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Summary sociology crime in the media exam responses
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sociology crime and deviance, crime in the media exam responses
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Explain how the news is a social construction:A social construction is regarding that of an idea or process of which is not naturally
occurring, this being that is has been derived socially and accepted or enforced upon society.
This concept being supported by McQuail who argues that the news is a socially
manufactured product as it is the result of a selective process. The news being built upon
values, the characteristics that make a good story, of which are favoured by the public as
consumers, implementing the way in which journalists and newspaper companies, often
maintaining a political bias, construct their papers and select their stories. These news
values govern that a story is likely to bring in a greater profit on the basis of the audience
being intrigued by its content, papers therefore actively decide to feature stories that
maintain a great threshold, being that a story is likely to attract a greater audience such it be
personified or include an event of which the individual does not come across on an everyday
basis, explaining why petty crimes like shoplifting and vandalism are often not reported on.
Furthermore, the news is bias in that papers have different propagandas when putting
forward information, meaning that various papers are to report crime from varying
perspectives. This being as different companies put forward stories regarding crime within
the context of their own political agenda, with popular paper ‘The Sun’ maintaining a right-
wing stance and in turn being more likely to convey that crime is a problem that effects the
poor. This therefore implies news to be a social construction of crime as these papers have
been derived from members of society to put forward an unnaturally occurring and
manipulated standpoint of crime, being likely to influence the perspectives of its readers as
to developing a falsified perception of crime.
Another way in which the news is seen to be a social construction of crime is regarding its
irregularities as to being consistent with official statistics, being that the crimes most
frequently occurring within society are not those being heavily reported on and frequently
occurring within society. This being demonstrated in the instance of the focus of murder and
other violent crimes within the news, when in fact the most frequently committed crimes in
the UK are property based. The news has also been known to propose victims to be more
commonly female when statistics show that young men aged 19-24 are the most frequent
victim of crime. Furthermore, the news has also been observed to utilise entertainment and
sensationalism when putting forward crime reports, this being described by Postman to be a
form of “Infotainment”, where developing an audience is put above accurate recollections
events. The news can therefore be inferred to be a social construction as is crime as
journalists act as moral entrepreneurs, being that they determine the publics perspective
surrounding their beliefs towards which individuals within society are deviant and how
frequently particular crimes are occurring.
Outline three media news values:
One type of news values is that of extraordinariness, proposing that a successful story arises
from the portrayal of a crime that goes against the routine events of most of society. An
instance of this would be that of the Twin Tower terrorist events of 2001, being that it was
not an everyday occurring event and managed to captivate the attention of millions using
news articles. This event being extraordinary as it went against the everyday experiences of
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