Media representations of crime and criminal justice

Birkbeck, CH ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1690-9708 2014, 'Media representations of crime and criminal justice' , in: Oxford Handbooks Online: Criminology and Criminal Justice , Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 1-13.

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Abstract

To date, criminologists have approached the media from a communications perspective that, directly or indirectly, treats them as a powerful social force. However, systematic research (conducted mainly outside but also within criminology) has failed to substantiate this image: the media may be an ubiquitous ingredient in daily life, but their influence is crucially mediated by social and psychological variables. Further progress in critically assessing the power of the media will depend on developments in media and communications theory rather than criminology. Meanwhile, criminologists could open up alternative lines of inquiry relating to the media’s quality of publicness and its location at the interface between revelation and concealment—an interface of considerable significance for crime and criminal justice. To do so would be to explore the media as a discourse, and materialization, of conventionality.

Item Type:	Book Section
Editors:	Tonry, M
Themes:	Subjects outside of the University Themes
Schools:	Schools > School of Health and Society > Centre for Applied Research in Health, Welfare and Policy
Journal or Publication Title:	Oxford Handbooks Online
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Refereed:	Yes
ISBN:	9780199935383
Related URLs:	Publication
Funders:	Non funded research
Depositing User:	CH Birkbeck
Date Deposited:	10 Sep 2014 12:01
Last Modified:	16 Feb 2021 15:00
URI:	http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/32508

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