Showing papers in "Crime, Media, Culture in 2018"

From geek masculinity to Gamergate: the technological rationality of online abuse

Abstract: In 2014, an orchestrated campaign of online abuse known as Gamergate overtook the global video game industry, calling unprecedented attention to the scope of gendered harassment on social media. Us...

‘Some viewers may find the following images disturbing’: Visual representations of refugee deaths at border crossings:

Abstract: The emotional reaction and outrage following the publication of photographs of Alan Kurdi who drowned while crossing borders in September 2015 highlighted the major impact visual representations of...

What’s the deal with ‘websleuthing’? News media representations of amateur detectives in networked spaces:

Abstract: This article explores websleuthing, a phenomenon widely discussed and debated in popular culture but little-researched by criminologists. Drawing upon a review of existing literature and analysis of news media representations, we argue that websleuthing is much more diverse than previously thought. Encompassing a wide range of motives, manifestations, activities, networked spaces and cases, websleuthing has a variety of impacts upon victims, secondary victims, suspects, criminal justice organisations and websleuths themselves. We conclude that websleuthing is the embodiment of true crime infotainment in a ‘wound culture’ (Seltzer, 2007, 2008) and as such, is deserving of more criminological scrutiny than has been the case to date.

"It must be great being a female pedophile!": The nature of public perceptions about female teacher sex offenders

Abstract: Although female sex offenders have received increased scholarly attention in recent years, and have also gained widespread media attention, minimal research has focused specifically on public perce

The high-profile case as 'fire object': Following the Marianne Vaatstra murder case through the media.

Abstract: In 1999 a girl named Marianne Vaatstra was found murdered in a rural area in the Netherlands. In 2012 the perpetrator was arrested. Throughout this period as well as thereafter, the Vaatstra case was never far removed from media attention and public debate. How did this murder become such a high-profile case? In this article we employ the concept of the ‘fire object’ to examine the high-profileness of the Vaatstra case. Law and Singleton’s fire metaphor helps to attend to objects as patterns of presences and absences. In the Vaatstra case it is in particular the unknown suspect that figures as a generative absence that brings to presence different versions of the case and allows them to proliferate. In this article we present four different versions of the Vaatstra case that were presented in the media and which shaped the identities of concerned actors. The unruly topology of fire objects, we argue, might well explain the high-profileness of such criminal cases.

Following #JillMeagher: Collective meaning-making in response to crime events via social media:

Abstract: In the early morning of Saturday 22 September 2012 an Australian woman, Gillian ‘Jill’ Meagher, was reported missing after spending an evening out with work colleagues in suburban Brunswick (Melbou...

Body Worn Cameras and police image work: News media coverage of the Rialto Police Department’s body worn camera experiment:

Abstract: In 2015, the so-called “Rialto study” was published in a peer-reviewed journal, although the findings of this experiment impacted policing as early as 2013. The yearlong study of officers who wore ...

‘Man I’m all torn up inside’: Analyzing audience responses to Making a Murderer:

Abstract: Despite the preoccupation with media depictions of crime and criminal justice, few studies have employed qualitative methodologies to investigate how audience members engage with, react to, and int...

Carceral horror: Punishment and control in Silent Hill:

Abstract: Prisons have become regular fixtures in late modern media. Despite this ubiquity, little research has been conducted examining representations of prisons and punishment within one of the most popul...

The ‘one who knocks’ and the ‘one who waits’: Gendered violence in Breaking Bad:

Abstract: This article provides a cultural criminological analysis of the acclaimed US television series, Breaking Bad. It is argued here that – as a cultural text – Breaking Bad is emblematic of an agenda for change surrounding criminological theories of peoples’ propensity to do harm to one another. To exemplify this, the show’s central (male) protagonist is revealed to undergo a complete biosocial transformation into a violent offender and, as such, to demonstrate the need for criminological theory to recognise and further reflect upon this process. However, at the same time, the (re)presented inability of the show’s female characters to do the same is indicative of a number of gender-related questions that progressive criminological theories of violence need to answer. In considering these two fields in tandem, the show’s criminological significance is established; it is symbolic of the need for criminology to afford greater recognition to the nuanced intersections of both biological and sociological factors in the genesis and evolution of violent human subjectivities.

From empowering the shameful to shaming the empowered: Shifting depictions of the poor in ‘reality TV’:

Abstract: Poor-blaming and poor-shaming have become intrinsic parts of the neoliberal order. For neoliberal discourse to enter and to dominate wider public ‘common sense’, vehicles of ‘populist language’ are required and the mass media has taken a central place in propagandising neoliberalism through their narration of poverty. This article focuses on so-called ‘reality TV’ and its neoliberal framing of the poor, particularly since 2007 and specifically in its generation of support for, and acquiescence in, ‘austerity’. We argue that what these programmes provide is a representation of poverty which is politically expedient but socially divisive. As criminologists, we suggest that this representation symbolises the intensification of what Cohen (2002: xxi) noted as the prominence of ‘“welfare cheats”, “social security frauds” and “dole scroungers” as fairly traditional folk devils. Further, we argue that an intensification in the denigration of the poor and the marginal in these programmes can be traced across three phases, from 2009 onwards, defined by their key features. Whilst not neatly discrete, these phases mirror the neoliberal political shift from welfare to punishment. They manufacture ‘epidemic problems’ that are seen to require urgent remediation. Yet the status and nature of these problems are defined through deception and the forms of intervention required are determined through individualised and moralised neoliberal prescription.

Living in the End Times through Popular Culture: An ultra-realist analysis of The Walking Dead as Popular Criminology

Abstract: This article provides an ultra-realist analysis of AMC’s The Walking Dead as a form of ‘popular criminology’. It is argued here that dystopian fiction such as The Walking Dead offers an opportunity...

Real men set norms? Anti-trafficking campaigns and the limits of celebrity norm entrepreneurship:

Abstract: This article analyzes celebrities’ norm entrepreneurship through a specific instance of its enactment: Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore’s media campaign against human trafficking (the K&M Campaign). D...

Cultural confessions: Law and the racial scrutiny of the Indo-Canadian home in Metro Vancouver:

Abstract: In Metro Vancouver, the recurrence of gang violence involving young South Asian men has spawned a series of public explanations about a new threat to public safety: the ‘Indo-Canadian gangster’. Th...

The criminal justice system on trial: Shaming, outrage, and gendered tensions in public responses to the Jian Ghomeshi verdict:

Abstract: Drawing on an affective framework, this qualitative content analysis of the immediate public responses on Twitter in the hours following Jian Ghomeshi’s not guilty verdict (n = 3943 tweets) reveals...

Exploring the relationship between cold case homicide survivors and the media

Abstract: After a homicide, survivors are thrust into relationships with a myriad of professionals. For cold case homicide survivors, these relationships are likely to develop into long-term, persistent inte...

Cops, lies, and videotape: Police reform and the media in Hawaii:

Abstract: Police accountability is among the most prominent criminal justice issues in America today. Accounts of police misconduct captured by new communication and information technologies have played a ce...

“My pain grows as my life dwindles”*: Women, poetry, and resisting state violence in Afghanistan:

Abstract: Western media reporting on the post-9/11 Taliban regime in Afghanistan propagated the image of Afghani women as being helpless, voiceless victims in desperate need of external intervention to rescue them from oppression—i.e. the faceless woman dressed in the all-encompassing blue burqa. Contrary to such symbolizing, and drawing on Hayward and Schuilenburg’s (2014) criteria for resistance, this article examines the longevity and endurance of Pashtun poetry as a vehicle of resistance for women and girls in their fight against state-sanctioned patriarchal oppression. Not only does this undermine the broader narrative of helplessness propagated by the West, but it illuminates the agency, resilience, and bravery of women who challenge the status quo and achieve greater participation in public and political life.

‘The best three days of my life’: Pleasure, power and alienation in the 2011 riots:

Abstract: This article examines one of the less frequently considered elements of riots: the emotions to which they give rise. Based on testimony from interviews with people who took part in the 2011 England riots, it explores the curiosity which drew many onto the streets, the excitement and fear involved in such quickly unfolding and unpredictable events, the impunity that many felt being part of such large crowds, together with the sense of ‘empowerment’ many experienced as a consequence of their involvement. The article suggests that a number of concepts regularly deployed within cultural criminology – most obviously ‘carnival’ and ‘edgework’ – are useful in understanding elements of the emotional world of the riot. More fundamentally, however, it is argued that what the accounts describe more than anything else is a pervading sense of ‘alienation’ among many of those involved in the disorder.

Women on the walls: Representations of women in political murals in Northern Ireland:

Abstract: The article documents the under-representation of women in political wall murals in Northern Ireland. There are significantly fewer representations of women than of men in these murals. Where women do appear, it is within a number of specific themes: as political activists, prisoners, victims or historical or mythological characters. The findings will be located within an analysis which sees the murals as a specific articulation of gender as a dimension of political mobilisation during conflict and in the period of transition from conflict. In short, the images sometimes reinforce and at other times challenge gender role expectations and norms. The extent of that reinforcement and challenge differs significantly between republican and loyalist murals. Nowhere do women receive representational equality with men, but in relation to loyalist murals, that absence comes close to being tantamount to silence.

‘I just wanna see someone get knocked the fuck out’: Spectating affray on Facebook fight pages

Abstract: Spurred by the advent of the Internet and the camera phone, in the early 21st century street fighting met the information superhighway. Today, one of the key vehicles accelerating this turn are Fac...

Book review: Geoff Manaugh, A Burglar’s Guide to the City

Abstract: Criminology has long adhered to two-dimensional, superficial, lazy, taken-for-granted and often quite frankly boring ways of thinking about urban space. From Guerry and Quetelet’s 19th century cartes thematiques and the Chicago School’s iconic ‘concentric zone’ model, to the latest developments in digital crime mapping, criminological conceptions of the metropolis have long exemplified what Michel de Certeau (1984) famously described as the ‘concept city’: the city as it is ‘seen by planners, developers, statisticians ... distilled to leave only quantitative data, demographics and rational discourse’ (Hayward, 2004: 2). All too often, criminologists have tended to regard the urban mise-en-scène of crime and social control – the built environment of the city – as an empty container, ‘an inert material backdrop, or an aesthetic surface upon which criminal activities can be mapped’ (Campbell, 2013: 18; Hayward, 2012). As a result, criminological understandings of urban space – at once the immediate, physical and phenomenological context of crime; increasingly a medium of social control; and repeatedly the object of political struggle – remain fundamentally underdeveloped and inadequate. In the last decade, criminology has embarked on something of a ‘spatial turn’, in which a range of innovative and exciting work has begun to offer more critical, textured and nuanced renderings of the lived experience, socio-cultural complexities and political dynamics of (urban) space, crime and social control (see, for example, Hayward, 2004, 2012; Campbell, 2013, 2016; Ferrell, 2015; Raymen, 2016). Geoff Manaugh, author of A Burglar’s Guide to the City (2016), is not a criminologist, but rather a prolific journalist and essayist; an obsessive student of urbanism, architecture and technology; and is perhaps most well known as the long-time author of the architecture blog, BLDGBLOG. Yet whilst by no means an academic work, Burglar’s Guide is certainly informed by urban studies, architecture, philosophy – and even criminology. The influence of Mike Davis, Michael Sorkin, Eyal Weizman – even Deleuze and Guattari – is felt throughout, either explicitly or otherwise. Moreover, Manaugh’s book provides a vital and refreshing antidote to the kind of ‘denatured and desiccated’ city envisaged by orthodox criminology (Young, 2004: 13). The book sets out from the premise that many of the most innovative burglaries involve infiltrating, manipulating, reconceptualising, reconfiguring or ‘hacking’ the built environment of urban space. ‘In one sense’, Manaugh writes:

“Once again, a meth lab exploded and somebody died”: Narratives of volatility and risk in the rural drug war:

Abstract: Methamphetamine (“meth”) has received a massive amount of media attention in the United States over the last decade. In reporting, journalists, politicians, and police commonly link meth to widespr...

Institutional deviance in TV news: BBC, ITV and the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal:

Abstract: This article is an empirical study of how institutional scandal is covered in TV news, using the BBC and ITV coverage of the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal as a case study. It draws on sociology of deviance as well as Greer and McLaughlin’s model of institutional scandal and the different phases they go through. As such, the study examines how the coverage of the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal moved through activations, reactions, amplification and accountability phases, although the progression was messy and complex. The study examines both verbal and visual elements of how TV news engaged in emotional accounts of suffering and attacks on figures of authority and public institutions. The article argues that institutional scandal and the media coverage of the NHS reflect both the politically disputed status of the NHS as well as a neoliberal drive to undermine public institutions.

Anti-cartel thrillers as a new film genre: How regulator-produced films portray and problematize cartels and communicate deterrence.

Abstract: This article directs the ‘visual turn’ in criminology to corporate crime, a topic that has been understudied by cultural criminologists. A recent trend of corporate crime movies suggests that film ...

Book review: Lizbet Simmons, The Prison School: Educational Inequality and School Discipline in the Age of Mass Incarceration:

Abstract: polska/sad-laskawy-dla-krola-dopalaczy-przemytnicy-leku-w-areszcie/kn4nwes (accessed 6 June 2016). Schütz A (1995) Symbol, reality, and society. In: Bryson L, Finkelstein L, Hoagland H, et al. (eds) Symbols and Society: Fourteenth Symposium of the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion. New York: Harper & Brothers, pp. 287–356. Wójcik M (2011) Zalegalizowali marihuanę. Dziwna jest ta Polska ... (They have legalized marijuana. Poland is a strange place ...). Fakt, 21 April. Available at: http://www.fakt.pl/wydarzenia/polityka/zalegalizowalimarihuane-dziwna-jest-ta-polska/c3651hc (accessed 6 June 2016).

Book review: Marian Filar and Jarosław Utrat-Milecki (eds), Kulturowe uwarunkowania polityki kryminalnej (Cultural Determinants of Criminal Policy):

Abstract: At the level of everyday thinking and the so-called ‘obvious world’ (as understood by Alfred Shütz, 1995), there are many myths that sustain the impression that some phenomena, which are human creations, have always existed in an omnipresent manner in the same form, e.g. ‘objective, universal truth’, ‘the same types of transcultural crimes’ or ‘objective court judgements’. They are depicted as if they existed and were defined independently of the decisions, values and sympathies of specific social groups and individuals, floating in some superhuman and transhistorical space, unsullied by any social, cultural or political influences. This is not true. This book, which is a collection of articles edited by Professors Marian Filar and Jarosław UtratMilecki, shows that the creation and execution of criminal law, as well as its use as a basis for assessments and judgements, are conditioned by many cultural, social, moral and psychological factors. Łukasz Ostrowski, for example, describes how the tabloids create images of suspects, accelerating a spiral of fear in society and presenting criminals in an hysterical and emotional way. Analysing crime news on the pages of Fakt (The Fact) (the Polish equivalent of the German Bild Zeitung), the author concludes that journalists use blunt and emotional words in their articles. There is no place for ‘suspects’ or ‘defendants’. There are only ‘thugs’, ‘torturers’, ‘degenerates’, ‘ruffians’, ‘beasts’ or ‘vile perverts’. Ostrowski suggests that the resulting images of suspects deprive them of humanity: they are not humans but beasts, say the editors of the tabloid press. When informing readers about the arrests of suspects, tabloid newspapers always prejudge their guilt and actually pass judgements by using phrases along the lines of ‘He is liable to X years in prison’ (X always means the maximum amount of the penalty, even if a trial ends in an acquittal). However, Fakt depicts uniformed service workers in a completely different way. The editorial staff shows them full respect, even when they commit crimes. Ostrowski describes the case of a prison warden who stabbed a prisoner: