COMPLETE MODEL ANSWER with everything you need for AC1.5, with up to date statistics and perfect examples. Graded A*- Includes an analysis of all the impacts of media representation with unique examples for each what you need to achieve full marks ;)
AC1.5 Explain the impact of media representation on the public
perception of crime.
Introduction: The way the media illustrates criminal offenders, victims and different
types of crimes has a huge impact on how the public perceives general crimes. Media
coverage can affect how people believe in crime and in their perception of how much
crime there is, whether they think that crime is increasing or how much of a threat it can
be to them. This may lead to the public to demand action to the police, courts or
government on how to deal with the problems, such as a “crackdown” on a particular
type of crime or offence or the introduction of new laws.
The media tends to exaggerate the levels of seriousness of crimes and how likely is the
risk of becoming a victim, this creates something called “Moral Panic” , this a term that
describes the consequence of the representation of media when something that
happened have been covered in an exaggerated way and the general public react in a
panicked manner, this is because the reporting of the crime is usually massive and
exaggerated and in consequence the public reaction is also massive. The sociologist
Stabley Cohen wrote a book “Folk and Devils and Moral Panics” (1973) , he suggests
that a moral panic occurs when a person or a group emerged as a threat to societal
values and interest an as a result of that, the media, politicians and other respectable
figures start to condeem it and make it worse by amplifying the scale of the problem.
The example for Moral Crime is the case of the 1990’s Ecstasy Moral Panic, or also
known as the “Leah Betts” case, she was a schoolgirl from Essex and in the 11 of
november, she took an ecstasy table gifted by her friend, after that she drank an
approximate of 7 litres of water in a period of an hour and a half and fours hour later she
collapsed into a coma, she did not recover and died on the morning of 16 November.
Her death was very noticeable for the huge media coverage that followed it, that is
because her family used her image of her in her death bed as an example of the
dangers of illegal drugs in general and ecstasy in particular, this was their attempt to
deter other young people from experimenting with drugs. The impact of a moral panic is
to make the public think the issues are worse than they really are, this could bring a
much more severe reaction to the issue and more people involved and an unreasonable
desire for justice
The way that media represent certain groups can change the public attitudes of them
and sometimes trigger a moral panic. SInce the islamic terrorist attacks on the United
States in 2001 the media connotations when reporting Islam or muslims have been
highly negative. This has contributed to change in public attitudes towards muslim
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