| Collective Behavior organized around imagery,
style, and symbolic meaning. |
| Production of symbols that reward only
one subculture while punishing or ignoring other subcultures. |
| Critics of cultural behavior that is perceived
to be irrational or incomprehensible. Ironically the criticism tends to
create the reverse of its indented effect, magnifying both support and opposition,
to the ultimate perpetuation. |
| References reiterating Racism and socioeconomic
discrimination. |
| Punks, Cholos, Goths, Skinheads, Gangs,
Pants falling down with underwear sticking out, hats turned around backwards,
untied shoes, bandannas and dark sun glasses. |
| Gender, Race, Religion, Ethnicity, Socioeconomic
Status |
|
Regularly focus their efforts at social and legal control on the cohesive
symbols adopted and displayed by members of youthful insubordinate "taste
publics."
Are aware that they actually enhance the value of insubordinate symbols
Knowingly drive the consumer market through campaigns of "false criminalization"
such as "adult" language ratings on music and video games, etc.
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| Mediated "Moral Panics" |
| The everyday collective practices of criminality
and criminalization of everyday life by the powerful |
| Music, Fashion "Good Taste",
Public "Decency", Producers of art and music stoke controversies
to promote consumption. Right-wing interest groups, religious fundamentalists,
and others promote "cultural conflicts" as part of their theo-political
agendas. Frequently these two dynamics intertwine in ironic, symbiotic relationships
of mutual amplification."Culture War","War on Christianity",
or religion. |
| Promote moral agendas. Advance political
careers. Justify spending public funds for various law enforcement programs.
Deflect attention from larger, more complicated political problems. Infers
power upon the individual or group responsible for producing the information. |
| To make a profit informing the public. |
| Reliance on experts and public officials
whose control over knowledge makes them the gatekeepers of that information.
Unfavorable reporting about them will close down those sources. |
| Reliance on advertising to a degree that
a news media outlet must avoid unfavorable reporting on any one sponsor
who is in league with most or all of the other sponsors, such as any member
of the local chamber of commerce. |
| Reliance on keeping the public interested
through sensationalism, propaganda, mythological treatment of authority,
and emotional pandering. Television was once considered immune when there
were only three choices. Now there are hundreds of channels. |
| A set of rules by which all of the above
mentioned "Dependencies" are treated when they must be publicized.
Originally, the sacred cow was a taboo subject that journalists avoided
to preserve their employment, but Bloggers are more frequently exposing
those vast omissions. |
| Reporting on drug abuse is exaggerated;
violence associated with drug addiction is labeled as "random",
and the resulting scare in the public paves the way for establishing new
bureaucracies, political positions, and massive tax-paid programs that,
under conditions of more accurate reporting, would never have been approved
by the public. "The random violence theme [portrayed by the media]
mobilized the white middle class against drugs and thereby invited an even
more repressive response than might otherwise have been possible." |
| Reporting on drugs and drug violence coincides
with political election cycles. The same goes for other topics such as abortion,
gay marriage, stem cell research, church-state separation, etc. |
| Official statistics from the Centers for
Disease Control (CDC) contradicted the news media's portrayal of a drug
"epidemic". |
| Liberal government officials in New York
reacted to a perceived drug crisis by calling for a variety of programs.
The news media, pursuing a sensational story that would sell the news and
not contradict the policies of officials on whom they depend for information,
mobilized the white middle class with an emphasis on the theme of random
drug violence. Faced with an alarmed voting public that was calling for
law and order, government officials promoted a drug scare that would permit
spending on law enforcement programs during a time of fiscal crisis and
overcrowded prisons. |
| Media and popular culture capitalize on public fear
and curiosity. Media presentations suggest that serial killers are responsible
for child abductions when in reality, the majority of child abductions are
by estranged parents or relatives seeking custody. |
| The technical term for multiple murder by an individual
has been replaced by more salient term "Serial Murder" by the
media |
| Hatred of women. Mass media depiction of violent acts
against women has been called "beautiful" by some film directors
and critics. Women victims in film are characterized as receiving a deserved
punishment for behavior such as refusing their boyfriends' sexual advances,
engaging in promiscuous behavior, or simply stepping out of their idealized
social places such as depicted in the film Thelma and Louise.
|
| The filmed violence that occurs without cause, motive,
or justification may cause the audience to manufacture a justification or
reason, by changing their attitudes toward some prior behavior in the film. |
| Film serial killers are depicted as having superior
strength, supernatural powers, or possession by evil magical forces or beings.
Hollywood's association of serial killers with the supernatural provides
both rationale and a basis for assumptions about actual killers |
| A brief history of bluegrass music |
| called "the high lonesome sound" |
| Many songs aggrandize home, spiritual life, family
values, and homespun tradition, while others bemoan their disintegration. |
|
They are few in number but are still performed at live venues. Three
distinct patterns emerged: First, In almost every case, the murder occurred
between acquaintances and nearly always involve a man killing a woman.
Second, the woman's death is nearly always a violent one, with her body
cruelly disposed of. Third, the murders depicted in song are characterized
by either a lack of explanation for the violent acts or an explanation
based on the man's jealousy and desire to possess the woman.
|
| Americans' interest in crime may be functional, serving
to reinforce conduct norms. Social theorists have commented that Americans
(among other societies) need crime to wonder about, to be shocked about,
to reinforce socially approved norms and values, and to gaze in awe and
disdain at the criminal who does what most cannot and would not do. |
| Americans consume crime, crime stories, and crime-related
commodities. The subtle differences between normal and abnormal behavior
become more clearly delineated within the shocked community. |
| Violent behavior is explained not only by cultural
differences by by social class. Research shows that lower-class young boys
are more likely to be socialized into relying on direct expressions of aggression
than middle class young boys. This finding is related to, among other things,
the types of punishment meted out by parents of different social classes
and the various roles and responsibilities of fathers among different social
classes. |
| Not simply applied. It is also experienced by users,
subjects and audiences. |
| Are raised to believe that being watched and watching
others through sense enhancing technologies is the normal order of things. |
| They will respond to requests for information that
in the past might have been inappropriate. |
| Shapes and normalizes new behavior patterns and aberrant
social expectations. Note the differences between trial proceedings where
television cameras are allowed and where television cameras are not allowed.
I.e. The O.J. Simpson Trial. |
| What are the soft spots? What are the contours of public
resistance or support for technologies that cross boundaries that in the
past have been impenetrable; and even sacrosanct? What themes and representations
do the supporters and opponents of the new technologies offer or fail to
offer? What is referred to only by Innuendo or Euphemism? |
- Artistic statements, unlike scientific statements do not have to be
defended.
- An osmosis-like transfer of legitimacy may be suggested by references
to valued symbols.
- The aura of science with its suggestions of modernity, power, efficiency,
and certainty.
- Attention may be focused away from what the product is used for, or
the conditions of its use, to its other attributes. I.e. Color, weight,
size. Etc.
- Ads may attempt to create and manipulate fear.
- Draw on a sense of responsibility or obligation.
- Imply that if you really love your children you will have a duty to
buy the product.
- Generate anxiety and then offer a means of coping - Ad space during
news broadcasts are highly desired.
|
| An affect of news media exposure characterized by mistrust,
cynicism, alienation, and perceptions of higher than average levels of threat
and crime in society. |
| An affect of television exposure that causes one to
favor punitive policies such as harsher punishments and the death penalty. |
| Increased fear of crime and perceived vulnerability,
and the adoption of self-protective anticrime behaviors. Adopting attitudes
regarding who can employ violence against whom, who are appropriate victims
of crime, and who are likely to be criminals. |
| The status quo is reinforced where the underlying structural
and institutional relations are taken as a given, without the understanding
that public discourse is framed in fixed political parameters. |
| There is an important need to deconstruct culturally
taken-for-granted factuality. |
| "The British Government and media based their
approach to the AIDS crisis on an agenda of sexual uniformity and conformity,
fueled by a not-so-subtle homophobia that had little, if any, impact on
the problem but was of ideological service in the struggle to reproduce
a repressive sexuality". --Watney; Policing Desire: Pornography,
AIDS, and the Media |
| Instead of reflecting the increasingly greater diversity,
the media have continued to provide homogenized, mainstream, and uniform
versions of reality that tend to avoid fundamental controversy. Since the
news media compete for the same audience, and since they reflect narrow
topical and selection criteria of significance and relevance to the concerns
of their audiences and their media organizations alike, it is not surprising
that what constitutes "news" does not necessarily conform to reality.
(p150) |
| Minorities are underreported in positive news, Women
are represented as subordinate with an underestimated economic role. The
media typically report on women of lower status, in negative roles such
as prostitute or mistress, while other roles which are no less common are
neglected. Routine working class jobs are rarely if ever seen except service
roles. |
| Invariably, media portrayals of criminals tend to be
one-dimensional reflections of the crimes commonly committed by the poor
and the powerless and not those crimes commonly committed by the rich and
powerful. Police and the justice system operates under a shroud of media
hype to such a degree that misbehavior is often overlooked. |
| Crime stories are a commodity whose audience or market
value may be higher than its value according to other criteria: Relevance,
accuracy, concern about effect, real significance |
| Cultivate a mainstream set of outlooks, assumptions,
and beliefs about behavior that confront symptoms divorced from their institutional
and constitutive elements. |
- Symbolic Rewarding
- Identifying heroes, villains, and neutral characters and associating
them with specific traits, beliefs, or kinds of behavior.
- Symbolic Punishing
- Labeling or stigmatizing certain activities or traits as antisocial,
deviant, or undesirable
- Methods of rewarding and punishing.
- Explicitly and openly.
- Through unspoken assumptions.
- Through framing of news accounts.
- Inferences of another's deviance by self-proclaimed normality.
Standing at a podium during a debate and saying "I'm for peace
and freedom." While making no mention of your opponent's position.
|
| Conservatives who begrudge a news media outlet for
it's coverage of minorities (and other "deviant" groups such as
single parents, gays, the mentally ill, the poor, and the homeless,) label
the news outlet as "liberal" or "left-wing". Consequently,
the threat of reduced advertising income determines the newsworthiness of
any topic. |
| Critical theories argue that powerful class elites
use the mass media to impose dominant views while marginalizing and delegitimating
views of opposition. |
| The news media helped to frame opposition to the war
as respectable only after the war had lost its legitimacy, not only with
the antiwar activists and demonstrators, but with a section of the established
elite as well. |
- "Lapdog" on behalf of the powers that be.
- "Watchdog" on behalf of the citizens that be.
- "Neuterdog" on behalf of the value-neutral journalists that
be.
|
- Worst News
- Television shows like Hard Copy and America's Most Wanted that
feature a confusing mix of 'live footage' and dramatic recreations
of actual events.
- "Scripted Reality:" Television shows like Parco P.I.
on Court TV, that are totally reenacted but made to appear as unscripted
depictions of real life.
- More subtle and inconspicuous.
- Bad News
- Produces the very language, discourse, and thinking about crime
and justice that needs replacement.
- More overt and recognizable by both experts and lay people.
- The news media's portrayal of sex crimes generally reflects journalism's
predominantly male and white constituency.
- The still prevalent stereotypes associated with both rape and
sex
- The absence of any recognition or reference to misogyny in American
Society.
- The tendency of the press to prefer individual to societal or
cultural explanations of crime.
- The inability of the press to refer to rape in non-sexual terms
(the Central Park Jogger report).
- Good News
- The news business has acknowledged its racist past and is sensitive
to questions of race and racism in its contemporary practice.
- These distinctions refer not only to the distance between "objective"
realities of crime and justice and their portrayals in the mass media
but to the distortions between the crimes covered and the degree to
which they are explained relative to the criminological knowledge base.
|
| The news media do not cover systematically all forms
and expressions of crime and victimization. They emphasize some crimes and
ignore others. They sympathize with some victims and blame others. There
are varying degrees of quality and quantity of crime news coverage. |
| Bikers and Skinheads, Bloods and Crips, 2 Live Crew
and Robert Mapplethorpe all construct symbolic networks and cultural identities
while they themselves are constructed by others as criminal. And in all
of these cases, this interplay of cultural and criminal practices is in
turn entangled with the practice of power, as played out in inequalities
of social class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. |
| If we reconsider past research in criminology and related
fields with an eye toward these sorts of issues, we can begin to see the
importance of style in defining criminal and cultural activities. The most
important factor affecting the decision of juvenile officers is the attitude
displayed by the offender |
| When kids participate in mainstream noncriminal activities
and culture, they operate within an elaborate system of commercial appeal
and consumption; with great care and grave consequences, they negotiate
status, identity, and community through style and makers of clothing, shirttails
tucked and untucked, over- or under sized garments, precisely cut hair,
subtleties of eyeliner and blush, and a host of other devices. |
- In Chicago, a deaf-mute teenager who signed "I love you"
was shot by gang members who mistook the sign for a gang sign.
- A Denver mother bought her son a team sports jacket that was coincidentally
a symbol of membership to gang.
- And a Denver police officer tells kids "Put on a Chicago Bulls
jacket and a pair of pricey sneakers and you may as well paint a bullseye
on your back." And warns them "of the hazards of stylin'."
- Style operates not only as a manifestation of individual and group
identity by as a critical component of social interaction.
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|
The conflict between working class kids and school authorities "is
expressed mainly as a style." Contemporary controversies regarding
police and judicial responses to gang involvement, graffiti writing, and
other subcultural activities also sketch connections between social power,
legal status, and style. Legal authorities interpret particular configurations
of ethnic and social class style as indicators of criminality. The stylistic
orientations of disadvantaged groups thus symbolize prior social inequality
and group identity, and at the same time propel group members toward further
victimization and criminalization.
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