Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice: A Reader provides readers with a variety of articles that showcase examples of cutting-edge research on crime and media. The text helps students better understand how crime and media are intertwined within culture and how this unique connection influences our behaviors, attitudes, and values. Unit One provides an overview of the major conceptual tools used by media and crime scholars. Dedicated readings explore the concept of globalization to contextualize the study of crime, copycat crime, moral panic, the debate surrounding the influence of violent media content on violent behavior, and more. Unit Two examines common crime narratives in the news media and popular culture. Students read about the over inflation of crime statistics, actors and institutions within the criminal justice system, and television news coverage of corporate crime. The final unit explores how political processes and media narratives combine to either deepen or hinder our democratic values. Dedicated readings speak to the political economy of media ownership, how mass media often reinforce criminal stereotypes about Black Americans, the rise in feminism in the horror genre, and more. Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice is ideal for courses in criminal justice, criminology, communications, cultural studies, and sociology.

How is social media changing contemporary understandings of crime and injustice, and what contribution can it make to justice-seeking? Abuse on social media often involves betrayals of trust and invasions of privacy that range from the public circulation of intimate photographs to mass campaigns of public abuse and harassment using platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, 8chan and Reddit – forms of abuse that disproportionately target women and children. Crime, Justice and Social Media argues that online abuse is not discontinuous with established patterns of inequality but rather intersects with and amplifies them. Embedded within social media platforms are inducements to abuse and harass other users who are rarely provided with the tools to protect themselves or interrupt the abuse of others. There is a relationship between the values that shape the technological design and administration of social media, and those that inform the use of abuse and harassment to exclude and marginalise diverse participants in public life. Drawing on original qualitative research, this book is essential reading for students and scholars in the fields of cyber-crime, media and crime, cultural criminology, and gender and crime.

"Crime and Media Studies concisely and efficiently pulls the curtain back on the reality of crime and punishment and the role media has played in the United States becoming the world's leader in incarceration. By addressing literacy rates that have remained virtually unchanged since 1935, the stark ramifications of the communication disconnect between those who study key issues and the ordinary citizen is explored. Crime and Media Studies calls for the dismantling of ideological divides between qualitative and quantitative researchers in favor of a united multidisciplinary front to create an informed citizenry. Divided into the key parts of the criminal justice system (crime, law enforcement, courts, corrections, etc.), the text explores prominent issues (drugs, domestic violence, race, gender, etc.) facing the criminal justice system. Each section contains crime and media research articles that analyze a variety of media (print news, broadcast news, movies, court TV, crime dramas, comic books, hip-hop, etc.) using quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies. In the tradition of Gregg Barak's ""News Making Criminology,"" each section contains discussion questions (designed for traditional and online classrooms), writing assignments (blog posts, press releases), literacy level exercises, brownbag sessions, and community engagement projects to help students understand the importance of being able to effectively communicate both with the press and the public. Crime and Media Studies is well suited for undergraduate and graduate courses in the social sciences that seek to address the role of media in policy and legal issues. The text, its test questions, discussion sessions, and writing assignments are designed to be used in both traditional and online classrooms. Franklin T. Wilson is an associate professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Indiana State University. He received his Ph.D. from the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University and has taught crime and media studies courses for over a decade. Dr. Wilson is the founding and current chair of the Annual International Crime, Media, and Popular Culture Studies Conference and is the editor of the Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture. He is also a member of the Board of Directors for CRIMCAST. His research has been published in such noted journals as The Prison Journal, Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, Race & Justice, and Women & Criminal Justice. Dr. Wilson's research has also been featured in a variety of media outlets including the New York Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Houston Chronicle, and Texas Tribune. "

MEDIA, CRIME, AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE is the definitive text on media and criminal justice. Its scholarship is impeccable, its style direct and approachable, and its format engaging and complete with visual examples and a collection of sidebar material that complements the main discussions. With the ever-increasing role of media in both reporting crime and shaping it into infotainment, the importance of the interplay between contemporary media and the criminal justice system is greater today than ever before. Author Ray Surette comprehensively surveys this interplay while emphasizing that people use media-provided knowledge to construct a picture of the world, and then act based on this constructed reality. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

"This book critically examines the media to identify how crime and criminal justice are treated in the news, entertainment, and infotainment media. The book sheds light on important realities of crime and criminal justice and corrects major misconceptions created by coverage of crime and criminal justice in the media."--