Western media has a love affair with crime and the justice system. It fills our television shows, newspapers, books, performing arts, radio, and crime has even made its way to the up and coming social media websites. In short, crime is a hot topic in our media.
Media has painted crime as:
-Dramatized
- Exaggerated
- Sexualized
- Entertaining
- More personal
- Distant from us
The issue comes in that the media tends to be the public’s only access to the world of crime, unless they themselves have faced direct experience. Whether it is a completely fictional and exaggerated crime show such as NCSI or the headlines in the news, crime becomes associated with these interpretations in the media. In a lot of ways, the public now thinks more in line with the media which they have easy access than the reality in the world around them.
However, the media does not necessarily have all negative characteristics when concerning it’s relationship with crime. Thanks to the media, we have more awareness of crimes around us and can be warned fairly quickly. There is also a humanizing factor of the people we otherwise distance as “hardened criminals”.
Due to the public’s primary access to crime coming from the images portrayed in the various public media resources; we must take a deeper look at the resources and the images that the media portrays.
Media has painted crime as:
-Dramatized
- Exaggerated
- Sexualized
- Entertaining
- More personal
- Distant from us
The issue comes in that the media tends to be the public’s only access to the world of crime, unless they themselves have faced direct experience. Whether it is a completely fictional and exaggerated crime show such as NCSI or the headlines in the news, crime becomes associated with these interpretations in the media. In a lot of ways, the public now thinks more in line with the media which they have easy access than the reality in the world around them.
However, the media does not necessarily have all negative characteristics when concerning it’s relationship with crime. Thanks to the media, we have more awareness of crimes around us and can be warned fairly quickly. There is also a humanizing factor of the people we otherwise distance as “hardened criminals”.
Due to the public’s primary access to crime coming from the images portrayed in the various public media resources; we must take a deeper look at the resources and the images that the media portrays.
WHERE TO NEXT?
Photo Cred: Top cover: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/con servative-race-war-meme/
In article: artwork by Deviant art
Linked images: cited on linked page
In article: artwork by Deviant art
Linked images: cited on linked page