Media and Criminal Behavior

• These are study notes from Week 1 to Week 5 of a Criminology Course

Course Introduction, Intro to Crime and Media

• Office hours are on Fridays from 5:45 pm to 6:45 pm.
• The midterm exam is on February 14.
• The portfolio assignment is due on March 14.
• The final exam period is from April 22-26.
• Only approximately 4% to 5% of all crimes are violent crimes.
• The largest contributor to the change in the Crime Severity Index in 2023 is the rise in the reported rate of child sexual exploitation.
• Robberies increased from 2022 but are about 50% lower than 25 years prior.
• The national homicide rate has been declining due to four consecutive annual increases.
• Media tends to exaggerate increases in crime.
• 84% of murders are committed by someone known to the victim.
• Male homicide victims are most likely killed by someone they know.
• Female homicide victims are most often killed by a current or former intimate partner or another family member.
• The chance of being murdered by a stranger at random in a 50-year span is 0.000128% in Canada.
• Violent crime stories dominate headlines due to their dramatic and emotionally charged nature.
• Shock value evokes strong reactions like fear or fascination, keeping audiences engaged.
• Dramatic visuals and narratives are used in emotional storytelling to connect with viewers, increasing interest and retention.
• Sensationalized crime stories, especially violent ones, attract larger audiences, driving advertising revenue and profits.
• Competition in a saturated media market leads outlets to rely on shocking and graphic content to capture viewers.
• 50% of media stories in Canada are about violent crimes, while violent crime is only 7% of all crime.
• Media promotes the belief that crime, especially violent crime, is more common than reality, distorting understanding and causing panic.
• The effect of frequent viewing of crime-related programs has an impact on attitudes.
• Sensationalized reporting can cause moral panic, amplifying public fear as well as reliance on media narratives.
• Moral panics cause people to believe immediate action is needed to avoid grave danger to society.
• Quick and unsupported solutions are often pushed, like “tough on crime” approaches.
• "Tough on crime" approaches are often rooted in “common sense” rather than scientific evidence.
• Ineffective or harmful laws are hard to change once enacted.
• Canadian authorities became alarmed about Indigenous families' perceived inability to care for their children properly, according to settler norms during the Sixties Scoop.
• Reports and government documents emphasized the "crisis" in Indigenous child welfare, stoking fears among policymakers and the public.
• This led to the widespread removal of Indigenous children from their families and communities, placing them in foster care or adoption with predominantly non-Indigenous families.

Curiosity about human nature

• People are inherently curious about what drives others to commit crimes, particularly violent or heinous acts and exploration of the "dark side".
• Crime stories offer insights into the darker aspects of human behavior.

Emotional Engagement and Storytelling

• Sensationalized crime narratives evoke strong emotions, making them captivating.
• Audiences may connect emotionally with victims or narratives of crime resolution.
• Sensationalist newspapers in the 19th century used graphic illustrations of crime scenes (e.g., Jack the Ripper) to engage readers.
• Contemporary TV shows dramatize crime-solving, blending suspense and emotional arcs to keep viewers hooked.
• Crime stories allow individuals to explore morality and provide a way to explore questions of morality and justice.
• Crime stories often frame narratives as a struggle universally between good and evil.
• Crime stories satisfy a desire for justice and closure, especially when offenders are caught and punished
• Public trials and executions reinforce community moral lessons.
• Documentaries also reflect the public’s interest in examining whether justice was properly served.
• Media shapes crime narratives to cater to societal fears, as well as interests.
• Crime stories can become part of a culture's shared memory, connecting audiences through communal experiences.
• Stories of outlaws become folklore.
• True crime tourism illustrates enduring fascination with infamous crimes.
• There are over 23,000 true crime podcasts on Spotify.
• Public executions in the pre-media era were a key form of crime-related storytelling.
• Events like hangings/beheadings served as punishment/moral lessons.
• Executions blended justice with public entertainment, drawing hundreds of spectators in Elizabethan England.
• Mass-produced broadsides reported sensationalized crime and execution accounts.
• The newspaper industry began covering crime stories for profit, which led to the rise of the printing press (early 19th century).
• The “Illustrated Police News” emphasized shock value, motivated for profits, which led to sensationalism.
• Crime reporting began to translate to radio, which brought immediacy and a sense of intimacy.
• Television showed crime scenes and victims in real-time, including visual storytelling.
• "In Cold Blood" (1967) mixed true crime reporting and dramatic storytelling.
• CNN cable news networks brought continuous crime, coverage that became increasingly sensationalized to maintain viewership in the 24/7 news cycle.
• Social media platforms allowed widespread unverified stories of crime.
• Many podcasts and documentaries are offering long-form crime investigations during the true crime renaissance.
• Dark tourism commodified past crime-narratives.

Doing Media Criminology

• Media encompasses any communication medium.
• Communication transmits messages.
• Print media consists of newspapers, magazines and books.
• Broadcast media consists of television, radio and movies.
• Outdoor media consists of Billboards and Posters.
• Digital media consists of social media platforms, websites, online streaming, and mobile apps.
• New media relies on digital tech and the internet.
• Formal legal crime definition: activity condemned by the state and deemed meriting punishment and control.
• Social harm crime conception: criminal and civil offenses resulting in harm that should attract penalty (e.g. assault, defamation, negligence causing personal injury).
• Cross-cultural universal norms: crimes such as “murder and assault” are seen across the board.
• Labelling approach: when something is socially labelled criminal, it is.
• Human rights approach: any act that violates basic rights.
• Human diversity approach: deviance represents an oppressed response.
• Media doesn't reflect objectivity selecting and framing crime.
• Sensational crimes are focused on most of the time. Media shapes public perception.
• Crime coverage influences public fear.
• Copycat crimes can result from media.

The Crime Media

• Law enforcement is influenced by media.
• Media reflect societal values and reinforce narratives about deserving justice.
• Moral panic: exaggerated public fear.

Crime Waves

• Crime waves are often amplified by media coverage.

Media Criminology

• Media Criminology is described as an interdisciplinary examination of media, crime, criminalization, and justice.
• How crime is represented in societal contexts.
• Criminology: identifies patterns of justice.
• Media Studies: analyses how patterns are interpreted.
• There is no evidence that media causes crime.

Correlation between Media, Crime, Attitudes, and Behavior

• There is a connection between criminal behavior and media.
• Heightened fear leads to mistrust and division.
• Media used the term "Chinese virus" in COVID.
• Media can create a copy cat effect depending on the individual.
• Minassian drove into pedestrians, killing people after the media glorified his violence.
• Media can misrepresent minorities making them dangerous.

Framing Theory

• What is framing: media organize and present information.
• Definininting who perps and VI's are, reinforce values.
• Emphasizes aspects while minimizing others.
• Key component of framing: elaborating on the aspects explained.
• Media frames attributing responsibility to crime: poverty, inequality and disadvantage.

Crime in the News

• Week 3 highlights crime in the new
• What is social constructionism? Knowledge is not based on objective views.
• Language is central in understanding reality.
• Interpretations depends on societal context, as well as power figures.

Framing and Agenda Setting

• Journalists need aspects of a story to set the agenda, while understanding events.
• News should involve severity as well as sensationalism in its alignment.

Media Frames

• Shape how the audience understands the issue.
• Environmental protests are often framed differently.

Robert Pickton example

– The media constructed Pickton to be more likeable in the media.

Putting It Together: Framing Analysis

• You can unpack and understand why the media are framed.
• Media can analyze patterns in content, but you also need to examine language choices.
• Emphasis, exclusion and elabortation.
• Analysing headlines to uncover any potential bias.

News Values

• Angle, new, values, language, Placement all have impacts on the news.

What are news values?

• Principles that guide selection.
• Implicit practices that align journalist with news values.
• Stories need level of importance to be considered.

How to attract attention of news

• Story needs to be unique.
• Is is predictable.
• Where did it occur? = Simplification: complex crimes reduced to straight narratives.

Risk factors on if story is shared

Individualism like amanda Todds suicide.

• Cultural motives that reduces the need for explaination.

Children

– If involves children, becomes more shocking.

Celebrity

– Level of deviance, more likely to become news. – What makes then newsworthy: emotion/societal connection.

Crimes should be visual

– Make crimes more compelling and newsworthy.

Signal Crimes

– Far beyond the direct VI or participant, affect society. – They are prime examples of how news values that amplify it.

Sources in Crime Journalism

• Journalists use to be credible.
• Ensure deadlines are met, and protect for legal challenges.
• Those in high places are credible: police, CEO's.
• Elites are primary definers.
• Those voice are often given equal views.

Media as a source

• Police, governments, and media are all sources.

Week 4: Police, Courts and Media

• News is filterable.
• 24/7 news cycles have changed crime coverage.
• You prioritize data at expense of data.
• Increased reliance.

Police

• Often rely on Police perspectives.
• Have twitter comms.

Courts

• Courts affect jury, as well as judgements.

Police

• Police are authority.
• By emphasize crime tends there is the option of an implication.
• Police agencies can bypass traditional media by using Social media for public interraction.

Policing Activities

• Aids in appeal, prevents crime , shapes public perceptions.
• Can manipulate info, also shifts blame from wrongdoings and is for strategic comms.

Media's role

• Can aid in police or shape how we work with them.

Crime Scene Permeability

• Reduced police control.
• Dangers arise in social media.
• Compromised strategies arise.
• People can take the power into there on hands and wrongly harass.
• Amplifies false reporting and panic.

Tweet Justice

• Rapid spread of misleading information.
• All courts have scrutiny.

Trials

• Trials have shifted to be for the public.
• Not everyone can attend for real time, thus providing them by providing updates is a solution.

Canada has Restrictions

• No live or real time, as can be viewed for bias.
• Public content can over simply the information.
• Courts are over simplified from trials shown online

Week 5: Victims and Offenders

• Labels of victim and offenders.
• Are complex.
• The role of journalism and shaping how we view victims are affected
• Can affect who is more deserving of attention.
• Women are hurt by violence/white are more likely to get this attention.
• More likely to receive if vulnerable or have worthiness.

Representation of Minorities

• Drug cries portray whites better then coloured offenders.

White vs coloured women

• Have a difference in headlining.
• News and narratives can be social stigmatism.
• Context as affects labels.

Fluidity of victims

• Women who kill abusive partners might be considered an offender.
• Many incarcerated were already victims.
• Victim labelled can easily stigmatize.
• Media fails to recognize how it makes this more complex, or is one label enough.
• Media presents series crime as random, which is not always the case in real life.
• Victims reject the labels as can imply they are helpeless.
• Rather be known as a surviror.

Consequences for offenders

• Siffer stigma and community backlash.
• Easy for public pressure to occur in punishment.
• Ignore larger societal issues.
• There can be misidentifications and misinformation.

People framed incorrectly examples

• People can be affected who are not actually involved.
• If no clear conclusion is made the media may create misinformation.
• May affect ability to integrate.

Ethics to crime

• Verify data correct by journalists as need accuracy.
• Give all walks of life attention.

Explore the relationship between media exposure and criminal behavior, the 'copycat effect' and its influence. Also, media representations that stereotype certain groups and its link to social deviance and crime. Learn about moral panics and sensationalized crime reporting.