Summary Model Answers for Criminology Unit 1: AC1.4
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Course
Unit 1 (4543U1)
Institution
WJEC
Book
WJEC Level 3 Applied Certificate & Diploma Criminology: Study and Revision Guide
This is what I used to achieve full marks on the written part of Unit 1! It has been tweaked many times after the use of feedback from my whole Social Sciences Department to become perfect. This is the final draft of my write-up that I used for the controlled assessment and this resource covers AC1...
Newspapers are a type of media that represents crimes that will get the public’s attention
such as reporting serious crimes (murder, sexual assault) or anything to do with celebrities
and their family. To ensure that what is being covered by newspapers is going to attract the
public, reporters look for ‘news values’ which they determine through the use of:
● Immediacy: The ability to have an immediate effect
● Dramatisation: More exciting to get a better reaction out of people
● Personalisation: Making it personal ie. a celebrity or somebody we care about
● Higher-status persons: Celebrities or MPs or of royalty
● Simplification: Simple ideas, not complicated like white-collar crimes
● Novelty or unexpectedness: Out of the ordinary to get more attention
● Risk: High risk makes the public more wary
● Violence: More violence makes the public more wary
News values represent crime because they check all of the boxes that news outlets want to
gain popularity and viewership that the public will look at and empathise with. Most (if not all)
crimes reported in newspapers are factual as they inform the public of recent incidents.
However, they offer a biased opinion as they tend to sympathise with the victim and their
family, rather than the offenders. An example of a crime that got the public's attention would
be the case of Jack the Ripper in 1888. A series of newspaper headlines were written about
his killings and victims, offering a great deal of sympathy while also showing speculations on
who the murderer really was and his motive. This brought about a great deal of attention as
the public grew more concerned and filled with fear over an unknown murderer who killed at
least 7 people.
Television is a big source of media that influences the public greatly. Typically TV will
overemphasise crimes to create a dramatic effect on the reader. TV can be split into two
categories: crime fact/news and crime fiction. Crime fact/news is similar to newspapers but
will still overemphasise violent crimes to gain more views. The public tends to trust the news
they’re told here as most of it is factual and correct. On the other hand, crime fiction
dramatises all types of crimes like making property crime more serious. This is viewed as
fictional as it’s normally made up or an over-exaggeration of a real story with inaccurate
information. Fictional TV likes to show the police in a positive way by having a high success
rate however, more modern TV shows will show them fail or show corrupt police officers to
shock the audience. An example of a TV show that does this is NCIS. It overemphasises
some crimes, especially the gory parts, to get a better reaction from the audience when
somebody is stabbed or shot. They also see officials fail sometimes and leave on a
cliffhanger to add suspense but ultimately all the crimes get solved.
Films represent crime as being more explicit and extreme with around half of all cinema films
including crime content in them. They influence the public majorly and sometimes cause
people to do irrational things in real life like stealing, fraud, or more extreme like murder.
Most of the content you see in films is fictional with an element of factual to try and create a
realistic element to the films in order to get a realistic reaction from the audience. Producers
have also adapted to the fact that the public have become more desensitised over time so
they show more explicit content and will exaggerate it to engage viewers still. An example of
a crime film would be The Godfather, about the rise and fall of a mafia family with explicit
scenes of gun shootouts and a lot of violence.
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