SOC 1500 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Moral Panic, Public Knowledge

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 1500
• Professor: Ryan Broll

Document Summary

Criminal justice system is too soft on criminals. Media can implement ideas about crime making the world seem more dangerous, violent and unsafe due to its depictions of crime (ex. Show that victims are chosen at random. In reality crimes are usually committed by people we know. Often little information is given about the offender. The story can deceive by depicting an offender or victim in a different way. We must be critical of what we see in the media. Public knowledge about crime and justice largely comes from mass media. The way crime is portrayed in the media differs from empirical accounts. Mass movement based on the false or exaggerated perception that some individual or group is dangerously deviant and poses a menace to society. Dispute between the mods and rockers groups (not really gangs) in a retirement community and threw rocks at one another, no serious damage though.