The media presents a distorted picture of crime however media reporting only has a minor effect on people’s knowledge about crime and crime justice responses.Discuss.

1. The media presents a distorted picture of crime however media reporting only has a minor effect on people’s knowledge about crime anc criminal justice responses. Discuss.

A good starting point for this essay is chapter 1 ofthe textbook Briefly describe the way in

which the media presents a distorted picture of crime

You will then need to review research which has explored relationships between

distorted media depictions of crime and people’s knowledge about crime and criminal justice responses.

Select at least 2 or 3 ways in which distorted media presentations of crime affect people’s knowledge about crime and criminal justice responses (e.g. fear of crime,policies which are too severe (harsh and inappropriate responses to crime, police focus on violent crime ratherthan say white collar crime).

Briefly outline each factor and the empirical evidence which has explored the relationships

You need to conclude for each factor whether or not it is significantly affected by media depictions. Are there certain aspects ofpeople’s knowledge or criminal justice policies which are affected more strongly than others? You also need to conclude overall about the impact of media depictions on people’s knowledge about crime and criminal justice responses.

It is acceptable to present stories which have been reported in the media to illustrate your points howevertry to limit the description ofthese stories to a line or two. Your essay needs to be based upon
academic research rather than newspaper stories.

You must adopt a position and argue this position throughout. Possible arguments might be:

(i) that media depictions significantly affect people’s knowledge about crime and criminal justice responses;

(ii) that media depictions don’t affect people’s knowledge about crime and criminal justice responses; (iii) that media depictions affect people’s knowledge about certain crime and criminal justice responses but not others.

This essay topic it is fine to disagree with the statement and argue that actually media reporting has a major effect on people’s knowledge about crime and criminal justice responses. You should develop this position after reading your empirical articles.

your essay preparation’ forum. The next step is to develop some good keywords for searching in the Griffith library. Think about ways in
which the media might affect people’s knowledge about crime. Perhaps you might think that the media affects people’s fear of crime. This
might lead to a library search using the terms ‘fear of crime’ AND ‘media’. What other ways does the media affect people’s knowledge about crime?