Crime and Law in Media Culture

by Brown, Sheila

• ISBN13: 9780335205486
• ISBN10: 0335205488
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-03-01
• Publisher: Open University Press

Summary

* Can we any longer 'separate out' crime, the law, and the media? * What does contemporary media culture do to our understanding of crime and the law? * What is the impact of cyberculture on crime and the law? This book explores the situating of law and crime within the vast range and scope of contemporary media forms. It begins from the premise that the whole of society, including crime and criminal justice, is embraced by media culture. 'The media' are viewed not as a set of institutions, but as a myriad of communicative forms or expressive techniques ranging from soaps to cyberworlds. Sheila Brown shows how crime and the law, or our understanding of them, are produced, reproduced, disturbed, and challenged in and through media culture. A lively and engaging text, this book contains a wide range of topical examples and provides a theoretically coherent examination of the field, providing an accessible critique of cultural theory along the way. It opens up the boundaries between the more traditional aspects of law and criminology, and the broader concerns of sociology and cultural studies. The result will be essential reading for students and a key reference for researchers as well as those with a wider interest in crime and the media.

Author Biography

Sheila Brown is Lecturer in Criminology at the Faculty of Law, University of Sheffield and has lectured in sociology and criminology since 1989. Formerly known for her challenging work in the field of youth and crime, over the past few years she has been researching the ways in which crime and law are embedded in everyday life through media cultures. Travels through the USA, cyberspace, TV, cinemas and crime fiction have been used as research journeys to explore the boundaries between fact and fiction in crime and the law. She is currently researching in the areas of science and crime, and mobile phone cultures.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
Mediatization, modernity and globalization: crime and law in media culture?	1	(38)
Approaching media, crime, and culture	1	(2)
Thought-crime prevention? Early conceptions of the mass and the media	3	(5)
Media messaging in modernity	8	(3)
The global soul? Globalization, identity and media culture	11	(5)
The emergence of the media hybrid	16	(7)
The academe and the study of media, crime and law	23	(1)
Modern media and the criminological project: dichotomies and dilemmas	24	(15)
Real crime/crime stories: the collapse of fantasy and fact?	39	(39)
Crime: metaphorically speaking, a practice?	40	(7)
Crime dramas: the collapse of the `real'?	47	(17)
Will the missing context please stand up? `Implosion' and its problems	64	(14)
Novel forms, dramatic scenes: crime and law in popular culture	78	(29)
Reading crime fiction: crime in popular culture	79	(11)
Reading law film	90	(12)
Reading the fictive: doing the culture	102	(5)
Does splatter matter? Representing violence, regulating consumption	107	(30)
A passionate cause: the splatter effect	108	(6)
Representing violence and the body	114	(9)
Contestation and cultures of violence	123	(6)
The political and the aesthetic: gendered violence	129	(6)
Does splatter (still) matter?	135	(2)
(S)talking in cyberspace: virtuality, crime and law	137	(37)
Cyberspace and cybercultures: approaching the prosthetic	138	(7)
Crime, law and the cyber	145	(21)
The virtual/real: where does it leave crime and law?	166	(8)
Crime, law and media futures	174	(23)
Cartographic convolutions? The media mapping of crime and law	175	(9)
Beyond and outside the postmodern	184	(5)
Crime and law in media culture	189	(4)
Entailments, ethics and crime, law, media, futures	193	(4)
Notes	197	(3)
References	200	(11)
Index	211