I. Introduction
Literature, by far, has provided many different theories on the influence of media on people’s attitudes, worldview, and as well as behaviour. This article specifically deals with the role of media on the social construction of difference or deviance. According to McGuire (1986), early experimental studies have failed to confirm the assumption that mass media have a strong power to change people’s attitudes despite many examples from historical and contemporary observations attesting to the power of the mass media to influence people.
Along the discussion, this article aims for certain relevant issues on the media role in social construction of deviance. It endeavours to show that people can be both afraid and fascinated on deviance or crime as shaped by the media to a certain extent. This article also shows, through certain facts and studies, that media can both amplify deviance and create moral panics. Lastly, it also takes note on the reality that media is selective in who and how it treats victims of crime.
II. Deviance and Crime
By definition, deviance generally refers to the behaviour of breaking rules or norm. When taken from this meaning, this term can be synonymous to crime. In fact, crime is a specific form of deviance that technically means breaking of legal norms or rules. Though both terms may seem similar, there are slight significant differences between them. In the same way as not all deviance is criminal, some forms of crime are also not seen as particularly deviant.
There are still questions as to whether deviance is an absolute or relative concept. The social construction of deviance can be conceptually divided according to historical and cross-cultural differences. Common social examples of historical differences include drug use, abortion, and homosexuality. Cross-cultural differences include dress codes and alcohol use.
At different times, different societies and same society have also different interpretations of deviant or non-deviant behaviour. It is then referred to as relative concept of deviance when the same behaviour can be shown to be interpreted differently relative to the culture or subculture in which behaviour is interpreted.
Under societal and situational deviance, behaviour that is considered by society as deviant may be acceptable to sub-cultural groups and vice versa. Social deviance is also viewed according to its level of seriousness. In the level of social agreement, seriousness of deviance can be high for serious or low for non-serious. In terms of level of social reaction, deviance can be strong for serious or weak for non-serious. And, for assessment of social harm or injury, it can only be high for serious.
It is apparent that in all countries media plays an important role in shaping ideas, fears, and fascinations on crime in society. Throughout the time, people’s perception of crime generally comes from popular media like newspapers, TV news, films, magazines, books and several crime-related programmes. For this reason, the media plays a very critical role in sensitising the public into perceiving and reporting certain activities as crimes. Media attention and zero-tolerance campaigns, for instance, have challenged the idea that domestic violence is a crime and not only a family matter.
III. Sociology of Deviance
Under the sociology of deviance, it is the society that defines certain persons, phenomena or behaviours as deviant and dangerous. Unwanted behaviours can be controlled by society through defining them as sinful or sick. Whoever has success in setting the norms for what is considered deviant and dangerous and promoting their particular interpretation of the deviance has thus gained a key position in the social power apparatus (Foucault 1980; Ben-Yehuda 1990).
Numerous factors surround the study of social construction of deviance. According to interactionism or the Labelling theory, deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label. In other words, a deviant behaviour to one is normal to another. There are certain acts or behaviours that are not publicly labelled as deviant. These are termed as primary deviance. Secondary deviance, on the other hand, happens when someone, like control agency, reacted to the fact of one’s deviance or the consequences of the social reaction to deviant behaviour. Views from interactionists have seen that social reaction is a crucial variable in the understanding of deviance. This is to say that the social consequences are minimal if no one reacts to a deviant behaviour. On the other hand, it will result in a stigma if behaviour gains social disapproval or being labelled as deviant.
Deviant behaviours can be culpable or non-culpable. The former refers to the deviance for which an individual is seen to have responsibility while the latter concerns on deviant behaviour due to madness, disability, and some forms of children’s behaviour wherein individual is not held responsible for such acts.
IV. Media and Deviance
The connection between media and deviance can be traced back in several studies. Young and Cohen (1981) worked and edited a volume in which many general studies about news-making were reprinted. Specifically, the volume addresses deviance, outgroups, and social problems. Among the issues included were drug use, demonstrations, mental illness, crime waves, violence, and racism.
Additionally, the study of Hall (1980) found the more explicit formulations of the distinction established with dominant American or empirical studies of the news and the media. One of the elements in the break with the dominating empirical, behaviourist media studies was the recognition that media messages are not transparent (when taken in quantitative content analysis), but rather they have a complex linguistic and ideological structure. In view of this, it was contended that TV news should not simply be seen as ideologically biased or distorted (Connell 1980). This viewpoint presupposes that the distorted image can be simply compared to some kind of objective reality or with some kind of neutral or correct image. Nevertheless, this reality represented in or through the news is itself an ideological construct, based on definitions given by the accredited sources of journalists, such as the government or the union leaders. Stated otherwise, the media are not a neutral, common-sensed, or rational mediator of social events, but fundamentally help reproduce pre-formulated ideologies. This standpoint is supported by a similar position illustrated by Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke, and Roberts (1978) in their study of mugging in the British press. Their study showed that there is not simply a new crime wave of mugging, which the media simply report, whether correctly or in a distorted and exaggerated way. It is rather the definition of mugging as provided by the authorities (e.g. police), that is reproduced in the news. For a case in point, this means that mugging is preferably attributed to members of ethnic minority groups.
V. Media and the Amplification of Deviance
Media is alleged to cause certain deviancy to be amplified. Deviancy amplification, as coined by Wilkins (1964), is used to describe how the media, as well as the police, can actually generate an increase in deviance. To illustrate, even minor and rare problems can look serious and common place. As a result, people become motivated in keeping informed on current events. It should be noted that the resulting publicity of the media has potential of increasing certain deviant behaviour through glamorising it and making it appear common or acceptable.
Media coverage also amplifies deviancy through negatively targeting undesirable groups like gypsies and asylum-seekers in its tabloid newspapers as these groups are considered as the “other groups” of the society. In the same manner, the media have the tendency to demonise rapists as evil psychopaths discounting the fact that most rape victims are raped by men they already know, trusted and even lived with. Moreover, media also has this “missing pretty girl syndrome” coined to describe a form of media publicity wherein much and excessive news coverage is given to a specific missing pretty woman or girl. Media reports and stories like these often last for several days and occupy interesting and newsworthy issues.
Furthermore, black criminality is also portrayed by the media as the image of offenders, muggers and criminality in general. Media reports less and even discounts the official statistical fact suggesting that African-Americans/African-Caribbeans and South Asians are twice as likely to be victims of crime as with most White population.
VI. Examples of Deviance
A solid example of deviancy amplified by the media is the Middleton Studies conducted in the United States of America in 1925. This study identified how community and religious leaders in small town Middleton condemned radio for promoting immoral behaviour (Lynd and Lynd 1929 & 1937). After such event, Hollywood films, comics, TV, video nasties and most recently the Internet have all been considered as contributing to deviant and criminal behaviour.
The political study done by Leicester group (Halloran, Elliott, and Murdock 1970) examined the media coverage of a large demonstration in London against the presence of the United States in Vietnam in the 1960s. While carefully observing the activities of television crews and newspaper reporters, along with a thorough analysis of the content, Leicester group had seen the way the media redefined what is supposedly a peaceful demonstration into essentially violent. This is because the media puts much and special attention to one minor incident that paved the way for a much bigger trouble.
In a separate event in the sixties, Cohen (1980) conducted a very influential study. Cohen’s work on the actions of the Mods and the Rockers paid extensive attention to the role of the news media in deviancy amplification. His major thesis was that the general moral panic defined these various groups of youngsters as “folk devils”. This is reflected right in the title of his book and was mainly formulated in the press. His study overtly showed that the media and the control structure (i.e. authorities) are jointly working with a model of amplifying deviancy. Media used symbolic shorthand icons like hair and clothing styles to signify the troublemakers.
In all of the above cases, the media is seen as responsible for an initial problem through various stages of misperception, sensitisation, dramatisation and escalation. Accordingly, media contributes to increased deviance and therefore to the confirmation of stereotypes.
VII. Australian Media and the Social Construction of Deviance
One of the reasons why former Yugoslavia was such a prominent story in the news media over a period of several years is the bad-news-is-good-news syndrome. According to Lowe (1995), news media producers fervently believe that the audiences are more interested in news about tragedy and misfortune than they are in happy or positive stories. It may or may not be true. Regardless, it is a powerful convention in news production which determines the focus on the bulk of news media output. There are a number of possible explanations for this emphasis on bad news. Aristotle’s argument that Greek tragedies offered a cathartic outlet for their audiences, providing them with a feeling of contentment by exposing them to the spectacle of great suffering experienced by others, may also apply to modern news media audiences. We are attracted to news about violence because it is close to one of our basic instinctive concerns: security and survival. Then again it may provide vicarious gratification of our latent aggressive instincts.
Whatever the explanation–and it is probably a combination of at least some of the above–the convention that bad news sells is a fundamentally important factor in the way news media producers construct their world. The media’s world of current events is a world bedevilled by disasters, conflict, accidents, inhumanity, despair, aggression and suffering. It is a construction of the world that describes the human condition in the bleakest, most existential terms. Even a superficial analysis of news media content will show that this construction is an absurdly distorted vision of real life. For example, stories about murders and violent crimes might comprise 10 per cent of a news bulletin’s content, yet murder does not occupy 10 per cent of our lives. Most of us go through life without ever witnessing a murder or its aftermath and without even knowing someone who was murdered. Its representation in the media is grossly out of proportion to its prominence in real life. Yet the news media tell us daily that murder and crimes of violence are a frequent occurrence in our society and a major impediment to our sense of well-being and enjoyment of life.
This emphasis on crime is part of another prominent media convention–a focus on deviance and aberration in human behaviour. The media describe society not by its normal behavioural characteristics but by the behaviour of its deviants. The media’s obsession with crime, immorality, sexual deviance, eccentrics, unusual and nonconforming lifestyles, represents a view of society from the perspective of society’s antithesis. Sociologists and other experts draw a number of conclusions about the media’s social function from this phenomenon, such as underpinning mainstream values and morality by holding their deviants up for ridicule and condemnation. Whether or not this media convention is based on a hidden agenda, it is a construction of society that emphasises abnormality and thus defines society by describing its renegades.
VIII. Moral Panic
Moral panic, as developed by Cohen (1970), results by the time a social deviance is considered to be dangerous that it consequently gains exaggerated fear. This is based on a false or exaggerated thought that some group’s behaviour is deviant and is a threat to society. In his book, Cohen used the term “folk devil” to refer to such groups.
In this contemporary world, a fierce competition exists in defining what is different or dangerous to society. In order to gain influence and get more resources for their particular cause, many organisations compete for setting the agenda for the discussion of social problems. From different professions that generally concerns with people’s lives and behaviours (priests, lawyers, psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists) have independent views on making statements about certain dangerous deviances.
Media comes in as sociologists argued that certain social problems are inflated to hysterical proportions through the way the media exposed them (Glassner 1999). There are significant and noticeable outcomes of media-created fears as shown by some notable studies. Fears that are initiated by media have made people change their lifestyles, changed the nature of social policies and undermined the process of justice as well (Altheide 1991, 1995, 2002; Altheide and Michalowski 1999). Generally, moral panics are in much extent fuelled by media coverage of social issues. However, there is still an on-going discussion as to whether media exaggerated or otherwise downplay a certain social problem.
IX. Conclusion
This article has just presented connections linking media and the social construction of deviance. Apparently, media plays a significant role in shaping people’s mind and behaviour through their influential power of disseminating information and news for the society. Inasmuch as this discussion focuses more on negative effects of the media on social deviance, the media has the ability to turn such things the other way.
The social construction of difference is greatly shaped by the media in an unconstructive way of influencing society’s behaviour. Much of this article provides support for this contention in the study of the relationship between the media and social deviancy.
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