scholarly journals Presse et délinquance ou comment lire entre les signes

Criminologie ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francine Soubiran-Paillet

Based on two newspapers published in different socio-political contexts, one in Nice, France, the other in Geneva, Switzerland, we would like to compare the way these two dailies view crimes against property. Does the journalist report theft, breach of trust or break and enter in the same way? Are the same variables used in the articles or are important changes made from one article to the other? If such is the case, who orders the changes in the structure of the articles? The work, which comprises a systematic list of six months daily articles, covers all typical situations published in the two newspapers. It seems, then, that the persons mentioned in the papers who belong to minority, as opposed to the majority groups, are generally presented as responsible for crime. It seems, too, that individuality disappears in the reconstruction of the reality by the media. All in all, the analysis shows that the press exercises only a relative influence on its readers.

1997 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 37-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilan Pappe

The academic debate in Israel on Zionism and its implications for the way the society views itself and the "other" were discussed in part one of this article. This part examines the press, which with partial privatization and the cumulative impact of the Lebanon war and the intifada has undergone a transformation since the late 1980s. While a wider diversity of views and bold reporting on events are now current, the article concludes that the representation of the Palestinians and Arabs in the news columns is fundamentally unchanged. The last part will follow the manifestations of the academic debate in film, theater, novels, music, and poems and will assess the significance of these changes in the culture and worldview of Israeli society as a whole.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Stephanie Fisher

<p>Theoretical discussions have proposed that opinions relating to offenders can be viewed along a continuum, with the moral stranger at one end and the fellow traveller at the other (Connolly & Ward, 2008). At the very basic level the moral stranger is the offender who is a bad person, while the fellow traveller is the offender who has done a bad thing. It is proposed that where an individual’s view of offenders sits on the continuum will help determine punishment and rehabilitation decisions that they make about offenders. It is further proposed that these views are influenced by outside factors such as the way that the media portrays offenders. The media is an important source of information on crime and offenders (Gilliam & Iyengar, 2000; Klite, Bardwell, & Salzman, 1997), and so the way that the media write about offenders can influence the public’s opinions about offenders. The moral stranger and the fellow traveller are theoretical concepts at present, so the aim of the current research was to investigate these concepts in an empirical context. Firstly, Studies 1 and 2 presented crime vignettes written from either the moral stranger perspective or the fellow traveller perspective and then investigated what punishment and rehabilitation differences there were. Study 3 then developed a measure to evaluate individuals’ opinions about offenders, to create an empirical basis for the existing theory. The Opinions about Criminal Offenders (OCO) Scale was developed in Study 3. Study 4 then tested the psychometric properties of this Scale, and through further factor analysis the scale was pared down to 12-items made up of four subscales. Study 5 then brought together the empirical work from Studies 1 and 2 and the developed measure from Studies 3 and 4. Participants were presented with two vignettes, one written from a subjective view and the other from an objective view. They were also given the 12-item OCO Scale. Structural Equation Modelling was then used to extend the work of Studies 1 and 2, and to further develop the decision making process individuals go through. Results indicated that each subscale of the OCO predicted different judgements made about the offender, in terms of his characteristics and likelihood of reoffending, and that these judgements then predicted different judgements about the outcome of the offence, including punishment motive. These studies, together, show that the moral stranger and fellow traveller concepts do exist, as a continuum, and the development of the OCO Scale showed that there is utility in the scale in terms of the type of judgements made about an offender and an offence. The current study was conducted with a sex offence in the vignettes and so further research needs to extend this by using different offence types and different offender characteristics, to investigate how generalisable these findings are.</p>


Author(s):  
Line Thomsen

What is journalism? How does it exist and why? How does journalism define itself and in what ways can we make use of looking theoretically at the practice of it? These were the central themes of our workshop; Theoretical Models as Mass Media Practice held at the ‘Minding the Gap’ conference at Reuters Institute in May 2007, from which this collection of papers has been selected. As with the other workshops during the conference, the majority of our panellists were themselves once media practitioners. It is my opinion that this background and inside knowledge of the field in itself can provide an exceptional framework for understanding the workings of mass media while helping the press reflect over these workings too. In a time of change for the journalistic profession, when media convergence is growing; the media is marked by deregulation and fewer journalists are being asked to do more, there is an increased need for the profession to get involved in debating the core values of its existence.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Stephanie Fisher

<p>Theoretical discussions have proposed that opinions relating to offenders can be viewed along a continuum, with the moral stranger at one end and the fellow traveller at the other (Connolly & Ward, 2008). At the very basic level the moral stranger is the offender who is a bad person, while the fellow traveller is the offender who has done a bad thing. It is proposed that where an individual’s view of offenders sits on the continuum will help determine punishment and rehabilitation decisions that they make about offenders. It is further proposed that these views are influenced by outside factors such as the way that the media portrays offenders. The media is an important source of information on crime and offenders (Gilliam & Iyengar, 2000; Klite, Bardwell, & Salzman, 1997), and so the way that the media write about offenders can influence the public’s opinions about offenders. The moral stranger and the fellow traveller are theoretical concepts at present, so the aim of the current research was to investigate these concepts in an empirical context. Firstly, Studies 1 and 2 presented crime vignettes written from either the moral stranger perspective or the fellow traveller perspective and then investigated what punishment and rehabilitation differences there were. Study 3 then developed a measure to evaluate individuals’ opinions about offenders, to create an empirical basis for the existing theory. The Opinions about Criminal Offenders (OCO) Scale was developed in Study 3. Study 4 then tested the psychometric properties of this Scale, and through further factor analysis the scale was pared down to 12-items made up of four subscales. Study 5 then brought together the empirical work from Studies 1 and 2 and the developed measure from Studies 3 and 4. Participants were presented with two vignettes, one written from a subjective view and the other from an objective view. They were also given the 12-item OCO Scale. Structural Equation Modelling was then used to extend the work of Studies 1 and 2, and to further develop the decision making process individuals go through. Results indicated that each subscale of the OCO predicted different judgements made about the offender, in terms of his characteristics and likelihood of reoffending, and that these judgements then predicted different judgements about the outcome of the offence, including punishment motive. These studies, together, show that the moral stranger and fellow traveller concepts do exist, as a continuum, and the development of the OCO Scale showed that there is utility in the scale in terms of the type of judgements made about an offender and an offence. The current study was conducted with a sex offence in the vignettes and so further research needs to extend this by using different offence types and different offender characteristics, to investigate how generalisable these findings are.</p>


Author(s):  
Daniel Jackson

The news media figures prominently in most appraisals of democracy today. This is because it is the main channel of communication between elected representatives and citizens; and the (self-appointed) watchdog of the powerful. While news organisations are sometimes reluctant to accept the responsibility that comes with such power, it is implicit in the core principles of journalistic philosophy, whereby attempts to constrain or censor the news media are seen as threats to democracy itself. However, these normative roles also are surrounded by many tensions that surround the ability of our news media to perform their democratic functions. This chapter discusses four of these tensions: (i) diversity versus commonality; (ii) the information necessary for citizens to participate effectively in democratic life, versus the entertainment-driven focus of an increasingly commercial-oriented media; (iii) the need of the media to treat people as citizens on the one hand and as consumer publics on the other; and (iv) broadcasters' relationship with the press.


Author(s):  
Ciara Chambers

Mercedes Gleitze was a British endurance swimmer who garnered huge public interest in the 1920s and 1930s. Celebrated for her athletic endeavours and philanthropic work, she was one of the first sportswomen to endorse a range of products, and most famously became a “poster girl” for Rolex. At a time when Edward Bernays was developing the psychoanalytic theories of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, to expand the fields of advertising and public relations, the media became increasingly interested in celebrities and the products they promoted. This article will examine the way the media covered Gleitze’s attempts to break world records and how coverage of her in the press and newsreels expanded beyond her athletic prowess to delve into her personal life and financial affairs. It will also consider how Gleitze became a symbol of expanding consumerism and explore how the tensions between her “new woman” status and her commodified persona were framed in the cinema. The article will also offer a consideration of how newsreels, a resource that has been underutilised by film scholars and historians, can help to inflect debates about contemporary popular culture, shifting female identities and burgeoning consumerism.


2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 588-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Selfe

This article revisits the period considered within ‘The Quality Film Adventure: British Critics and the Cinema 1942–1948’ ( Ellis 1996 ), mapping the professional cultures, working contexts and industry relationships that underpinned the aesthetic judgements and collective directions which John Ellis observed within certain film critics’ published writings. Drawing on the records of the Critics’ Circle, Dilys Powell's papers and Kinematograph Weekly, it explores the evolution of increasingly organised professional cultures of film criticism and film publicity, arguing that the material conditions imposed by war caused tensions between them to escalate. In the context of two major challenges to critical integrity and practice – the evidence given by British producer R. J. Minney to the 1949 Royal Commission on the Press and an ongoing libel case between a BBC critic and MGM – the spaces of hospitality and film promotion became highly contested sites. This article focuses on the ways in which these spaces were characterised, used and policed. It finds that the value and purpose of press screenings were hotly disputed, and observes the way that the advancement of women within one sector (film criticism) but not the other (film publicity) created particular difficulties, as key female critics avoided the more compromised masculine spaces of publicity, making them harder for publicists to reach and fuelling trade resentment. More broadly, the article asserts the need to consider film critics as geographically and culturally located audiences who experience films as ‘professional’ viewers within extended and embodied cultures of habitual professional practice and physical space.


1995 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 93-104
Author(s):  
Wasif Shadid

Research in both Europe and America indicates that the way in which mass communication deals with ethnic minorities contributes directly and indirectly to the diffusion and the maintenance of prejudice against these groups. These are generally projected as problem categories in cultural and in socioeconomic sense. In this article we pay attention to the causes and functions of prejudice and especially to the role of mass communication media in this regard. Furthermore, attention is paid to the possibilities of and the extent to which the media can succeed in fighting against such negative attitudes towards the groups concerned. In this regard, a distinction is made between preventive and interven-tive strategies. Based on certain theories of social psychology on attitude forming and on the use and absorption of information it is concluded that though manipulation of attitude is not easily achieved, it is nevertheless possible. Various experi-ments in similar fields show that, under certain conditions, the supply of informa-tion through an adequate intervention strategy of the media can to some extent generate attitude change in the desired direction. However, such a positive result can only be achieved (1) if the basic thoughts underlying the prejudice concerned can be accurately identified; (2) if the difference between the information provided on the one hand and the existing information on the other is neither too weak nor too strong; (3) if the relevant information is provided by prominent persons and media in society; and (4) if the intended message emphasizes the positive rather than the negative similarities between minorities and the other groups. Because of the complexity of such an intervention process it is doubtfull whether the media can actually play an effective role in this context. Consequently, being attentive to the way in which the media provide information about the groups concerned is a more appropriate strategy in preventing the diffusion of prejudice. In this article, some relevant suggestions in this regard have been discussed.


1972 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-11
Author(s):  
Jack Haberstroh

Two professors at San Diego State College disagree over how responsible the press is in this country. Jack Haberstroh says the bulk of the media is motivated by desire to make money, not by responsibility to the public. He recently told the Journalism Educator he believes professors do a disservice to students by “teaching them the way the press ought to be rather than the way it is.” His colleague, James K. Buckalew, maintains that the press, while seeking profit, is still responsible.


Journalism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 541-556 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Butler

This article investigates how the press stigmatized Toxteth during, and immediately following, the disturbances in 1981. It builds upon a body of literature on territorial stigmatization where there is a gap in understanding surrounding the production and formation of stigma. Drawing on the acceptance in literature that the media is a key contributor to territorial stigma, I delve further to understand some of the techniques that the media uses to stigmatize place. I engage in a combined quantitative and qualitative analysis of 496 newspaper articles from five British newspapers to examine how the press reports on Toxteth, and who constructs Toxteth’s identity. I show that the name of ‘Toxteth’ was largely defined by the media and that the residents of Toxteth were denied a voice in the press coverage in 1981 with fewer than 10 per cent of all articles quoting a resident. I refer to this process as ‘stranger-making’, and it underscores the way that the media denied residents an ability to construct their own identity and the identity of their area. While stranger-making involves obfuscating the unique contours of Toxteth and silencing voices, the press simultaneously impose aspects of identity from a position of power through the techniques of naming, negativity, and oppositionality.


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