Media And Crime Case Study

What do the majority of the worlds children do in their social time? Watch television. The Jamie Bulger case asks the question can violent films be blamed after the two boys had reportedly watched ‘Child’s play 3’ before murdering the 3 year old (Slideshare.net, 2014). Newspaper headlines shout at us, enticing our attention about crime, designed to shock, frighten and titillate. What exactly is the relationship between media and crime? The three main theoretical perspectives that will be discussed include media effect, the moral panic theory and the ill-effects theory.

To what extent does mass media cause anti-social, deviant or criminal behaviour? The media effect theory explains how the media affects society and how society affects the media. The media effects model attacks the problem backwards. This means that they start with the media and then try and make connections rather than starting with the offender and finding the root of the problem, another criticism is also linked into this where the model focuses on the individual rather than the society. A study carried out by Hagell and Newbury (1994) was where they interviewed 78 violent teenage offenders and then traced their behaviour back to media usage. They compared their date to a group of over 500 ‘ordinary’ school pupils of the same age. They found that the young offenders watched less television and video games than their counterparts and had little access to technology in the first place, therefore going against the model. (Theory.org.uk, 2014)

The publication of Stanley Cohens (1972/2002) Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers is the origin of moral panic. ‘A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as ...

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...w to try to reform todays policy to aid the future, as shown in late 2005 with the anti-muslim riot. The Australian society was able to explore ways to reform todays society. Moral panic theory also has structural bias which means that they assume the public will react in a certain way to media, this trait can also be found in the ill effects model. The ill effects model says that society will just simply accept the data that is given to them and therefore behave in a certain way. Evidence proves that there is a correlation between media and crime however it may not be as strong as these three models suggest. Factors such as focusing more on the individual than society is a weakness shared in all. Moral panic in my opinion is the strongest model which shows how if a dangerous individual is highlighted in the media then society can react to it in an exaggerated way.