Fiche de révision : Media Criminology and Society

📋 Course Outline

1. Introduction to Media Criminology
2. Research Examples at UON
3. Main Concepts Overview
4. Media Representations and Impact
5. Agenda-Setting and Framing

📖 1. Introduction to Media Criminology

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Media Criminology: A sub-discipline of criminology examining representations of crime across various media forms, including news, film, TV, and social media. It relates media portrayal to broader understandings of crime and deviance.
• Media-Crime Nexus: The connections between crime and media influence that shape societal definitions and problems of crime and deviance, including how certain acts and populations become criminalised through media representation.
• Social Constructivism: The idea that media presents a version of reality, not reality itself, and that social problems related to law and order are constructed based on what humans deem important.

📝 Essential Points

• Media criminology studies crime depiction across media types such as news, film, TV, and social media.
• It employs criminological and sociological theories to analyze how media shapes perceptions of crime, class, gender, and race.
• The course focuses on understanding media influences through agenda-setting and framing.
• Media representations influence public discourse on crime, criminality, and victimhood by shaping social control and power dynamics.

💡 Key Takeaway

Understanding media criminology involves recognizing how media constructs and influences societal perceptions of crime beyond simple reporting, shaping social understanding and responses.

📖 2. Research Examples at UON

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Research-Led Teaching: Incorporates current academic research into course content and assessments, exemplified by studies on LGBTQ+ hate crimes, police accountability, and media framing.
• Digiqueer Criminology: Focuses on LGBTQ+ visibility and representation in digital media related to crime and justice, as explored in recent publications by Ellis and colleagues.
• Media Presentation Assessment: Students present on media-related crime topics in a style similar to articles in The Conversation, engaging with contemporary research.

📝 Essential Points

• UON research includes studies on LGBTQ+ hate crimes, police accountability, and media framing of male same-sex criminalisation.
• Recent publications by Dr Justin Ellis and colleagues examine social media’s role in police scandals and law-and-order politics.
• Students engage with current research through presentations modeled on accessible media articles.
• UON research highlights the intersection of media, crime, and social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and #metoo.

💡 Key Takeaway

Research at UON exemplifies how contemporary media criminology critically examines social issues through empirical studies and public engagement.

📖 3. Main Concepts Overview

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Agenda-Setting: The process by which journalists select and prioritize news stories, influencing public perception of importance.
• Framing: The way media presents and structures stories to shape interpretation and discussion of public events.
• Framing Devices: Techniques such as headlines, photos, quotes, and statistics that contribute to the overall framing of a story.

📝 Essential Points

• Agenda-setting places journalists in a privileged position to influence which crime stories gain prominence.
• Framing actively sets reference points that audiences use to interpret crime-related news.
• Framing devices include representational and rhetorical tools that shape narratives about crime and victimhood.
• Understanding agenda-setting and framing is essential to analyzing media's role in constructing social realities of crime.

💡 Key Takeaway

Mastering agenda-setting and framing concepts is key to critically evaluating how media shapes public understanding of crime.

📖 4. Media Representations and Impact

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Media Literacy: The ability to understand, analyze, evaluate, and create media content ethically and critically.
• Mediated Experience: Experiencing events through media rather than direct involvement, shaping perception and interpretation.
• Media Effects Models: Theories explaining media influence, including hypodermic syringe, uses and gratifications, and audience reception analysis.

📝 Essential Points

• Media impact varies depending on the medium, context, and audience targeted.
• Media literacy enhances understanding of media organization, meaning production, and ethical participation.
• Mediated experience influences public perceptions differently than direct experience, especially in crime discourse.
• Audience responses are diverse, from passive reception to active, polysemic interpretation of media texts.

💡 Key Takeaway

Evaluating media's impact requires recognizing audience diversity and developing critical media literacy skills.

📖 5. Agenda-Setting and Framing

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Dominant Media Frames: Prevailing narratives in media that attribute responsibility for crime and shape public opinion.
• Media Bias and Market Forces: Influences such as profit motives and advertiser interests that affect crime story selection and portrayal.
• Production and Consumption Models: Perspectives on media as a unidirectional influence versus an interactive process involving audience agency.

📝 Essential Points

• Crime stories often do not reflect actual crime trends due to media bias and sensationalism.
• Market forces drive media to prioritize violent and sensational crimes for profit and audience appeal.
• News outlets hold significant power in choosing which crime stories to report and how to frame them.
• Audience agency complicates the idea of passive media consumption, showing that audiences actively interpret and respond to crime narratives.

💡 Key Takeaway

Understanding agenda-setting and framing involves analyzing how economic and institutional factors shape crime narratives in media.

📊 Synthesis Tables

⚠️ Common Pitfalls & Confusions

1. Confusing media representation with actual crime statistics or reality.
2. Overestimating the passive influence of media; ignoring audience agency.
3. Assuming media bias is solely intentional rather than also driven by market forces.
4. Misunderstanding framing devices as neutral rather than rhetorical tools shaping narratives.
5. Overlooking the role of social constructivism in how society perceives crime through media.
6. Ignoring the diversity of media effects models and their different assumptions about audience reception.
7. Neglecting the influence of authors like Ellis on contemporary research and social justice issues.
8. Assuming agenda-setting only involves newsworthiness, ignoring the influence of market and political factors.

✅ Exam Checklist

• Define media criminology and explain its focus on representations across various media forms.
• Describe the media-crime nexus and how media influences societal definitions of crime and deviance.
• Explain social constructivism’s role in understanding media’s portrayal of crime.
• Identify key concepts such as agenda-setting, framing, and framing devices, and their impact on public perception.
• Discuss the role of journalists in agenda-setting and how framing shapes interpretation using specific devices like headlines and photos.
• Analyze how market forces and profit motives influence crime story selection and presentation.
• Understand different media effects models, including hypodermic syringe, uses and gratifications, and audience reception theories.
• Recognize the importance of media literacy in critically engaging with crime representations.
• Summarize research examples from UON, including studies on LGBTQ+ hate crimes, police accountability, and social media’s role in law-and-order politics.
• Know Ellis’s contributions to digital media criminology and social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and #metoo.
• Explain mediated experience versus direct experience in shaping perceptions of crime.
• Describe how agenda-setting and framing influence societal understanding of crime, including the roles of dominant frames and production/consumption models.