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Crime and the Media

Crime and the Media. Overview of Media Social Constructionism MADD Politics. Crime has always been a good source for media Earliest forms of media had crime/justice themes Folktales, theatre, songs Types of media Print (as early as 1400s) Pamphlets Penny press, dime novels, comic books

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Crime and the Media

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  1. Crime and the Media Overview of Media Social Constructionism MADD Politics

  2. Crime has always been a good source for media • Earliest forms of media had crime/justice themes • Folktales, theatre, songs • Types of media • Print (as early as 1400s) • Pamphlets • Penny press, dime novels, comic books • Visual • Film (1910) • Commercial radio (1920s) • Commercial television (1950s) cable television (1970s) • VCRDVR • Internet/Computer games A Brief History of Crime/Media

  3. News • TV (local, national, cable) • Entertainment • Examples • Infotainment • Why is crime-media such a good match? • The “mediated experience” Content

  4. Knowledge is socially created (shared meanings) • Sources of “knowing” • Direct (experience) • Symbolic (other sources) • Where direct and symbolic knowledge clash, what wins out? • Conformity experiments, horse meat Social Constructionism

  5. Physical World • Competing Constructions • Media as the Arena • Winning Social Construction Surette—The Process

  6. Moral Entrepreneurs • Examples of claims makers in crime/justice? • Role of law enforcement? • Claims • Factual • Interpretive • Linking • Satanic Day Care Cult Murderers (p. 37) • Meth is more addictive than _______. Claims Makers / Claims

  7. Define • CJ Frames • Faulty System • Blocked Opportunities • Social Breakdown • Racist System • Violent Media Frames

  8. “Perfect Examples” of the problem • Worst crime • Innocent victim, heinous offender/crime • Link construction to symbolic crime • Child would be alive if not for _________. • Press case in media Symbolic Crimes

  9. Who “owns” a particular problem helps dictate policy • Common problem owners? Examples? Ownership

  10. What is the media image of crime most visible in news and entertainment? • Theme in both Surette and Beckett/Sasson? • A particular “frame” has largely won out in the competition for social construction of crime • What effect does this have on the “real world?” • Cultivation theory and the “mean world” • Selection Theory, Qualifications • Response using experimental design You See Timmy…

  11. Beckett and Sasson • Dominant construction of crime not accident • Context of 1950s-1960s • Liberal agenda/policies? • Conservative strategy? • Individual understanding of crime/disorder • Welfare as bad The Politics of “Law and Order”

  12. Conservatives hate change • Civil rights • Competing construction of civil disobedience • Goldwater  Nixon • Crime as National Concern • Strikes chord with subset of Americans • LINK crime to civil rights to other fears of change/disorder • The “Southern Strategy” • Nixon “We’ll go after the racists” • Problem: Crime not federal. Solution? Law and Order II

  13. Reagan • Economy in tank (#1 American concern) • Still, put crime as high on agenda • Shift federal law enforcement from white collar to drugs/violence • “Just say NO” • Democrats Pile on • Bush • War on Drugs • Willie Horton as a “wonderful mix of liberalism and a big black rapist” (Horton as his “running mate”). Reagan/Bush Years

  14. Crime as situational/personal failure • “COPS” • News coverage, etc. • War on Drugs • Crack babies • The “Meth Epidemic” Media Involvement

  15. Common perception/story = politicians respond to public demands • Public “fed up” • Beckett and Sasson • Politicians helped “construct” and cultivate the law and order frame • Criminal justice problem and solution (not poverty, etc) You See Timmy

  16. Context of 1970s/early 1980s • Claims Makers? • How did MADD “construct” the problem of drinking and driving? • Vs. competing claim of the time? • Use of Media? • Context • Fit for “industry” • Fit for political context MADD

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