The media plays a big part in society. The media provides important information about current affairs such politics, business, education, health, scandals, terrorism wars and international conflict and crime and violence. The media also has a significant influence on the way in which society sees the world. This essay will define what is media, this essay will also investigate and discuss the ways in which crime is portrayed by the media, and how it impacts the level of crime and violence in today’s society.
The term media refers to the main means of mass communication, this can be done through broadcasting, publishing written or even spoken words (Oxford, 2016). There are many different ways in which the media can be assessed, this can be done through television, radio, the internet, newspaper, magazines, music and even films. In today’s society, the media has been a significant force as the media reflects and creates new cultures within society. For example, many people often idolise their favourite celebrities based on how they are seen through the media. They begin to act, talk and even dress like their idols. Another example of how the media can be influential can be seen with new age hip hop and the lifestyles that comes along with it. Many young people in today’s society idolise their favourite rappers and some even go as far as to act on the words portrayed in their songs, some will involve themselves in criminal activities such as selling drugs or carrying a weapon and some even have violent tendencies. This therefore, seems to prove that there is some form of manipulation or influence within the media.
There has been a huge debate concerning the mass media, and to what extent the media is said to cause violence and criminal behaviour (Jewkes, 2015). It is a known fact that society has become more violent since the introduction of the modern media industry and with the arrival, development and growth of computer technologies and social media the public anxiety has intensified (Jewkes, 2015). The media regularly reports on criminal activity as it should do; however, the media has created fear among the public. Reiner (2007) identifies two main public anxieties about the media (Newburn, 2013). First is that the media is seen as subversive, meaning that it undermines the laws set out by the government or rebels on what is considered to be societies norms and values. The political rights have an undeniable belief of this. They believe that the media glamorises criminal behaviour and violence which undermines authority and the role of law which encourages criminality (Newburn, 2013). Second is that the media is seen as a subtle form of social control. Many media images of crime and deviant behaviour heightens public fear. This is done by exaggeration and misrepresentation of criminality, which then raises the publics fear on law and order thus proving that the mass media does indeed have an impact on the public’s attitude and conduct (Newburn, 2013). However, this can be hard to prove as many criminologists argue that there is no link between watching television and day-to-day behaviour.
There is no doubt that the influence of the mass media does affect the way society thinks and behaves. It has been argued that media can manipulate and cause change and effect on an individual’s cultural and personal beliefs (Jewkes, 2015). It can be quite simple to effect and change an individual’s behaviour, as anyone can be influenced by what they see and read and this can ultimately have an impact on their own opinion and how they chose to behave around others (Jewkes, 2015). For example, an individual may see a news clip about the recent terrorist attacks in Berlin and form their own opinion based on what is portrayed in the news about this particular terrorist himself and what affiliation he may have had with the terrorist group Isis. As a result, an individual watching this news clip may become racially biased against ethnic minorities of middle-eastern descent and may not want to engage with them socially, as they are in fear of their own safety.
But with that being said, it is important to remember that not all information presented on the news is 100% accurate. Therefore, individuals should not take the information from the news at face value, instead they should gather information from other sources before forming any opinions based on what they have seen or heard.
It has also been argued that internet has the potential to change the nature and extent of criminal behaviour. This is because the internet allows for a broader outlook on such topics as politics and social and cultural viewpoints. With growth of technology the internet has become the first place where people can have access to almost any information therefore, they ae able to share their views on anything that is happening around the world (Marsh, 2009). For example, with recent tensions in America concerning the amount of black males being killed at the hands of the police. The news has been proven to be biased in portraying police officers as being innocent while portraying black males as violent individuals. Thus some who have access to this media coverage may come to the conclusion that, the police offices were right to taking the lives of those black males, whereas some may have felt that the police officers where too quick to act, when in fact there were other options that could have been used, which would not resolve in any deaths. Others went beyond the simple outlook of the situation and took it upon themselves to vindicate those who had died, by assassinating various police officers and this sparked up the infamous Ku Klux Klan and other racist organisations to resurface in the hopes of creating a new race war (Marsh, 2009). However, although society tends to hold the media accountable for what it portrays to the public, whether it is written in the newspaper or viewed on TV, there is the question of whether the blames falls on the media alone but the fact may just be that an individual’s reaction or effect of the media may be based on their own knowledge or experiences and not that the media has influence over them.
Many questions have been asked as to whether the media’s representation of crime and violence has had a negative effect on its audiences (Carabine Eamonn, et al p.418). It is clear that there is a large porpotion of news coverage on crime and deviance. The news often shows a keen curiosity in crime and has a way of misrepresenting images of crime, criminals and the police. This is because the media over represents violence and sexual crimes and can sometimess discriminate agaist the potrayal of criminals and victims from lower and middles class working backgrounds. They exaggerate the risk of being victimised and the media even seeks to report the most heineous crimes as this will incease the number of audiences. (Jewkes, 2004) makes a suggestion that many news events have to be considered significant or dramatic enough to be in the news. For example, a single case of rape may only make the local newspaper, whereas a serial rapist might become a national news story, for example, the Yorkshire ripper. Crime becomes newsworthy when it can be presented as serious, random and unpredictable enough so that a moral panic occurs in the sense that we all get scared of becoming a victim ourselves.
Nevertheless, several studies have been done but have failed to reach a convincing conclusion as to whether violence in the media has a damaging effect on it audence, and dispite the amount of time and money put forward towards coming up with an answer, there the no clear evedience for or against such claims of behavioural change (Carabine Eamonn, 2014). Nevertheless, there has been a large amount of experimental studies that has tried to identify and single out the effects of the media. Many of these studies focused on whether viewing sexual or violent content in the media is linked to changes in attitude and behavior (Newburn, 2013). Many of these studies found that when the experiment was conducted in small goups, it was apparent that there was some signs of effect, in particular there was signs of a negative effect, especially in the case of increased aggression or violence (Newburn, 2013).
Many critcis have argued that studies done on the effects of the media, have failed to place effects in their social context for example, to what extent does the media shape our perception of crime? Or does the media construct and present our social world in ways that distort reality and is unjustly to stereotyping a particula group of people? They also argue that these experiements rely on made up asumption on how the audiences processes the messages sent out by the media (Newburn, 2013). Even with such critisisms, none of these critics have denied that the media does have an effect, as it is the media’s job to communicate and get a reaction from its audience. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that there is a direct link between media violence and real violence.
One of the most controversial topics associated with the media and crime looks at whether, media violence has a direct link to level of real violence in today’s society. A recent report by the (American Psychological task force, 2015) looked at the role of media violence, in relation to video games and its influence on young children and adolescents. There are many cases reproted that shows clear evencence of this. In the last 2 decades there has been a lot of media coverage on mass murders that were linked to violent video games. For example in the case of Evan Ramsey, who in 1997 walked into his high school and shot a student, a principal and wounded others, it was said that he was heavily influenced by the video game Doom. Evan Ramsey claimed that the video game distorted his vision of what was reality (Fletcher, 2015). In a statement he was quoted saying that he did not understand that if he pulled out a gun to shoot someone, that person would never get back up. He went on to say that in Doom “you shoot a gun and you see the video game characters get back up, you have to shoot at least eight or nine times before anything dies” (Fletcher, 2015). Research from the University of Oxford found that there was no link between playing video games and real life violence but they did however, find that playing video games over a long period of time is linked to behaviorial problems and this was the significant factor rather than the types of games played. Dr Andrew Przybylski, from Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute, said: “We can see links between some types of games and children’s behaviour, as well as time spent playing. However, we cannot say that game play causes good or bad behaviour”. (Oxford, 2015). However, a lot more researchers are working on conducting studies that look at the effects of video game play in people at risk for aggression or violence due to a combination of risk factors (Fletcher, 2015).
Positive effcet of the media is that, individuals become more informative about national and international current affairs, the deveoplment of technology makes it even ten times faster to receive updates about current events. The media has also been positive in transforming the way in which people think. The media allows an individual the oportunity to express themselves and contribute their own thoughts and opioin to society. As media has its positive effects, it has also some negative effects. The media creates a very strong influence on the young people as they tend to follow what they have see or heard on TV and social media websites. As a result, they fall into a trap of not being able to distinguse what is reality and what is the real world. The media should provide the truth however the media can be bias in their narration of the news. People are exposed to only one side of the truth. As a result, media has caused lots of social upheavals across the world resulting in political turmoil.
In conclusion it is clear that society is surrounded by all types of media which can be easily accesed. There is no doubt that the media is heavily involved in our everyday lives. The media has an impact in controlling the way society thinks and the way society sees the world and has become a significant force in creating many different cultures within society. With the media ever changing, so has the growth of its influence on the general public. The media has influenced the publics thought, the media however does not always have a negative influence on the public, sometimes the media can be benificial. The media can influence the publics thoughts, from which political side they chose to support, food they eat, clothes they wear. Nethertheless, there are negative effects to the media. In the case of crime and violence the media has been accused of having a direct link between creating crime and violence and being responsiable for the level of crime and violence in society. With violent movies, books, video games and even violent images being shown on TV, in the internet, in the newspaper and other social media outlets, crime has become a central dominant theme in society. The effects of this has seen more and more people being violent towards each other and has seen even young children and adolecents become aggressive, this has lead them to lose sight of right and wrong. Eveidence has shown that there is a link between violence in the media and violence in real life. However, the media can not be held accountable for the effect it has on an individua, l as there are other underline factos to take into account for example depression and delinquency. Although many have conducted studies on media violence and its impact on society, there is no proof that the growth of crime in the media has led to high levels of crime and violence in society.
Bibliography
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