Crime and the Media

Provides a critical discussion of crime in the media and equips students with a better understanding of the key theoretical concepts and methodological tools for undertaking media analysis. Examining both real and fictional representations of crime and criminal justice agencies, this is the essential textbook for crime and media courses.

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From video games that allow us to participate in Mafia-style violence, to newspaper reports about the latest terrorist atrocity, from detective novels that fill our bedside cabinets, to Hollywood's beloved legal dramas – the mass media is saturated with stories about crime, justice and disorder. Together they create a cultural landscape of crime that is distinctly at odds with reality, as criminologists are apt to complain.

Crime and the Media attempts to make sense of this cultural landscape and its relationship with broader social trends and public attitudes. Through focussed, critical discussions about crime in the media - taking on crime news and fictional representations of cops, courts, and corrections - the text equips students with an understanding of the key theoretical concepts and methodological tools that are required to undertake media analysis.

With questions for discussion, exercises and workshop sessions, as well as techniques for analysing crime in a range of media formats, the book makes an invaluable contribution to crime and media courses, and to the social sciences in general.