[OPINIE] Media portrayal of (cyber)crime

[QuoVadis]

Daca exista interes pentru acest subiect va rog sa indicati printr-un like si voi continua sa postez pe aceasta tema. Daca nu, nici o problema, nu voi mai umple forumul cu astfel de lucruri. Multumesc!

Am observat in ultima vreme anumite discutii (aprinse) referitoare la anumite "stiri" din domeniul IT si nu numai, in special modul in care "criminalitatea"/infractiunile IT sunt prezentate, percepute, dezbatute, etc. Cu ceva ani in urma am petrecut o vreme considerabila asupra acestui domeniu: "media portrayal of cybercrime" si imi propun ca in urmatoarele postari pe aceasta tema sa prezint anumite puncte de vedere, in special cele ale lui Tim Newburn si ale lui Robert Reiner care mi-au influentat gandirea si care cred ca pot oferi niste concepte interesante si stimula gandirea cititorilor. Voi prezenta in cele ce urmeaza extrase din diferite publicatii (majoritatea apartinand celor 2 mentionati anterior) insotite de propriile opinii.

Media Representations of Crime

How is crime presented in the media? Why is it presented in this way and what impact, if any, do such representations have? MacDougal (1968:12) notes that, “At any given moment billions of simultaneous events occur throughout the world… All of these occurrences are potentially news. They do not become so until some purveyor of news gives an account of them. The news, in other words, is the account of the event, not something intrinsic in the event itself”. How particular events come to be selected depends upon a complex process involving editors, journalists and the broader environment in which they work

Reiner (2007) identifies two broad approaches to understanding why media representations come to be as they are. The first he refers to as “crime news as hegemony in action”. Here, the ownership and control of the media, the location and structure of much crime reporting, and the core elements of “newsworthiness” all contribute to production of crime news in a form that reflects the dominant social ideology and social order: a focus on crimes of the powerless rather than the powerful; sympathetic to the justice system rather than to the offender; and, favouring “things as they are” rather than “things as they might be” (Hall et al., 1978)

The second approach, “crime news as cultural conflict”, is a variation on this theme rather than a radically different viewpoint. This attempts to provide a more subtle approach, seeing crime news less as a direct reflection of particular social or economic interests, and more as the product of interaction between a number of factors, including political priorities, the practice of journalism and everyday pressures. The difference between the two approaches is not necessarily to be found in the outcome – the reproduction of social order – rather in the extent to which this outcome is seen as being inevitable (Ericson et al., 1991).

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We will later discuss the subject of what makes news and in particular what events in the IT sector makes news but something quite important to reflect upon is the objectivity/subjectivity of news: how impartial can one be prior to even starting to report an event if they choose in advance what is worth reporting and what is not worth reporting?

United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was arguing that "as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones." Translating this into our own scenario, how much of the known unknowns are being exposed and moved into the first category? How much and how deep are the news reporters digging, researching and presenting the unknown unknowns? How much is covered because of "national security" or political agendas or personal views, socio-cultural contexts? and the questions can go on and on...

Very much linked to this questions is the next topic to be published: Newsworthiness (the quality of being sufficiently interesting to be reported in news bulletins) or what makes news. To be continued...

[QuoVadis]

Newsworthiness

Just as it is only possible for the police to enforce some laws some of the time, so it is only possible for the news media to report some events, and them usually fleetingly. Choices therefore have to be made about which “stories” to cover and how. This is what we mean by “newsworthiness” – being considered to meet the necessary criteria for inclusion in a broadcast or in print or the internet.

A number of authors have outlined what they take to be the core values – the professional ideology – that provide the basis of editorial decisions about which stories to print and to broadcast. In a classic early study by Chibnall (1977) eight “professional imperatives” were identified as implicit guides to the construction of news stories. They were:

1. Immediacy (speed/the present)
   
2. Dramatisation (drama and action)
   
3. Personalisation (cult of celebrity)
   
4. Simplification (elimination of shades of grey)
   
5. Titillation (revealing the forbidden/voyeurism)
   
6. Conventionalism (hegemonic ideology)
   
7. Structured access (experts, authority)
   
8. Novelty (new angle/speculation/twist).
   

Hall et al. (1978), in their study of the moral panic surrounding mugging, argued that violence played an important role in determining the newsworthiness of particular events. They argued (1978: 67-8) that any “crime can be lifted into news visibility if violence becomes associated with it since violence is perhaps the supreme example of the news value “negative consequences”. Violence represents a basic violation of the person: the greatest personal crime is “murder”, bettered only by the murder of a law-enforcement agent, a policeman or similar. Violence is also the ultimate crime against property and against the state. It thus represents a fundamental rupture in the social order”.

Chibnall goes on to suggest that there are at least five sets of further informal rules which govern the reporting of violence and, in particular, help determine what will be considered to be relevant, newsworthy:

1. Visible and spectacular acts
   
2. Sexual and political connotations
   
3. Graphic presentation
   
4. Individual pathology
   
5. Deterrence and repression
   

Building on other work in this area, Jewkes (2004) outlines a slightly revised list of 12 news values that she argues structure crime news. Many of these are similar in all or part to Chibnall’s, but 3 are recognisably additions:

1. Risk – in today’s more risk-oriented times, she argues, news stories have become more victim-centred and concerned with motions of vulnerability and fear
   
2. Proximity – this is both spatial and cultural. Spatial refers to geographical proximity (this will vary according to the nature of the media – local, national, international – and according to other aspects of the story – whether it involves celebrity, for example) and cultural proximity to the apparent relevance of the story to the particular audience
   
3. Children – the attachment of children to a story gives it a prominence it might not otherwise have.
   

Finally, Greer (2007) has recently added a further news value – the visual. As he puts it: “The rapid development of information technologies in the recent decades has changed the terrain on which crime news is produced. Today, crime stories are increasingly selected and “produced” as media events on the basis of their visual (how they can be portrayed in images) as well as their lexical-verbal (how they can be portrayed in words) potential”.

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Observing the first 8 "professional imperatives" - how does dramatisation, novelty and titillation influence media in reporting cybercrime? How much of such news are reported purely for their novelty attributes?

Does internet violence give a new dimension to the news story? More pressure on law enforcement to act/react?

Jewks (2004) highlights in particular the "risk" element and perhaps this is one of the fundamental reasons why hacking is reported nowadays, apart from the novelty factor, because actions are victim-centred and concerned with motions of vulnerability and fear. The (geographical) proximity element only enhances such stories.

Finally, children as hackers has often been in the news and reported widely and throughout most major news agencies and reporters. How much prominence and value does age or sex or orientation, religion, etc. give to cybercrime reporting?

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Coming up: The (cyber)crime content in the media…