Media Representation of Youth Crime

Media representation of youth crime links to moral panic

In 1964, the term ‘moral panic’ was used in the work of Marshall McLuhan (Rohloff, Hughes, Petley, & Crichter, 2013). However, Cohen (1972) produced the most seminal work on moral panic. According to him, emergence of a threat to societal values and interests first created moral panic. Such threat may come from an episode, condition, person or group of persons (Cohen, 1972). Mass media intensifies this threat by presenting this threat in a pure stereotypical fashion. There are also experts that magnify the nature of such threat by pronouncing its diagnosis and solutions (Cohen, 1972, p. 9). According to Cohen, moral panic has four elements. Firstly, it has a predictable object. Secondly it has a predictable discursive formulae used to represent the object. Thirdly, the object is damaging in itself as well as serves as “warning signs” of a deeper and prevalent condition. Fourthly, moral panic is simultaneously transparent and opaque, and it is only the accredited experts that could properly explain the phenomenon (Cohen, 1972).

Youth Crime and Moral panic

Mainstream media has been consistently giving significant level of attention to the issue of youth crimes. Literature also has given a lot of significance to this issue and the moral panics it has created (Bright, 2015). However, (Blackman & Wilson, 2014) argues that media reports are arguably leading the issue to moral panic, which may not commensurate with actual scale of the issue (Blackman & Wilson, 2014).

Focus on the content analysis and Main Question

This report will explore the relation between the issue of youth crime and the moral panic it has alleged created. It will report what news media are representing about the alleged moral panic aroused by youth crime. The report will review media information and data to that effect. The objective of this report is to study these media information and data on the issue of youth crime for the period from 2019 until the present and report the scale of the issue as represented by news media. This report poses the following main research question:

1. How does the media representation of youth crime w.r.t. knife crime linked to moral panic?

Content Analysis

Content analysis is largely deductive. Before data is collected and analysis is drawn, the area of interest of the researcher and preliminary codes are developed. It is used to examine existing texts. Data analysis is mostly quantitative and focuses on descriptive statistics (Maschi, 2016, pp.21-22). Content analysis is mainly used to examine mass media items, text and documents. It seeks to quantity in terms of categories predetermined and in a replicable and systematic manner (Bell, 2015, p.300).

In this analysis, the research used news media reports, articles, statistics and other news media research data. The research comprises the following phases:

Phase I

1. The content focuses on results between Jan 2019 - June 14, 2020.

2. Online key words used are Youth crime, knife and moral panic to capture the most popular youth crimes associated with moral panic.

3. The crimes resulted from the online search using the key word indicators above are as follows:

a. Knife crimes

b. Vaping Culture

c. Drill music - underground rap

4. This analysis has chosen knife crime for the report. This reason for this is that a general research on the topic in reference to youth and moral panic shows knife crime amongst youth has been given significance importance by the news media and experts and stakeholders arguably term this crime as national emergency.

Phase II

In this phase, the research analysis is on the text of news media. The analysis is conducted on the text sourced from a combination of 3 national new channels and 2 private news and media community. The reason for this combination is to represent a holistic view of the news media representation of the subject matter of research.

A grid is developed that lists the source, date of the text, crux of the news information, and the key codes used and captured from the text. The research issue in hand is quantified by using these codes associated with youth crime and moral panic. Primary Codes used are youth crime, knife, and black. Secondary codes are derived from the text resulted from using the Primacy Codes. They were used to research further. All the Codes are listed as follows in the Annexure I. Some of the codes are moral panic, youth crime, knife, deprived, marginalized, black issue, black, asian, politician, ignore, police, social problem,

Findings

The reality on the ground is that majority of the knife crime has been committed by white people. This is reported in 2 out of the 5 news channel. However, the 5 news media channel reported that a moral panic about the crime has been created as being confined in the “ghettoes” or mostly associated with black youth. They also reported that the problem has been continuously ignored by the politicians, with support from active rightwing press. As reported by all the sampled news channels, increased use of Police power and that of stop and search is a common feature with this crime. They reported government measures, proposed or existing, of strengthening the police by giving them more power. One of the news media text reported that there has been an alleged political construction of a moral panic about knife crime. That is alleged as the root cause for toxic environments resulting to deprivation of funding for basic services, lack of opportunities and employment among young people. Due to this moral construct, the current establishment calls for stringent police measures with funding of billions of pounds. Strategies also include racial profiling of movies and music and categorizing them as being high risks.

The news media information saw a shift in the way the crime has been presented. Earlier, Crime presented as “black on black” crisis, which shifts the fault to black community, as a black issue, epidemic, serious, or national alarm. Currently, the government has generalised the problem by describing it as "a growing culture of insolence" on the part of the thugs and as being associated with young black and Asian people.

Few things thing remain constant, which are stereotypes and racism and the affect on the community and youth, especially from the black and ethnic minority community, who are mostly broken. This is generally reported across the news channel. The triggers of the crime are deprivation, marginalization aggravating the problem with constant ignorance by politicians and increases and disproportionate use of stop and search and other interferences.

One on side of the debate, the issue is being majorly seen as a social problem caused by a combination of deprivation and lack of opportunity. News media reported a general perception among people in the establishment that the problem is mostly a black people issue, is an epidemic and a disease without realising it disproportionately affects mostly young black men and other ethnic minority. The research found that problem is being ignored by the politicians, who are only focused on use of more police force totally ignoring social-based policies to tackle the problem. On the other side of debate, which is relatively news concerning the current political agenda, the issue is seen as a national crisis to be tackled with hard core approach going against the social-based solution argument. The issue looks politicised and is apparently used as a tool to achieve one political party’s election objective.

Literature indicates that media reports often tend to conflate the issue of youth crime by showing or portraying that there is a substantial increase in youth crime (Blackman & Wilson, 2014). However, in this current research, it is the current government that generally labelled black and asian young men as being insolent and have conflated the issue. This non-recognition of the root cause is reflected in all the sampled news media channels.

The results, after reading them, are ineffective solution and constant labeling of a particular community. Rather than portraying the truth on youth crime, media reports, such as the present a picture that is exaggerated and leads to people forming hysteria or moral panics around youth crime (Blackman & Wilson, 2014)

The results include a criminal justice system practicing institutional racism and marginalization, and a political system taking advantage of the situation for its gain.

Interpretation of results

News media reports on youth crimes involving knife presented a social perspective to the problem, while views of the establishment and concerned stakeholder are divided. There is a desperate political construction of moral panic around the crime specifically confined to black community. Having driven by the ruling political party, it appears a unilateral view of the current ruling party regarding the issue is being presented. The proposed hardcore approach and giving more power to the police to tackle the issue is a testimony.

Conclusion

News media has been reporting the apathy shown by the government and related establishment towards the social issues faced by the youths in context of the knife crimes. Effort of the media information in addressing the issue generated less interest as there was no political will. It is not the media that links the crime with moral panic. It is a politically constructed problem.

This research is limited as it lacks a qualitative approach to understanding the real problem faced by the youth. However, the use of the key codes is a major contributor to finding components to construct answer to the research question. The phase wise conduct of the research help in structurally confining the research to the question and filtering appropriate portions of the results for the answer. The constantly gradual political ignorance and labeling one particular community or minority will create more marginalisation rather than fixing the problem. Social solution should be the way and measures such as treating the issue like a disease will bear no fruit.

Bibliography

Bell, A.B.a.E., 2015. Business Research Methods. Oxford University Press.

Blackman, S. & Wilson, A., 2014. Psychotic (e)states: Where anti-social behaviour with recreational drug use to signify the social problem group. In S. Pickard, ed. Anti-Social Behaviour in Britain: Victorian and Contemporary Perspectives. Springer.

Bright, C., 2015. Preventing youth violence and gang involvement: A review of risk and protective factors. Early Intervention Foundation.

Cohen, S., 1972. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. London: Oxford University Press.

Maschi, J.W.D.a.T., 2016. Content Analysis. Oxford University Press.

Rohloff, A., Hughes, J., Petley, J. & Crichter, C., 2013. Moral Panics in the Contemporary World: Enduring Controversies and Future Directions. In J. Petley, C. Critcher, J. Hughes & A. Rohloff, eds. Moral Panics in the Contemporary World. New York: A&C Black.