The Influence of Media and Social Medial on Perceptions of Crime

The media platform has become an essential part of human life in the contemporary world, influencing every aspect of people's norms and practices. It plays the agenda-setting role sensitizing the public about the critical issues in crime-related issues like behavior, rate, victimization, etc. The new forms of information like the social media presence in the 21st century consist of both accurate and unreliable information since lack of censorship makes it difficult due to its spread and ease of use to spread the word (Jewkes, 2017). The mainstream media may have the gatekeepers who verify all the factual details in news information regarding crime and security matters. But they cannot cover all crime incidents in a particular region or city, making social media a popular public forum to educate and inform the society. At some incidences, social media users may be quick to believe a piece of information or an incident about crime and widely share their social cycle, promoting misinformation about the issue in the process. For instance, media and social media posts that regularly avail viewers and readers with images of physical attacks or mugging create moral panic among the society members. Thus the media creating the perception of fear among its audience. The assembled view makes it difficult for community involvement to fight crime since, at any incident, people will flee due to the fear of the unknown about engaging in breaking the law. The media may present a distorted view of crime due to misrepresentation or exaggeration of specific security incidents, making it problematic to understand and manage as the majority population formulate the perception of victimization perpetrators.

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Media and Crime Perception

The primary issue in criminology and related research is the fear of crime posing to be a matter of concern in the field. Criminology primarily entails studying crime trends such as incidents, rates, and available tools to combat them, such as the law enforcement agency. There is an association between media consumption on crime news and fear of victimization, making it problematic to manage insecurity between community and law enforcement cooperation (Hollis, 2017. For effective management of crime requires both the police and the community to respond to reported incidents of insecurity. The media and social media have been instrumental in weakening the link between the police and the community by creating fear among the citizens weakening their psychological preparedness to respond to insecurity incidents (Hollis, 2017). For instance, when the media reports on critical crime issues such as murder and kidnapping, the public becomes fearful of such incidences coexisting in their neighborhood, weakening their mentality to corporate with the law enforcement to solve crimes.

Related to fear of victimization is the effect of crime have on individuals as portrayed by the media outlets. The crime rate conceptualizes the number of insecurity incidents within a selected geographical location. According to Hollis et al. 2017, there is a relationship between how the media presents a particular locality's criminal activity and how the locals perceive their safety in the specified neighborhood highlighted. People tend to avoid areas reported to have high crime rates by the media, especially places identified as hotspots of robbery and mugging. For instance, in cities like New York, there are places like abandoned buildings or isolated path walks represented to be hot spots for crimes like drug trafficking and robbery, making locals avoid such areas for fear of harassment by lawbreakers. Reporting on crime rates of a place also contributes towards the rising rate of insecurity cases in such sites since criminals learn about the loopholes in the law enforcement efforts existing in such regions that aid them in committing offenses and evade the police. The media focus on the violent crime reporting widens the moral public from the public reaction resulting in the development of avoidance behavior to the areas with the fear of victimization (McGregor, 2017). Therefore, media representation of crime rates makes it difficult to handle the issue due to the citizen's avoidance of the reported areas that can inform the police about criminal activities in such areas.

Also, overrepresenting crimes by the media results in extorted policy changes in the criminal justice system and the police making it ineffective to fight the perceived insecurity threats. Laws and policy amendments involve certified regulatory measures by the authority to help manage public issues in the country or state. The policymakers in the security docket of state or locality adjust security laws per the crime rate trends with their jurisdiction areas. Labeling by the media may pressure the authority to make misinformed policy changes on crime matters due to an exaggerated overreaction from the public (McGregor, 2017). For instance, frequent coverage of security issues related to terrorism may result in societal panic; hence people react by staging demonstrations, making the authority introduce strict rules such as imposing curfews to manage the situation. As a result, the over-reporting by the media on a security issue results in the enlargement of the problem out of the proportion at times, resulting in misuse of the government resources to manage a non-existing public threat.

Policy Reforms to Control Media Reporting on Crime

Media and social media are powerful, practical tools in the contemporary world hence encouraging its inclusion into fighting crime. In criminology, policy reforms entail a change in the security policies to mitigate the loopholes identified in the existing laws. Popularity in mobile and social media entails that the daily crime news will be immediate, visual, and democratically available, necessitating the need for policy reforms that promote a working relationship between media outlets and law enforcement agencies to manage crime-related issues (Jewkes, 2017). The media's influence on its audience can be effectively used as a reform tool to improve societal involvement to manage crime incidents within their neighborhoods. It is unconstitutional to restrict reporting on media coverage due to the universal democratization of freedom of speech. Still, instead, the platform can educate the public on how to fight crime in the society. Policy that promotes cooperation between the law and justice system should be enacted to help inform the public on critical issues to curb fear of victimization by criminals and help the police maintain law and order.

Furthermore, there is a need to introduce laws that make it mandatory for media agencies to have a criminology expert in censoring coverage on security-related news as a plan to prevent the moral panic that may emerge from the overrepresentation of violent crime reporting. The law expert will work as a gatekeeper to sensitize the journalists on the significance of maintaining public order to help fight crime. Relatively, the country's law enforcement agencies should utilize social media to educate the public on sensitive policy matters regarding crimes by providing factual information to reduce misinformation and exaggeration of security incidents. Therefore, since it is problematic to restrict media coverage in the modern world, there is a need to introduce a policy that promotes the platform's use to encourage positive reporting and public education on crime management and the role the public plays in it.

Conclusion

In summary, the media and social media are powerful, practical tools that inform a particular crime perception in society that makes it challenging to fight insecurity matters. With the development in communication, there is an immediacy in sharing crime news by media outlets, which affects people's psychology to respond to insecurity issues causing moral panic. The fear of victimization caused by the media leads to the development of non-responsive behavior to crime problems by the public members making it difficult for the law enforcement agency to fight crimes. There is a need to introduce policies that will engage the media and social media to effectively inform the public on crime matters to manage its manifestation in the community.

References

Hollis, M. E. (2017). The relationship between media portrayals and crime: Perceptions of fear of crime among citizens. Crime Prevention and Community Safety, pp. 46-60. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41300-017-0015-6.

Jewkes, Y. T. (2017). Media and Crime in the US. New York: Sage Publications.

McGregor, J. (2017). Crime, News, and the Media. The Palgrave Handbook of Australian and New Zealand Criminology, Crime, and Justice, pp. 81-94. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55747-2_6.