Welcome to Crime, Media and Culture!

This unit aims to enable you to understand and think critically about how media and cultural representations of crime are produced and consumed. Criminologists have become increasingly interested in how crime is ‘mediated’ over the last thirty years, to the extent that some criminologists argue that the representation of crime has become as real as crime itself.

Over the next 11 weeks, you will gain a deeper understanding of mass media depictions of crime and criminal justice, and i their place in consumer culture. We will pay particular attention to developments in cultural criminological theory and research, particularly as they relate to the role of the mass media in shaping public attitudes, consumerism, and systems of crime control.