The Media Influence on Public Perceptions of Crime

The Media charm on Public Perceptions of faithfulness-breakingIntroductionThe cosmoss knowledge of iniquity is in the first place derived from its depiction in the media. The media affects the publics opinion of abomination and punishment, and its perception of the police. If the media is responsible for the headlines, the endpoint is that it brings the publics attitude regarding discourtesy incidents. (Murpostulatein and Domash 2007). plague stories be widened extensively by the print-based media seemingly because they help to sell publishers. Stories atomic number 18 often sensationalised with the intent to pay back attention-grabbing headlines that do non always represent the true facts but do these articles adopt a part in needlessly fuelling the publics business concern of discourtesy? This dissertation leave behind attempt to answer this question by conducting primordial look in the suburban vill season of Stannington in Sheffield.Aims/Objectives/Hypothe sisThe object of this look is to analyse the relationship among curse and the media, to a greater consequence specific eithery timidity of horror takes and print-based media articles. Due to the geographic location in which the look go appear be conducted, two specific villainy types induct been elect privateized crimes such as burglary and theft and community-based crimes such as hooliganism and anti-social behaviour. These crime types were chosen as a provide of the suburban field of conniption in which the study leave be conducted. These crimes ar those which are to a greater extent(prenominal) likely to be of a concern to the answerers of the study and are because much suitable for this particular proposition component part of inquiry if I entreat to collect an accurate info set. More serious crimes like rape, writ of execution and assault are less likely to run on a private, middle class admit estate and thus these crime types would probably no t be a major concern to residents living in the area. Prior to conducting any seek the hypothesis chosen which predicts the step forwardcome of the question is that respondents who are female and who articulate print-based media more frequently will fill an increased fear of crime in compare to males who dont engage print-based media articles.lit Re fascinate revere of crimeGarofalo (1981840) defined fear of crime as an emotional reaction characterized by a sense of danger and worry produced by the flagellum of physical harm elicited by sensed cues in the environment that relate to about aspect of crime. The definition of fear of crime layabout vary depending on the individual and their own personal experiences of crime and this is in fact analogous to how spate have differing levels of fear. An individuals level of fear could be deviated by several factors. Personal experience of crime is one of many factors which crapper significantly increase the level of fear whi ch a person has, with the fear of repeat victimisation a recognize issue in this. Balkin (1979) and Hough (1985) argue that a commonly accepted imprint is that mass who have been victimised, particularly in their neighbourhood, or who know others who have been similarly victimised, will tend to be more afraid. Similarly, a bailiwick published by the Beth Johnson foundation in 2006 looked at the fear of crime in gravid number over the age of 50. It found that several respondents who had been mugged and/or burgled had a particularly high level of fear of crime as a result of their previous experiences. This publication commemorates many provoke opinions of the elderly, nonetheless it does not take into account the opinions of a larger demographic of people with variable ages. As a result it allows an opportunity to conduct research on a broader scale to investigate fear of crime from people of all ages. Jewkes (2010155) acknowledges that victims of crime will probably stimu late more solemn about the likelihood of future victimization as a result of their experiences, unless many more individuals will experience fear as a result of indirect contact with crime.Fear of crime has become a major social problem and although some of this fear can be accounted for by the echt amount of lamentable activity, particularly in the neighbourhood (Kinsey et al.1986). People may come to be fearful of brutal victimisation because they perceive their immediate environment to be threatening, thus cacophonic neighbours, teenagers hanging around street corners and flats with broken windows may all entail to some individuals that their neighbourhood is threatening (Baumer 1985 Hunter and Baumer 1982), however much of it is cause by other surmountive/perceptual and social structural factors. A au accordinglytic amount of research has already identified several factors which reckon to suck up a contribution to fear. Box, Hale and Andrews (1988 341) classify these under the following headings vulnerability, environmental clues and conditions, personal knowledge of crime and victimisation, confidence in the police and criminal arbiter systems, perceptions of personal risk, and seriousness of various offences. The research for this humankind of fake will be carried out by households in close proximity to each other consequently the environmental conditions should be genuinely similar for each respondent. However other factors, in particular vulnerably personal knowledge of crime and confidence in the police and criminal legal expert system should be different for e really respondent. As a result, the findings of the research should be particularly diverse.In wrong of fear of crime, the British Crime Survey offers an in prescience insight into the British publics perception of crime, in compare to actual crime statistics. The BCS is a face-to-face victimisation play along in which people inhabiting households in England and Wales are asked about their experiences of crime in the 12 calendar months prior to interview. The 2009/10 BCS shows that a large proportion of people (sixty six per cen while) believe crime has risen across the country as a whole in the hold out few years. There has been a large majority of respondents who think crime has risen at a national level since the questions were first included in 1996. Statistics provided by the household blank space (2010) show an actual decrease in a large number of crimes between 2002 and 2010. The total of sexual offences, robbery, burglary, fraud, drug offences, and the total of all recorded crime have decreased ein truth year for the knightly 8 years. These figures would suggest that the publics fear of crime is unjust based on the number of crimes which have fallen throughout Britain in recent years. It would appear that the publics perception of these high crime levels is influenced by more than just ordained statistics released by the Home Office, th e most obvious contributor to this fear of crime world the media.Fear of crime and the mediaIt is often argued that the media exaggerate the extent of crime in Britain. This includes newspapers, news and entertainment on television and radio, as salutary as crime fiction (Greer,2005). These exaggerations of crime stories which are in the public eye daily can have a substantial disturb upon the publics perception of crime, but more significantly their fear of it. As previously mentioned, personal experiences of crime can often result in victims neat increasingly fearful of being victimised while accounts of crime from family, friends and neighbours may as strong have this effect. However as previous research has discovered the most powerful source to fuel fear of crime is normally the media. As Jewkes (2010) states numerous writers have examined the proposition that the media present crime stories ( both(prenominal) genuine and fictional) in ways which call forively disto rt and manipulate public perceptions, creating a false picture of crime which promotes stereotyping, bias, prejudice and gross oversimplification of the facts. Their closedown is that it is not just official statistics that misrepresent the picture of crime, but that the media are also guilty of manipulation and fuelling public fears. Roberts and Doob (1986) and Surette (1998) reaffirm this view of crime and the media in their outline of how influential the media can be. The publics perception of victims, criminals, deviants, and law enforcement officials is largely determined by their portrayal in the mass media. question indicates that the majority of public knowledge about crime and justice is derived from the media. western sandwich troupe is fascinated with crime and justice. From films, books, newspapers, magazines, television broadcasts, to every twenty-four hour period conversations, we are invariably engaging in crime talk. In this sense the mass media play an importan t government agency in the construction of criminality and the criminal justice system.Research conducted by Ditton and Duffy (1983) came to a similar conclusion to Jewkes in regards to reporting of crime stories in the media after their abbreviation of three Scottish newspapers. An analysis of the crime subject of the newspapers (in terms of the numbers and page areas of crime reports) was effected and found that six per cent of the news involved crime, with xl basketball team per cent of this being violent or sexual crime. This figure was then compared with actual police statistics which showed just two per cent of crime in the locality to be of a violent and/or sexual temperament (Williams and Dickinson 199335). As a result of their findings, Ditton and Duffy came to the conclusion that this research exemplifies the level of sensualism and exaggeration of crime stories which appear throughout print-based media. Consequently, they called for further research to be conduct ed to determine whether the mis types of crime in newspapers influence the general perceptions of readers. Despite a large percentage of violent or sexual crimes covered in the newspapers, it is arguable as to weather a percentage of just six out of the total of all articles in them is substantial replete to come to pressher that print-based media exaggerate and sensationalise as Ditton and Duffy suggested.This research as easy ask significant steps to examine the content of crime stories in print-based media and be regarded as a successful study, however it was conducted almost thirty years ago which means in terms of quantity and coverage of crime stories in modern Britain, it is somewhat outdated. In addition the research fails to determine any links between media coverage and fear of crime, so with this in mind, the study which will be conducted for this piece of work primarily aims to investigate if there is any sort of coefficient of correlation between print-based media and fear of crime in an attempt to come to a conclusion which Ditton and Duffy were unable to achieve.When the discussion takes place surrounding how influential the media can be on crime levels and fear of crime the theory of righteous panics often surfaces. This model made famous by Stanley Cohen in the seventies with the publication of Folk Devils and Moral Panics The creation of Mods and Rockers refers to public and political reactions to minority or marginalized individuals and hosts who appear to be some kind of threat to consensual value and interests. (Jewkes 201074) By labelling certain groups as deviant scatty out key facts and extensively covering crime stories the creation of chaste panics by the British press has comely arguably one of the more damaging aspects of crime coverage, causing unnecessary for fear and apprehension amongst the public. These fears when compared to actual crime statistics do appear to be uncalled for, but figures from the British Crime Surv ey suggest that they are still present in the minds of newspaper readings.The British Crime Survey has been conducted by the Home Office since its cosmos in 1982 and from 2001 it has run continuously each year. The survey of around forty thousand adults is conducted to gain an insight into public attitudes to crime as well as other criminal justice issues, with the findings often used to facilitate the Government in their policy formations (Home Office 2010). The 2003 edition of the BCS was the first to ask respondents directly about their newspaper reading habits. The results showed that attitudes to crime are very much influenced by newspaper reports. Forty three per cent of pill readers believed that crime has increased a lot with seventeen per cent also claiming to be very worried by the threat of physical attacks (Guardian 2003). These findings are based on a very large scale with the respondents geographically located across most parts of Britain. They offer an accurate rep resentation of the cosmoss fear of crime and how this is influenced by newspapers articles, however due to its large scale, a more appropriate approach to use in order to get a localised view on crime would be a study of households in one particular part of a city. This order then allows the researcher to investigate if the immediate area in which the respondent resides is influential in their levels of fear.Several other pieces of research have been carried out to understand fear of crime in both the elderly and in women respectively. A recent Age Concern account entitled The Fear Factor Older people and Fear of Street crime reported that forty seven per cent of those over 75 years of age and thirty seven per cent of those over fifty no long-range take part in social and community activities after calamitous because of fear of street crime (Help the Aged 2006). Similarly an article in the Independent (2005) entitled Women and Crime Fear in Suburbia goes into depth about the fe ar which one women have about being attacked in their own homes. In this article many women interviewed agreed that the media has a role to play in increasing womens fears despite official Home Office statistics suggesting total recorded crime is down by six per cent year-on-year (Independent 2005). Both pieces of research gain insight into two separate groups of society with valid and reliable information collection, however they fail to make comparisons of fear of crime levels with other groups of people. By conducting research from both men and women of varying ages, this allows for more in depth analysis, where comparisons and correlations can be made between all respondents to determine if age and/or sex are an influential factor in fear of crime levels.There has been extensive literary criticism of the empirical and theoretical validity of the claims that media images cultivate a misleading view of the world of crime (Howitt 1998 Ditton et al. 2004) and according to several critics, there is still not enough sufficient evidence to suggest that exposure to the media as well as other variables such as class, gender, race, place of residence and actual experience of crime can and do effect an individuals fear of becoming a victim of crime (Reiner 2006). Despite these criticisms the research carried out for this piece of work will attempt to gather enough evidence to show that the media along with other variables does in fact influence fear of crime. methodologyThe selective information collection method which will be used for this research is a cross-sectional questionnaire consisting of both qualitative and quantitative questions. The questionnaire will be given to twenty four randomly selected respondents living on a housing estate in the semi-rural village of Stannington, in Sheffield. At the last census (2001), the population for Stannington village was listed as 16,600 (www.stannington.org.uk). This number is far too large as it would require a signi ficant amount of questionnaires to be produced which is unrealistic given the resources and time-frame available therefore a combination of both clomp and systematic sample will be used to select certain roads and houses within a small geographical location. Kalsbeek (1998) defines cluster sampling as sampling in which sampling units (that is, households) at some point in the selection process are collections, or clusters, of population elements. For the primary sample group eight roads on the housing estate will be selected as part of the cluster sampling process, then house numbers two five and eight are to be chosen systematically. This approach eliminates any potential bias, allowing the validity of the research to be increased. Similarly for the secondary sample group, four roads will be selected with house numbers one and ten chosen to induce the questionnaire if not all twenty four primary respondents decide to sleep with the questionnaire. In order to be courteous when a ddressing the respondents, the electoral register will be accessed at the Sheffield Town Hall to gather the names of those chosen to participate in the study. Doing this should allow for the respondents to be contacted formally whilst making it more manageable to record which households responded and those who declined.When the collection of data from the primary sample group commences, personal introductions will be made informing the randomly selected respondents what the research study is for and how they have been chosen. If the respondents then decide to take part in the study they will be given the questionnaire along with a cover sheet, outlining the instructions on how to complete the questionnaire and a brief letter explaining the think of the study. If the there is no one in at the chosen addresses the questionnaire will be posted to the respondents and will be collected a calendar week from that date.The decision to utilise a cross-sectional questionnaire was made beca use this method allows data to be collected relatively quickly and at a single point in time. These characteristic of data collection are very much suited for this type of research study due to the time and transport limitations which apply. A questionnaire is preferable over other designs such as a longitudinal survey or case study as it lends itself well to quantifiable data, allowing for variations to be established which may appear throughout the different variables. According to Bryman (200845) cross sectional studies are very powerful in terms of replicability because the researcher can spell out procedures for selecting respondents, intent measures of concepts administrating research instruments and analysing data.When the questionnaires have been collected from all respondents and the required amount of data has been gathered it will then be analysed using the data analysis software SPSS. This software allows complex data to be interpreted very easily through the use of bi variate and multivariate crosstabulations as well as frequency tables. This data can then be used to create graphs which allow for patterns of correlation to be identified. SPSS was elected due to its efficacy to eliminate any issues regarding inter-coder reliability. It also lends itself well to quantitative closed-ended question data (which I intend to collect) because this form of data requires very little cryptanalysis and can therefore be inputted into the programme with ease.Data Analysis quest the collection of twenty four questionnaire responses the data was inputted into the SPSS software and the variable values were coded. After compiling frequency tables and crosstabulations it appears that the research has identified some interesting findings, which do not necessarily agree with the original hypothesis express at the beginning of the study.Table 1 (below) shows how participants responded to the question Do newspapers influence your fear of crime? It appears that only 37.5% of people felt that their fear of being a victim of crime was influenced by newspapers. 50% say that they werent influenced which is pretty more than those that answered yes to the question however it is not significantly high enough to suggest a majority because there were 3 respondents (12.5%) who were undecided.(Table 1) Do newspapers influence your fear of crime?FrequencyPercentValid Percentaccumulative PercentValidYes937.537.537.5No1250.050.087.5Dont know312.512.5100.0Total24100.0100.0When the variable of gender is factored into the same question, it appears that men are more influenced by print-based media than women. A crosstabulation of the two variables shows that 6 males in comparison to just 3 females stated that their fear was influenced by newspapers. This figure at first appears to be a surprise when compared to the Independent (2005) article (referred to earlier) which stated that the media has a role to play in increasing fear of crime levels amongst women. H owever when a crosstabulation was formed which analysed the gender and how often do you read national newspapers? variables it appears that the male respondents in the study read newspapers more regularly than the females. Table 2 (below) shows that half (6) of all male respondents read a national newspaper once a week in comparison to only 2 female respondents. It also illustrates that all of the male respondents read a newspaper at least once a month in comparison to 5 females who stated that they never read a newspaper.(Table 2) How often do you read national newspapers? * Are you male or female? CrosstabulationAre you male or female?Total virileFemaleHow often do you read national newspapers?Every day235Several times a week213Once a week628Once a fortnight202Once a month011Never055Total121224With this in mind the statistics appear to suggest that those who are subject to newspaper articles more frequently appear to be influenced by them more in terms of fear of crime.Lichtenste in et al (1978 575) state Fear sells. recent research by Ditton and Duffy (1983) amongst others, primarily focused upon newspaper content analysis. rough evidence was found to suggest that certain crime types in particular violent or sexual crimes appeared continuously throughout newspapers articles. This research along with several other studies has collectively suggested that sensationalism of crime stories does occur in order to sell more copies. The questionnaire given to respondents asked them Do you think newspapers sensationalise crime stories? The pie chart above shows the overwhelming majority (91.7%) of participants felt that sensationalism does occur in British newspapers. This figure is particularly high considering that 5 out of the 24 respondents stated that they didnt read newspapers. In this case the assumption could be made that those who dont read newspapers would not be fully aware of the extent to which sensationalism appears to occur. However this statistic co nfirms that this is irrelevant.In a similar manner, many newspapers (and the media in general) have been accused of creating moral panics. These accusations have especially