Impacts Of Media Representations On Public
Perceptions Of Crime
1) Moral Panic:
• is an exaggerated reaction by the public to problems within society, as a
response to the media overdramatising the seriousness of those problems and
leading everyone to think they could end up being victims of supposedly serious
and dangerous crimes
• Stanley Cohen (1972) has stated in relation to moral panic that it happens
when a “condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become
defined as a threat to societal values and interests”
• one significant consequence of moral panic is a deviance amplification spiral,
which is the theory created by Wilkins that describes how a deviance
amplification spiral is when authorities attempt to control deviance, but this
actually ends up resulting in more deviance
*Examples:
• Mods & Rockers: were two conflicting youth subcultures that existed in Britain
during the 1950’s and 60’s; the media coverage in relation to a fight between
the two during Easter weekend in 1964 was what sparked moral panic amongst
the British about the youth and the two groups were eventually perceived as
being violent troublemakers, with to the media labelling them as “folk devils” -
this caused the groups to be blamed for crime and other problems within society
• Mods & Rockers (deviance amplification spiral): the media placed particular
emphasis on the divide between the two groups which caused many young
people to choose to insert themselves within either group, leading to them
viewing everyone else as an opponent
*Statistics:
• out of the 1000 people estimated to be involved in the incident between the
Mods & Rockers, only 60 were arrested and were narrowed down to just 12 who
were prosecuted and fined - this shows how largely exaggerated the media's
portrayal of the incident between the Mods and Rockers was as the originally
believed total of culprits was was 1000 when only 12 were actually convicted
2) Perceptions Of Crime Trends:
• the media play a significant role in the publics perception of crime trends - if
certain crimes are being publicised regularly, society collectively begin to feel
growing levels of concern about those crimes, which reinforces the idea in their
heads that they are at risk of becoming victims, particularly the elderly, women
and children as they are often who the media tend to shift their attention
towards when creating victim profiles for high-risk crimes, due to their
exaggeration of the threat posed towards these groups
*Examples:
• research conducted by Schlesinger and Tumber revealed that regular news
readers and TV watchers were more likely to have a greater fear of becoming
victims, than those who didn’t, which is because of the excessive coverage of
crime within media
*Statistics:
Perceptions Of Crime
1) Moral Panic:
• is an exaggerated reaction by the public to problems within society, as a
response to the media overdramatising the seriousness of those problems and
leading everyone to think they could end up being victims of supposedly serious
and dangerous crimes
• Stanley Cohen (1972) has stated in relation to moral panic that it happens
when a “condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become
defined as a threat to societal values and interests”
• one significant consequence of moral panic is a deviance amplification spiral,
which is the theory created by Wilkins that describes how a deviance
amplification spiral is when authorities attempt to control deviance, but this
actually ends up resulting in more deviance
*Examples:
• Mods & Rockers: were two conflicting youth subcultures that existed in Britain
during the 1950’s and 60’s; the media coverage in relation to a fight between
the two during Easter weekend in 1964 was what sparked moral panic amongst
the British about the youth and the two groups were eventually perceived as
being violent troublemakers, with to the media labelling them as “folk devils” -
this caused the groups to be blamed for crime and other problems within society
• Mods & Rockers (deviance amplification spiral): the media placed particular
emphasis on the divide between the two groups which caused many young
people to choose to insert themselves within either group, leading to them
viewing everyone else as an opponent
*Statistics:
• out of the 1000 people estimated to be involved in the incident between the
Mods & Rockers, only 60 were arrested and were narrowed down to just 12 who
were prosecuted and fined - this shows how largely exaggerated the media's
portrayal of the incident between the Mods and Rockers was as the originally
believed total of culprits was was 1000 when only 12 were actually convicted
2) Perceptions Of Crime Trends:
• the media play a significant role in the publics perception of crime trends - if
certain crimes are being publicised regularly, society collectively begin to feel
growing levels of concern about those crimes, which reinforces the idea in their
heads that they are at risk of becoming victims, particularly the elderly, women
and children as they are often who the media tend to shift their attention
towards when creating victim profiles for high-risk crimes, due to their
exaggeration of the threat posed towards these groups
*Examples:
• research conducted by Schlesinger and Tumber revealed that regular news
readers and TV watchers were more likely to have a greater fear of becoming
victims, than those who didn’t, which is because of the excessive coverage of
crime within media
*Statistics:
