MEDIA AND CRIME

Abstract

Aim of this paper is to address the role of “media and crime”. In various academic circles is being discussed about how media phenomenon causes anti-social, deviant or criminal behaviour in our society, in other words, to what extent the negative media images bring to their viewers, and based in that man is unstable and susceptible to external influences, is often taken as an incontrovertible fact that society has become more violent since the advent of modern media industry. Arrival and growth of the film, television and more recently, computer technologies, have served to intensify public fears of crime wave and some genuinely new phenomena, resulting in a persistent myth that the two phenomena - Media and crime, are 'naturally' connected among themselves. In this paper, “media” refers to various means of communication. Media is the key source of knowing what is happening around the world. Speed of information that media bring us, have indeed made the world a global village, since information applies throughout the globe with the speed of light. Nowadays electronic media are media which includes radio, television (television and new platforms, etc.). In recent years, the media influence has grown exponentially with the advance of technology; first there was the telegraph, then radio, newspapers, magazines, television and now the Internet. Media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and the responsible –accountable, this is their strength. The more pressing issues are “Copy Cat” crimes. This has to do with copying of something published or broadcasted that drags media attention, by causing people to impersonate in order to get the attention of the same level. Examples of this are copy cat assassinations, suicides, and other violent acts that have no other motive than getting attention of the wider public community, these acts are copies of the same acts that have been seen in media, films, even in the different video spots, as well as read in the books.