11. News power, crime and media justice

Greer, Chris; McLaughlin, Eugene

doi:10.1093/he/9780198719441.003.0012

Cited by 27 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(11 reference statements)

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“…Crime reporting is a long-standing news staple (Greer and McLaughlin, 2017), with movement from more traditional print-based material, to online reporting and sharing of crime news stories on corresponding social media platforms which are then shared by people not usually involved in the production of news. Across these changing media platforms, there is a continuation of repetitive messages surrounding common criminality and those who commit crime (Hayes and Luther, 2018).…”

Section: Expanding Our Understanding Of Desistancementioning

confidence: 99%

Social media: A challenge to identity and relational desistance

Rutter

2020

Probation Journal

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Society has witnessed a rapid growth in the prevalence and use of social media. The influence and impact of this expansion has sparsely, if at all, been considered within the context of desistance from crime. This article draws upon the narratives of male and female service users subject to community supervision by a Community Rehabilitation Company, collected as part of a doctoral thesis. Evidence demonstrates how social media plays a largely negative role, with some gendered difference on a service user’s identity and relational desistance, alongside individual agency and wider social structures. This enables the article to develop the evidence base of interactionist perspectives of desistance, while also recognising gender.

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Section: Expanding Our Understanding Of Desistancementioning

confidence: 99%

Social media: A challenge to identity and relational desistance

Rutter

2020

Probation Journal

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“…However talented and virtuous a celebrity may appear, a scandalous news feed will go viral in a hyper-connected world (Greer & Mclaughlin, 2015, 2017b. By surviving decades in the spotlight with their reputations intact, national treasures establish a rare positive consensus across a national media typically characterised by a 'gotcha' impulse to shred reputations (Cashmore, 2006;Greer & Mclaughlin, 2017a;Lloyd, 2004). Of the National Treasure competition run with the British Library, Sunday Telegraph editor, Ian MacGregor, said: 'There is so much bleak news at the moment, but this has been a great opportunity to celebrate some truly wonderful British achievements.'…”

Section: Media Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While state honours vetting remains a notoriously secretive affair (Phillips, 2004), the media vetting of a potential national treasure’s probity plays out in the full glare of publicity. However talented and virtuous a celebrity may appear, a scandalous news feed will go viral in a hyper-connected world (Greer and McLaughlin, 2015; 2017a, 2017b). By surviving decades in the spotlight with their reputations intact, national treasures establish a rare positive consensus across a national media typically characterised by a ‘gotcha’ impulse to shred reputations (Cashmore, 2006; Lloyd, 2004).…”

Section: Why Do National Treasures Matter?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why becoming a national treasure matters: Elite celebrity status and inequality in the United Kingdom

Greer

McLaughlin

2019

European Journal of Cultural Studies

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This article presents the first academic analysis of ‘national treasure’ as a status designation for an elite category of British celebrities who hold a unique position in the Great British hall of fame. The emergence of this status designation is situated in the context of two intersecting processes of cultural change in the post-War period – the rise of celebrity culture and the popularisation of the state honours system. It is proposed that national treasure status results from the accumulation of three interlocking forms of validation: peer, state and media. After reviewing these underpinning forms of validation, we consider one of Britain’s most celebrated national treasures – Dame Judi Dench. The aim is to illustrate empirically the status elevation and sedimentation processes through which particular elite celebrities become national treasures, and the various ways in which they might respond to this status designation. Although the term ‘national treasure’ for many – including those so-designated – may seem a trite term of endearment, we argue that it is in fact an ideological assemblage invested with significance. On one hand, national treasures help revalidate the notion of the authentic celebrity within an apparently meritocratic system that recognises and rewards talent, hard work and dedication. In the context of a relentlessly bleak news cycle, they are a wholly virtuous expression of national identity, signifying all that is great about Britain. On the other hand, although national treasures are constructed as being ‘of the people’, by authenticating the underpinning institutional forms of validation, their status transformation contributes to the legitimation and reproduction of status hierarchies, cultural authority and inequality in the UK.

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“…There has been much discussion of the 'tabloidisation' of journalism in recent years, which relates variously to the growth of 'infotainment', the reduction in investigative journalism and the increased personalisation of stories, though there is very little consensus on the nature and implications of this (Bird, 2009;Zelizer, 2009). Certainly the interactive dynamics of tabloidisation and digitisation promote an ever more sensationalised, and adversarial form of crime reporting (Greer and McLaughlin 2017). However in the UK context there continues to be a clear differences in the reporting of crime across the tabloids and the broadsheets -with the former tending to focus on stories about 'good' and 'bad' characters, on the emotive details of the crime rather than consequences (Rogers 2004).…”

Section: Media Engagement As Social and Cultural Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

Punishment, legitimacy and taste: The role and limits of mainstream and social media in constructing attitudes towards community sanctions

Happer

McGuinness

McNeill

et al. 2018

Crime, Media, Culture

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Although criminologists have studied public attitudes to community sanctions, and there has also been some attention to media representations of them, there has been no serious examination of the relationships between media and public understandings. This article presents an interdisciplinary analysis (drawing on sociology, media and communications and organisational studies) of the potential influence of media consumption practices on penal tastes among diverse participant groups. We aim to develop a clearer understanding of how these processes shape the public legitimacy of community sanctions. In particular, we report on original research employing innovative methodologies to explore the dynamic set of practices deployed by audiences in the process of making meaningful the media landscape on punishment and community sanctions. Our findings offer some confirmation of the primacy of the prison in the popular imagination; community sanctions' media profile is delimited by their perceived banality, in turn leading to confusion surrounding their purpose and potential. However, this study suggests that the legitimacy problem for community sanctions may be far more complex than 'newsworthiness'. Community sanctions, we argue, may be subject to appraisal in line with penal 'tastes' in which the function of moral censure is of central significance. However, we also uncover some evidence about how traditional markers of taste are disrupted by processes of media convergence (of appropriation, circulation, response) in ways which can operate to limit deliberation even amongst more liberal audience groups, and conversely open it up amongst those who are more punitive.

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11. News power, crime and media justice

Cited by 27 publications

References 23 publications

Social media: A challenge to identity and relational desistance

Social media: A challenge to identity and relational desistance

Why becoming a national treasure matters: Elite celebrity status and inequality in the United Kingdom

Punishment, legitimacy and taste: The role and limits of mainstream and social media in constructing attitudes towards community sanctions

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