Two ways the media may contribute to an increase in crime

The media can portray role models with glamorous lifestyles and exaggerate the reporting of events, according to the item in the AQA’s Crime and Deviance SCLY2/3 exam paper from November 2021 (1)

In these 10 mark ‘applying material from the item questions you need to use the two ways (in this case) as hooks and elaborate how these may contribute to an increase in crime, applying sociological concepts and theories.

According to the mark scheme you also get some marks for evaluation.

A key hint here is to remember that this is a Crime and Deviance paper, not a media paper, so don’t get too carried away with media concepts, although you should be credited for them, it’s always safer to use core crime and deviance material.

Another thing to be careful of is to include theories and concepts rather than relying on popular examples from the media. You can use examples, and you should do, but make sure you link them to theory.

The rest of this post considers how you might go about expanding on the two points mentioned in item A:

  • The media portraying glamorous lifestyles
  • The media exaggerating events.

How glamorous lifestyles in the media might contribute to an increase in crime

Examples of the media portraying glamorous lifestyles include cribs, many music videos and also lifestyle vloggers on YouTube, which tend to celebrate wealth, conspicuous consumption and people generally having a good time.

Such portrayals give the impression that being wealthy is the norm in a society, and, following Robert Merton’s strain theory this might increase the level of anomie, which can lead to different types of crime depending on how people respond.

Merton theorised that if people don’t have the opportunties to reach what they perceive to be the ordinary success goals in society some of them will turn to utilitarian crime to get what they think they should have, which means economic crimes such as burglary, robbery and theft.

This might explain the prevalence of crimes such as moped snatch-thefts in London recently, and also drug related crimes: those who can’t get jobs might believe the only way they can earn enough money to achieve ‘glamourous lifestyles’ is to deal drugs, maybe as part of a gang, which is something Venkatesh found in Gang Leader for a day.

The media, at least some aspects of it also glamorises gang, gun and drug culture: with many films showing crime as glamorous itself, which might encourage people into gangs and crime more generally.

Other people may look at glamorous western lifestyles in the media and react against it, seeing it as shallow and anti-religious and this might inspire anti-western sentiment and increase conflict in the form of fundamentalist terrorist attacks, this would be a rebellious response in Merton’s theory.

However most people don’t turn to crime because of media portrayals, they just give up on achieving and settle for ordinary jobs and average lifestyles or develop retreatist subcultures, which aren’t necessarily criminal, so it isn’t as simple as the media causing criminal behaviour, people aren’t that passive.

Finally, the portrayal of glamorous lifestyles might themselves be criminal – such as with people on social media boasting about their sports cars and wealth in order to encourage people into investing into get rich quick schemes, such as dodgy crypto DEFI schemes, whereas in reality these are just rug pull scams.

How media exaggeration might contribute to an increase in crime

You could apply moral panic theory here: when the media exaggerate the deviance of youth subcultures , according to Stan Cohen, this attracts more violent people to the subculture so the subculture becomes more violent in reality.

The problem with this is that it relies on the passive audience theory, but audiences are more active today.

There are theories which suggest violence in the media can cause people to be violent, such as Bandura’s Copy Cat theory, but there are many flaws with his original experiment which tried to prove a direct link between media violence and real life violence, and little evidence that there is a link.

Violence in the media may, however, desensitise people to violence in real life and make them less likely to react when they see violent acts.

Similarly with increasing fear causes by the exaggeration of violence. Ordinary people are less likely to go out in public meaning there are less people around to informally police the streets if crime is happening.

The news often exaggerates the extent of violent street crime compared to property crime, and working class street crime compared to middle class white collar crime, and both of these might cause an increase in particular types of crime.

One thing the media exaggerates is the extent of stranger sexual assault and child abduction by strangers, which keeps domestic abuse cases hidden, and may make it easier for partners and friends to keep on abusing because no-one is looking out for these criminals, who are the usual perpetrators.

Similarly with focusing on violent street crime: the lack of focus in the media agenda on high level fraud allows governments and corporations to carry on their criminal operations as usual, according to a Marxist perspective.

Signposting and sources

The main material to draw on to answer the above questions comes from the Crime and Deviance module.

For more examples of how to answer all sorts of A-level sociology exam questions please see my exams page.

The question above can be found in the the AQA’s November 2021 A-level sociology crime and deviance paper, SCLY2/3.

Sociology in the News (8) – Killer Clowns and Donald Trump’s Misogyny

The Killer Clown Craze 

killer-clown-craze-manchester.jpg

The societal response to the so called ‘Killer Clown Craze‘ seems like a good example of a moral panic. Piers Morgan (moral entrepreneur supremo) has waded in against the craze, and as soon as he gets involved in anything, that’s a sure sign of moral panic). Twenty years ago, people dressed in scary clown costumes would have been regarded as ‘Halloween pranksters’, today they’re regarded as public menaces who are a threat to public order and child well-being.

Thames Valley Police reported that

‘In the last 24 hours we have been called to 14 incidents across the region where people have reported being intimidated or frightened by others dressed as clowns. This follows the report of other incidents across the country which have been widely reported in the national media. While we don’t want to be accused of stopping people enjoying themselves we would also ask those same people to think of the impact of their behaviour on others and themselves.’ 

The public have been warned that dressing up as a clown with the intent to scare people could result in a criminal record, and children have been advised to phone child line if they are distressed by such sightings. Staffordshire police have further advised that people don’t ‘like’ Killer Clown pages on Facebook.

Maybe the chainsaw wielding clowns are taking this a step-too far, but as far as I can see, most of the incidents are harmless pranks, meaning the panic over this is almost certainly disproportionate, possibly a response to living in a culture of fear in which paranoid parents construct children as delicate objects in need of protection. Surely 30 years ago clown pranks would have been laughed off as funny?

This is also a great example of a ‘hyperreal’ deviant phenomenon – some people are even dressing up as superheros and chasing the Killer Clowns…

cumbriasuperheroes1

 

Donald Trump’s Downfall

donald-trump-gropes-ivanka.jpg

Donald Trump’s downfall is a useful example of how Synoptic Surveillance can bring down the powerful – It looks like his chances of winning the US election are now extremely slim after video footage came to light of him engaged in what he thought was a private conversation in which he described his failure to ‘fuck’ (his words) a married T.V. presenter even thought he’d ‘moved on her like a bitch’, shortly after he himself had just married. He also boasted of groping women in the same conversation.

Synoptic Surveillance is a concept developed by Thomas Mathiesson to describe how surveillance is now carried out by a diverse range of people, rather than just the state keeping citizens under surveillance – as a result power is now more widely dispersed and those with political power are subject to more control from below, through journalistic surveillance for example.

Maybe the next moral panic will consist of people dressing up in Donald Trump masks groping women?  (‘Honest love, it was just a joke’.)

donald-trump
Trump -almost certainly more terrifying than killer clowns

 

 

Labelling Theory of Crime – A Summary

People do not become criminals because of their social background, crime emerges because of labelling by authorities. Crime is the product of interactions between certain individuals and the police, rather than social background.

NB these are very brief summary notes, for a much more in-depth post on everything below please see my main post on the labelling theory of crime.

Crime is Sociology Constructed

  • There is no such thing as an inherently deviance act

  • Howard Becker (1963) “Deviancy is not a quality of the act a person commits, but rather a consequences of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an ‘offender’.”

  • Becker – The Outsiders – Malinowski – Incest example

  • Applies to drugs – compare illegal ‘legal’ highs UK to legal weed in Colorado

Not everyone who is deviant gets labelled as such

  • Whether an actor is labelled as deviant depends on: their interactions with the police, their background/ appearance, the circumstances of the offence.

  • negative labels (deviant/ criminal) are generally given to the powerless by the powerful.

  • Cicourel – first stage – working class kids more likely to be labelled as deviant by police; second stage – more likely to be prosecuted by courts, most of this is based on appearance and language, not the deviant act.

Labelling has real consequences – it can lead to deviancy amplification, the self-fulfilling prophecy and deviant careers

  • Lemert – primary and secondary deviance

  • Becker – labelling, the deviant career and the master status

  • Labelling theory applied to education – the self-fulfilling prophecy

  • Moral panics, folk devils and deviancy amplification

Labelling theory should promote policies that prevent labelling minor acts as deviant

  • Decriminalisation (of drugs for example)

  • Reintegrative shaming to label the act, not the criminal.

Evaluations

Positive

Negative

Labelling theory emphasises the following:

– That the law is not ‘set in stone’ – it is actively constructed and changes over time

– That law enforcement is often discriminatory

– That we cannot trust crime statistics

– That attempts to control crime can backfire and may make the situation worse

– That agents of social control may actually be one of the major causes of crime, so we should think twice about giving them more power.

– It tends to be determinstic, not everyone accepts their labels

– It assumes offenders are just passive – it doesn’t recognise the role of personal choice in committing crime

– It gives the offender a ‘victim status’ – Realists argue that this perspective actually ignores the actual victims of crime.

– It tends to emphasise the negativesides of labelling rather than the positive side

– It fails to explain why acts of primary deviance exist, focussing mainly on secondary deviance.

– Structural sociologists argue that there are deeper, structural explanations of crime, it isn’t all just a product of labelling and interactions.