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Lecture notes Crime, media, power
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Lecture 1: Theorising crime in the mediaLaw is a social construct, just like crime.
Mass society theory
- Behaviour is a response to external stimuli
- Media influences the masses
- Moral panics, folk devils
- Mass media injects society with values and information that affect
behaviour & thought
Strain & Anomie theory
- Anomie theory (Durkheim): moral authority of collective consciousness,
society cannot regulate appetites of individual conscience mass crime
- Strain theory (Merton): inability to success leads to criminal behaviour
Affects those that are isolated from society. Mass media feeds us the
cultural goals that some people cannot seem to reach
Dominant Ideology approach
- Marx: society controlled by elite, exploits lower class. Society is a social
construct
- Gramsci: control upper class hegemonic culture propagation that held up
status quo
Radical & critical criminology (builds further on dominant ideology approach)
- Crime/criminals are labels that powerful class gives to lower class
(labelling theory)
- Importance structural inequalities in determining crime
- Media owned by corporations
Media representations (of crime) reproduce interest of powerful actors
(political economic approach)
Hierarchy of credibility/propaganda model
Pluralism = Counterargument for dominant ideology approach
- Plurality of sources/channels forum for all views
- Information overload (sensationalism)
Post-modern & post-structural turn
- Questioning what is taken for granted
- Knowledge itself is constructed
Cultural criminology: crime as cultural event
- Audience has agency about what to consume
- Blurring of real and image
- Audience gratification crime: a product for entertainment
Hyperreality
, Lecture 2: labelling, moral panics & interactive construction
Constructing the outsiders
Labelling
- Rules, compels, judgement are the 3 main things
- Statistical analogy: too far from center (if you are too tall, you are deviant)
- Medical analogy: sick or something not working then you are deviant
- Functional/dysfunctional: if something is not working then you are
deviant
Steps of labelling
1. Making rules
2. Applying to certain people
3. Labelling them outsiders
Social construct of things
Rule creaters: moral entrepreneurs
- Rule creators: create the rules
- Rule enforcing: enforce the rules, like police
= hierarchy of credibility
- Change individuals public identity
- Self-fulfilling prophecy
- Further deviant behaviour to a deviant career
… but things as gender are not in the theory and certain groups are claimed to be
deviant, while they are not (like people that are too tall for example)
Moral panics
- Lack of proportion
- ‘experts’ claiming things
- Sudden and dramatic increase of information
- Becomes defined as threat to society
- Stereotypical presentation
- Long lasting repercussions
- Society conceives itself
Rule creators and moral entrepreneurs cause moral crusades
Cohen’s stages:
1. Warning
2. Impact
3. Inventory (deviance amplification cycle)
4. Reaction
Actors:
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