exaggerates how successful the police are in solving crime.
Exaggerates the risk of being a victim of crime. It gives the impression that females, older
people and the middle class are most at risk, but stats disagree.
Ignores ordinary crime and over emphasises extraordinary crime. Pety theft gets little
coverage, but terrorism and child abuse are over reported.
Left realists say the media disguises the reality of crime – i.e., that criminals and victims tend to be
from the working class. Marxists point out that the media largely ignores white collar and corporate
crimes.
News values – Social construction of the news and crime reporting
The media present and inaccurate picture of crime as the news is socially constructed by journalists
using news values (values that are used to decide if a story is worth writing about). News values that
affect crime reporting:
Drama – excitement and action
Personalisation – individuals’ stories
Simplification – makes the issue seem as simple as possible.
Novelty – something unusual e.g., cannibalism.
Risk – focusing on victims being afraid.
Violence
Agenda setting
The media use this when reporting on a crime. It means when the media talk about crime they do so
in certain set way. Certain crimes and criminals are always shown in a certain way, e.g., people who
commit benefit fraud are ‘work shy scroungers’ stealing from the public. What is never discussed is
the lack of job opportunities available and why some jobs are so low paid.
Agenda setting sets the limits for what shall and shall not be discussed. There is also a hierarchy of
access to the media in that only certain views are heard those of the primary defenders – the official
views of the police, courts, and politicians not of those deviants or criminals themselves.
, Studies that show agenda setting
Welfare scroungers (Golding & Middleton, 1982)
They looked at how moral panic was created by the media about benefit fraud in the mid 70’s. the
agenda was set in terms of the claimants being seen as idle, not wanting to work, and living off state
benefits. The media also implied that there were jobs if only they would ‘get off their backsides’ to
look for them, and that more legislation should be brought in to prevent benefit fraud. Official views
received prominent treatment, and little was heard of the views of the claimants themselves not of
the sums of unclaimed benefit or the extent of tax fraud, both of which were much larger than
estimated benefit fraud.
Hall – policing the crisis.
Hall looked at how the media helped create a moral panic that occurred in the 70’s centred on the
‘new’ crime of mugging. Again, only the views of the primary defenders were heard in the media
e.g., the police, judges, magistrates, and politicians, and not the views of the ‘muggers’ themselves.
These views in the media helped bring in greater social control in society e.g., military policing in the
inner cities and harsher sentencing for muggers.
Both the above studies believed that the reason for the media’s portrayal of these events was to
divert attention away from the ‘crisis in capitalism’ that was occurring in the 1970’s (strikes, student
protests, terrorism in Northern Ireland). Therefore, both groups acted as scapegoats on which to pin
the blame for societies problems.
More recent examples of agenda setting and moral panics in the media:
Immigration
Desensitisation – people see so much crime and violence it becomes ‘normal’.
Shows people how to commit crime.
Advertising creates false needs which most people can’t legally achieve.
Makes some crimes/criminals look glamorous.
CRITICISM -> However, studies show that watching a lot of media violence has very little effect on
behaviour.
Moral panics and Deviancy Amplification
Another way in which the media can cause crime is through labelling leading to deviancy
amplification and moral panics. Deviancy amplification spiral refers to the increase in deviance that
can occur when an individual or group are labelled deviant by agencies (police and the media)
The media can amplify deviance in the way they report events and can increase existing deviance or
the perception of an increase.
Part of the deviancy amplification spital is the creation of a moral panic. A moral panic is when
society over reacts to something they think is a big problem. This is created by the media.
Cohen notes that the media definitions of the situation are crucial in setting a moral panic, because
in large scale modern societies, most people do not have direct experience of the events themselves
and this have to rely on the media for information about them. In the case of Mods and Rockers, this
allowed the media to portray them as folk devils – major threats to public order and social values.
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