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Results for media and crime

11 results found

Author: Papadopoulos, Alexandros

Title: A Violent Archaeology of Dreams: The Aesthetics of Crime in Austerity Britain, c.1944-1951

Summary: In the immediate post-Second World War period, London's criminal cultures generated popular understandings of fantasy and cinematic escapism as a modern mode of life, a pleasure-seeking activity and a form of rationality. These narratives centred on increasingly visible but enigmatic genres of urban transgression: notably the phenomenon of spivery. Mixing petty crime, gambling and the black market with proletarian dandyism, urban waywardness and celebrity posturing, the cultural iconography of spivery was also associated with the deviant lifestyles of confidence tricksters, army deserters, good-time girls and mass murderers. Drawing on cinema, popular literature, courtroom drama, autobiography and psychiatry, this thesis explores how debates about the escapist mentalities of the spiv shaped the public discussions of crime as a socio-aesthetic practice. The central aim is to explore the cultural and symbolic associations between street-wise forms of deviant illusion and the cinematic representation of fantasising criminals in 1940s London. The thesis reveals how contemporary historical actors and cultural institutions understood the imagination as a popular and contested form of knowledge about the self, social change and erotic life. The method interweaves intertextual analysis of a key cinematic subgenre of crime, 'spiv films', with a historical focus on two 'true crime' stories: the cleft chin murder (1944) and the serial killings carried out by John George Haigh (1944-45). Utilising the criminals' self-confessions, trial transcripts, autobiography and popular journalism, these cases studies show how spivery was rooted in the experience and representation of everyday metropolitan life. The interdisciplinary examination of cinematic text and historical evidence emphasises how Hollywood aesthetics and indigenous national culture co-determined the public construction of 1940s crime as an embodiment of the contradictions of post-war British modernity.

Details: Manchester, UK: University of Manchester, School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, 2011. 286p.

Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed May 18, 2015 at: https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:125325&datastreamId=FULL-TEXT.PDF

Year: 2011

Country: United Kingdom

URL: https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/api/datastream?publicationPid=uk-ac-man-scw:125325&datastreamId=FULL-TEXT.PDF

Shelf Number: 135702

Keywords:
Cinema
Media and Crime
Popular Culture
True Crime

Author: Friehe, Tim

Title: The Effect of Western TV on Crime: Evidence from East Germany

Summary: This paper explores the causal influence of Western television programming on crime rates. We exploit a natural experiment involving access to West German TV within the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in which only geography and topography determined the allocation of individuals to treatment and control groups. Focusing on violent and property crime (as these domains were most likely to be affected by the marked differences in TV content), we find that in the post-reunification decade in which TV content was harmonized, regions that had access to Western TV broadcasts prior to the reunification experienced lower rates of violent crime, sex crime, and theft, but more fraud.

Details: Marburg, Germany: University of Marburg, 2017. 32p.

Source: Internet Resource: Joint Discussion Paper Series in Economics, No. 10-2017: Accessed March 8, 2017 at: https://www.uni-marburg.de/fb02/makro/forschung/magkspapers/paper_2017/10-2017_friehe.pdf

Year: 2017

Country: Germany

URL: https://www.uni-marburg.de/fb02/makro/forschung/magkspapers/paper_2017/10-2017_friehe.pdf

Shelf Number: 141375

Keywords:
Mass Media
Media and Crime
Television

Author: Dodsley, Thomas Paul

Title: Images of Crime: Young People, Cultural Representations of Crime, and Crime Concern in Late Modernity

Summary: Set within the context of a late modern world where crime is both controlled and commodified, this thesis explores young people's crime concerns and their opinions on the cultural representation of crime. Following a reconceptualisation and widening of the notion of fear of crime, crime concern is employed to investigate young people's concerns regarding crime prevalence, crime management and crime representation. Encompassing a cultural criminological approach and an interpretive phenomenological attitude, this thesis utilises performative drama alongside focus groups to explore how crime concerns and the cultural representation of crime interact to inform everyday lived experience. The thesis finds that the young people in the study demonstrate an acute awareness of the processes which shape their understandings of crime. Such awareness is rooted in their sense of agency and embedded in a resistance towards the dominant discourse of problematic and risky youth. The crime concerns that the participants expressed were primarily regarding the representation and management of crime. Varying concerns around crime prevalence were identified. The findings reveal that gendered implications play a key role in shaping crime concern and forming opinions on the cultural representation of crime. The thesis concludes by reflecting upon the research process and pointing towards future directions for criminology.

Details: Durham, UK: Durham University, 2017. 291p.

Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed April 7, 2017 at: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12042/1/Images_of_Crime.pdf?DDD34+

Year: 2017

Country: United Kingdom

URL: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12042/1/Images_of_Crime.pdf?DDD34+

Shelf Number: 144747

Keywords:
Cultural Criminology
Mass Media
Media and Crime

Author: Perry, David

Title: On Media Coverage of the Murder of People with Disabilities by Their Caregivers

Summary: or this White Paper, we looked at the media coverage of 260 cases of the killing of disabled people by the parents or other caregivers, ultimately narrowing our sample down to 219 cases in which the circumstances were clear. The cases date from January 2011 to December 2015. The cases range from clearly intentional acts of murder to death through neglect; the victims have a wide range of disabilities, and the legal outcomes vary from acquittal or no charge to lengthy prison sentences. Our Goals Identify and assess the patterns in coverage. Analyze how those patterns might contribute to stigmatization of disability and disabled people and even intensify the risks of future crimes. Provide a comparative framework so that journalists covering such a story in their own community might have easily accessible references. Highlight the efforts of the self-advocate community to combat disability stigma, to demand victim-centered stories, and work for change. National data repeatedly indicates that people with disabilities are at higher risk for violent crime than people without disabilities. The deaths of people with disabilities at the hands of caregivers, including parents, is a particularly tragic subset of this broader pattern. Moreover, when journalists cover the deaths of this vulnerable segment of the population, the focus is often directed at the murderer. Journalists, consciously or unconsciously, often write stories that build sympathy for the murderer and the circumstances that led them to their crime, while the person with a disability is erased from the story. We have examined over 200 news reports about cases in North America between 2011-2015 that clearly describe the murder of a victim with a disability by a parent, child, spouse, or unrelated caregiver. Findings At least 219 disabled people were killed by parents and caregivers between 2011 -2015 - an average of approximately a murder a week. This is a very conservative number due to under-reporting and the fact that a victim's disability is not always made public. The real numbers are likely much higher. The killers routinely claim "hardship" as a justification for their acts. The media rarely questions such claims or asks for comment from disability rights organizations, and especially not from people with disabilities themselves. In the drive to explain a killing, the lives of the victims get erased resulting in killer-centered, rather than victim-centered reporting. Spreading the hardship narrative may lead to more violence, rather than changing policy around supports. In many cases, moreover, the narrative is fundamentally not true. Many killers receive little to no prison time. In such cases, perceptions of disability as suffering inform judicial decisions not to punish murder. Best Practices Tell victim-centered stories. Don't just report what the killer says about the victim, which will always be dehumanizing. Do the journalism to find out more about the victims' lives, their desires, their agency. Talk to experts in disability. The disability rights community follows these cases closely and will provide expert commentary. Remember, most caregivers do not kill disabled people, so blaming a killing on disability-related hardship is never the full answer. Challenge the claims of defense attorneys and perpetrators. Investigate whether the claims of defense attorneys and perpetrators are accurate. When prosecutors treat such cases lightly, investigate whether they treat cases involving non-disabled victims the same way. Provide Context. These cases are rare (there are around 450 cases of parents killing children every year in the United States), but not unique. They need to be put in context so the consequences of dehumanizing disabled people can be made visible to the general public.

Details: Newton, MA: Ruderman Family Foundation, 2017.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 22, 2017 at: http://www.rudermanfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Murders-by-Caregivers-WP_final_final-2.pdf

Year: 2017

Country: United States

URL: http://www.rudermanfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Murders-by-Caregivers-WP_final_final-2.pdf

Shelf Number: 145157

Keywords:
Disabled Persons
Femicide
Filicide
Homicide
Media and Crime
Murder

Author: Fuentes, Johanan Rivera

Title: Crime Hype in Mexico: A fierce battle for attention

Summary: The way media covers drug-related violence in Mexico generates more violence because it responds to the publicity-seeking behavior of Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs). My analysis shows that excessive media coverage in violent states translates into more narcomantas and that high numbers of narcomantas are positively and strongly correlated with high levels of violence. The incentive for DTOs to 'publish' a narcomanta in response to media coverage in violent states is three times larger than in states with average violence. My projections show that in extremely violent states a shock in coverage generates an average increase of 1.6 narcomantas during the following week. DTOs use media attention to build reputation and increase the perception of insecurity. The way media covers violence in Mexico is generating feelings of fear and danger in the population. The 2011 Survey on Public Safety and Governance in Mexico shows that common offenses such as house robberies and street assaults have not changed much since the early 2000s. However, insecurity perception has increased to the point that, today, over 80 percent of the population is afraid of being victims of these crimes. Fear and insecurity perception can make the population an easy target for extortion, local authorities an easy target for corruption and hinder reporting. The situation is now at a point where action is needed. The best method for promoting a more responsible behavior while protecting media freedom is self-regulation since it originates from a multi-stakeholder open discussion on editorial guidelines and accountability mechanisms. I recommend the following next steps should be taken in the next six months to build a strong self-regulatory media environment: - Create a code of editorial guidelines to reporting on publicity-seeking crimes. Each code of ethics responds to the peculiarities of the media and its context, hence it can be tailored to the sensitivities of the Mexican society and democracy. - Institute a self-regulatory body that oversees completion of the code and has a complaint system open to the public. These bodies can have different forms such as ombudsmen, press councils, editorial committees, etc. - Introduce training programs for journalists. Good reporting on publicity-seeking crimes requires a lengthier and more thoughtful narrative. Additionally, journalists reporting on violence and conflict should know how to assess risks in threatening environments and be trained in digital as well as physical security. - Design a campaign to raise awareness among the population. Raising awareness is about creating civic engagement. Without civil engagement self-regulation compliance becomes almost impossible. Setting up a self-regulatory system will prevent the media from furthering DTOs objectives. This will help raise professional standards, strengthen the social standing of journalism in the country while increasing the quality of information people receive and reducing publicity-seeking violence.

Details: Cambridge, MA: Harvard Kennedy School, 2013. 52p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 2, 2017 at: http://ksghauser.harvard.edu/index.php/content/download/66767/1239878/version/1/file/SYPA_JohananRivera_2013.pdf

Year: 2013

Country: Mexico

URL: http://ksghauser.harvard.edu/index.php/content/download/66767/1239878/version/1/file/SYPA_JohananRivera_2013.pdf

Shelf Number: 145247

Keywords:
Drug Trafficking
Drug-Related Violence
Fear of Crime
Homicides
Kidnappings
Media and Crime
Publicity
Violent Crime

Author: Ralsmark, Hilda

Title: Media visibility and social tolerance: Evidence from USA

Summary: I study the impact of media visibility of people of colour on the rate of hate crimes motivated by race or ethnicity in the United States. To do so, I construct a novel measure of state-level media visibility of people of colour between 2007 and 2013. Comparing state-level variation in the hate crime rate with a measure of the one-year lagged state-level variation in media visibility, I find that an increase in media visibility reduces the number of hate crimes. The effect is not larger in states that used to be pro-slavery, but larger in states that are more prone to spontaneous emotional outbursts of hate. The result, which is robust to several checks, is in the line with the argument that "visibility matters."

Details: Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg, 2017. 39p.

Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper in Economics No. 703: Accessed September 9, 2017 at: https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/53014/1/gupea_2077_53014_1.pdf

Year: 2017

Country: United States

URL: https://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/53014/1/gupea_2077_53014_1.pdf

Shelf Number: 147201

Keywords:
Bias-Motivated Crimes
Hate Crimes
Mass Media
Media and Crime

Author: Abodunrin, Hammed

Title: A Survey of Violence Related Deaths in Egbedore and Ifedayo Local Government of the State of Osun (2006-2014)

Summary: Egbedore and Ifedayo local government areas (LGAs), like any other parts of the world, did not have complete immunity to violent conflicts and disasters that caused deaths. Though these areas are rural communities that did not attract media attention and have all happenings reported always, this does not mean that they had no share of violence leading to loss of lives between 2006 and 2014, the period under review. This paper focuses on these deaths, their causes, and the reasons such happenings were not reported by the national press. A non-probability sampling technique was adopted for this study, using both incidental and purposive sampling to source information from people who were accessible and based on the researcher's choice, for accuracy. In all, 40 copies of a questionnaire were administered to stakeholders in violence and disaster management, while two Focus Group Discussions were conducted with commercial drivers and motorcyclists in each of the LGAs. In addition, nine interviews were conducted among the community leaders in the study areas and journalists working in the state. These were complemented with relevant photographs. Secondary sources explored for the data used include records of the local governments, such as maps and souvenirs as well as their websites. Virtually all the respondents (100% in Egbedore and 88.9% in Ifedayo) considered the study areas nonviolent. However, nine and 13 violent deaths respectively were recorded in Egbedore and Ifedayo LGAs respectively during the period under review. Of these deaths, communal clashes and attacks over land disputes, police/transport union clashes, and personal attacks accounted for 22.2% in Egbedore and 30.8% in Ifedayo, whereas road accident deaths accounted for five (55.6%) in Egbedore and eight (61.5%) in Ifedayo. As revealed by the information gathered in the field, bad roads were responsible for the most of the accidents. For instance, Alagbede Hill, a particular spot along Ila-Ora road, recorded five of seven road crashes and six of the eight deaths caused by accidents in Ifedayo. Interviews conducted with journalists covering the State of Osun1 revealed that almost all media houses represented in the state had one reporter to cover 30 LGAs and one area council. A number of reasons were advanced for not covering the councils appropriately: there were claims of poor and irregular salaries - and hence an inability to make frequent visits to remote parts of the state-lack of community newspapers, bad roads and poor transportation services, and an uncooperative attitude from security operatives in releasing information. In addition, journalists pointed to different media house styles, which see some stories as not weighty enough to make national news. In light of all these factors, adequate coverage of events in rural Nigeria to make violent incidents in such areas visible can only be achieved through the use of community-based media, not only to report violence but to also to offering early warning services.

Details: Ibadan, Nigeria: FRA Institute of African Studies , University of Ibadan, 2014. 39p.

Source: Internet Resource: IFRA-Nigeria working papers series, no39: http://www.nigeriawatch.org/media/html/WP17AbodunrinV7Final.pdf

Year: 2014

Country: Nigeria

URL: http://www.nigeriawatch.org/media/html/WP17AbodunrinV7Final.pdf

Shelf Number: 148744

Keywords:
Homicides
Media and Crime
Violence
Violent Crime

Author: Marshall, John

Title: Political Information Cycles: When Do Voters Sanction Incumbent Parties for High Homicide Rates?

Summary: I argue that voter news consumption tracks electoral cycles, and thus electoral accountability is often shaped by noisy performance indicators revealed before elections- when news consumption is greatest. Examining local homicides prior to Mexican municipal elections, I test this theory’s central implications using three sources of plausibly exogenous variation. First, I show that voters indeed consume more news and are better informed before local elections. Second, pre-election homicide spikes substantially decrease the incumbent party's re-election prospects. This sanctioning is limited to mayors controlling local police forces, and does not reflect longer-term homicide rates. Third, the punishment of pre-election homicide shocks increases with access to local broadcast media stations. Such political information cycles appear to be driven by poorly-informed Bayesian voters demanding more information during election campaigns, rather than naive responses to exogenous adverse events. By highlighting the importance of when voters consume news, these findings can help explain variation in the media’s persuasive powers and the mixed evidence that information supports electoral accountability.

Details: Unpublished paper, 2018. 95p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 10, 2018 at: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jmarshall/files/political_info_cycles_0.pdf

Year: 2018

Country: United States

URL: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jmarshall/files/political_info_cycles_0.pdf

Shelf Number: 150800

Keywords:
Homicide Rates
Media and Crime
Politics and Crime
Punishment
Voters

Author: Esberg, Jane

Title: Explaining Misperceptions of Crime

Summary: Promoting public safety is a central mandate of government. But despite decades of dramatic improvements, most Americans believe crime is rising - a mysterious pattern that may pervert the criminal justice policymaking process. Why do Americans think crime is worsening? We test four plausible explanations: survey mismeasurement, extrapolation from local conditions, lack of exposure to facts and partisan cues. Cross-referencing over a decade of crime records with geolocated polling data and original survey experiments, we show individuals readily update beliefs when presented with accurate crime statistics, but this effect is attenuated when statistics are embedded in a typical crime news article, and confidence in perceptions is diminished when a copartisan elite undermines social statistics. We conclude Americans misperceive crime because of the frequency and manner with which they encounter relevant statistics. Our results suggest widespread misperceptions are likely to persist barring foundational changes in Americans' information consumption habits, or elite assistance.

Details: Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2018. 45p.

Source: Internet Resource: accessed July 27, 2018 at: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/jmummolo/files/esberg_mummolo_ms_share.pdf

Year: 2018

Country: United States

URL: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/jmummolo/files/esberg_mummolo_ms_share.pdf

Shelf Number: 150943

Keywords:
Media and Crime
Public Opinion
Public Safety

Author: Nolte, Andre

Title: The Internet Effects on Sex Crime and Murder - Evidence from the Broadband Internet Expansion in Germany

Summary: This paper studies the effects of the introduction of a new mass medium on criminal activity in Germany. The paper asks the question of whether highspeed internet leads to higher/lower sex crime offences and murder. I use unique German data on criminal offences and broadband internet measured at the municipality level to shed light on the question. In order to address endogeneity in broadband internet availability, I follow Falck et al. (2014) and exploit technical peculiarities at the regional level that determine the roll-out of high-speed internet. In contrast to findings for Norway (Bhuller et al., 2013), this paper documents a substitution effect of internet and child sex abuse and no effect on rape incidences. The effects on murder increase under the instrumental variable approach however remain insignificant. Overall, the estimated net effects might stem from indirect effects related to differences in reporting crime, a matching effect, and a direct effect of higher and more intensive exposure to extreme and violent media consumption. After investigating the potential channel, I do find some evidence in favor of a reporting effect suggesting that the direct consumption effect is even stronger. Further investigation of the development of illegal pornographic material suggests that the direct consumption channel does play a significant role in explaining the substitution effect.

Details: Mannheim, Germany: Centre for European Economic Research, 2017. 60p.

Source: Internet Resource: Discussion Paper No. 17-050: Accessed August 16, 2018 at: http://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp17050.pdf

Year: 2017

Country: Germany

URL: http://ftp.zew.de/pub/zew-docs/dp/dp17050.pdf

Shelf Number: 151153

Keywords:
Homicides
Internet
Media and Crime
Murders
Sexual Abuse
Sexual Violence
Social Media

Author: Couttenier, Mathieu

Title: The Logic of Fear - Populism and Media Coverage of Immigrant Crimes

Summary: We study how news coverage of immigrant criminality impacted municipality-level votes in the November 2009 "minaret ban" referendum in Switzerland. The campaign, successfully led by the populist Swiss People's Party, played aggressively on fears of Muslim immigration and linked Islam with terrorism and violence. We combine an exhaustive violent crime detection dataset with detailed information on crime coverage from 12 newspapers. The data allow us to quantify the extent of pre-vote media bias in the coverage of migrant criminality. We then estimate a theory-based voting equation in the cross-section of municipalities. Exploiting random variations in crime occurrences, we find a first-order, positive effect of news coverage on political support for the minaret ban. Counterfactual simulations show that, under a law forbidding newspapers to disclose a perpetrator's nationality, the vote in favor of the ban would have decreased by 5 percentage points (from 57.6% to 52.6%).

Details: London: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2019. 65p.

Source: Internet Resource: Discussion Paper DP13496: Accessed February 15, 2019 at: https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=13496#

Year: 2019

Country: Switzerland

URL: https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=13496#

Shelf Number: 154619

Keywords:
Fear of Crime
Immigrants and Crime
Mass Communications
Media and Crime
Muslims
Newspapers
Violent Crime