How Does Media Influence Crime

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1. In Chapter 3, Surette explains the link between the media and criminal behavior. According to Surette, there have been several difficulties in examining the relationship between the media and criminal behavior. (Surette, 2011) Surette explains that they are several ways in which media influences crime. The media could be increasing the number of criminals by turning previously law-abiding people into criminals. It could also be helping active criminals become more successful in their offenses. There are so many ways that the media could be influencing crime but the research is too unstable because an aggregate, society-wide media criminogenic effect is likely to be small and intermixed with many other crime-generating factors. (Surette, 2011) At the beginning of the nineteenth century came the emergence of the copycat crime and resurgence of concern that the media influences crime. For a crime to be a copycat crime, it must have been inspired by an earlier, media-publicized or generator crime. (Surette, 2011)
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According to Rafter, Hollywood films give us ideas about heroes and the nature of heroism. (Rafter, 2006) As a society, we admire the powerful and look down upon the weak. We love to watch characters that stand against oppression and bring freedom to all. No matter what method they use to administer justice, because they are doing it for society, it is acceptable. Traits glorified by films and other media constitute a kind of ideology of heroism, a set of assumptions about what admirable means. (Rafter, 2006) To fully understand why society reveres heroes, Rafter explains the eight kinds of narratives that contain the different types of crime heroes. The eight types of narratives are: the mystery or detective story, the thriller, the caper or heist, the tale of justice violated/justice restored, the disguised Western, tales of revenge and vigilantism, chronicles of criminal careers, and the episodic plots of action stories. (Rafter,

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