Credit Points 10

Legacy Code 102710

Coordinator Ken Yates Opens in new window

Description There is a close relationship between representations of crime in mass and social media, and policy and legal responses to crime. Media consumers are producing and circulating content about crime and criminality through new media technologies, and some are using social media and the internet to engage in new forms of criminality. In this subject, we explore the complex role of mass media and 'new' media in debates over crime and crime control, and the facilitation of criminality by media technologies. This means studying contemporary media theory and its relevance for criminology, and the effects of social media and computing technology on representations and practices of criminality. The subject maintains a strong focus on the ways in which media and culture informs crime policy and criminal justice processes.

School Social Sciences

Discipline Criminology

Student Contribution Band HECS Band 4 10cp

Check your fees via the Fees page.

Level Undergraduate Level 3 subject

Equivalent Subjects CULT 3010 - Culture and Crime

Restrictions

Successful completion of 80 credit points

Assumed Knowledge

A basic understanding of foundational criminological theory.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of the theoretical accounts and topics of research that are part of criminological media studies.
2. Make appropriate links between theoretical accounts and independent research.
3. Demonstrate the capacity to disseminate theoretical and empirical evidence of the links between culture, media and crime to a professional audience.
4. Critically assess cultural depiction of crime, criminals and the criminal justice system.

Subject Content

1. An introduction to criminological media studies
  -  Examines the relationship between media, culture, and crime

2. The Spectacle and Hyper-Reality
  -  Explore how spectacular images are used to dramatise crime and criminal justice issues in ways that remove or simplify context, and the blurred distinction between the represented and the real.

3. News and true crime
  -  Examines how news and infotainment shape public perceptions of crime, harm, and crime control in popular culture.

4. Internet and social media 
  -  Introduces the internet as a ‘new media technology’ as a conduit for discourse and representations of criminality and also a potential instrument of criminality, with a focus on the effects of social media on contemporary society

5. Technology, technocultures, harm
- Examines how current and emerging social and information media technologies mediate and shape cultures and narratives around crime, social harm, and crime control.

6. Impact on policy and practice
  -  Provides case studies of the entanglement between media and cultural discourses of crime and public policy, legislative reform and policing practice.

7. Positioning the examination of crime, media, and culture in the (post) colonial context
- This subject will also incorporate reflection and examination of how the economic, social, political, and cultural legacies of colonialism relate to social harm, criminality, and crime control as cultural processes.