CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Criminal Justice

Criminal Justice

Assignment Task 1

1. Find and summarise at least three journal articles dealing with Media Representations of Crime.

Media representations of crime, deviance and disorder have been a continual cause of worry. Two opposing anxieties can be noticed in public debate and both are reflected in a large research literature. On the one hand the media are often seen as essentially rebellious, on the other as a more or less abstruse form of social control. Those who see the media as rebellious see media representations of crime as themselves a consequential cause of wayward.

Research Trail

Strategy

My strategy of writing this paper was based on searching the online databases and libraries for the topic media representation of crime. Some of the keywords that will be used to conduct the search are: media, representative, crime, UK, police and so on.

Methods And Mechanisms

The criteria of selection for the articles were relevance to the research topic and the year of publication. Both public and private libraries as well as online libraries will be visited to access the data. Some of the online databases that will be accessed are ebsco, phoenix and so on.

Article 1) Media and Crime: A Critical Introduction (Key Approaches to Criminology) by Yvonne Jewkes [online database ebesco]

This article depicts that mass media representations of crime, deviance and disorder have been a perennial cause of concern. Two competing anxieties can be discerned in public debate and both are reflected in a large research literature. On the one hand the media are often seen as fundamentally subversive, on the other as a more or less subtle form of social control. Those who see the media as subversive see media representations of crime as themselves a significant cause of offending. This has been a constantly recurring theme of that 'history of respectable fears' which Geoffrey Pearson has traced back through the last few centuries. At the end of the 18th century, for example, the Middlesex magistrate Patrick Colquhoun claimed that crime was rising because 'the morals and habits of the lower ranks in society are growing progressively worse.' He attributed this in part to an alleged wave of bawdy ballad singers who went around entertaining in pubs. He regarded suppression of these as counter-productive, so he urged the government to sponsor rival groups of wholesome ballad singers. He was confident that these 18th century precursors of Sir Cliff Richard and Dame Vera Lynn would soon supplant their bawdy brethren in popularity and influence.

In their ideal-typical form these perspectives are polar opposites, sharing in common only their demonisation of the media, whether as a subversive threat to law, order and morality, or an insidious form of social control paving the way to authoritarianism by cultivating exaggerated fears about criminality. Each has generated huge research industries conducting empirical studies of media content, production and effects.Because of the difficulties in rigorously establishing straightforward causal relationships between images and effects some researchers tacitly imply that media images of crime do not have significant ...