Public Perception Of Crime

In this essay, I aim to inspect the ways in which the public’s perception of crime can be, and is, influenced or affected by the media. I will do this through the use of both criminological and media theory surrounding the issue of how crime is presented within various media outlets and link that back to a specific, media-prominent case.

The public’s perception of crime is often influenced by the media. This is because the media is only as successful as their numbers of views, which very often means that media industries focus on what sells and what the public are interested in. Research has shown that crime is generally over-represented in the media compared to actual crime rates. Research conducted by Dorfman and Schiraldi (2001) found that

There are many examples of moral panics within the media, such as the mods and rockers in the 1960’s who were two groups, notorious for fighting with each other which the media mentioned a lot over a period of time which lead to people believing that . Another example is that of terrorism/ terrorists and the media representing all terrorists as being Muslim therefore leading to prejudice and stereotyping amongst the general

This has the potential to lead to Muslims believing these things about themselves and thinking it’s the norm for their culture, and then pick up these deviant behaviours or criminal acts for themselves. This is because, as Ray (1961) said, “Treating a person as though he were generally rather than specifically deviant produces a self-fulfilling prophecy. It sets in motion several mechanisms which conspire to shape the person in the image people have of