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Example research essay topic: Violence Against Women Portrayal Of Women - 2,773 words

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VICTIMOLOGY Many say that the entertainment media is able to present distorted use of crime. An example here is the exaggeration on the conditions of violent crimes regarding the branding of corporate crimes. The problem of violence in the entertainment media is our particular target in the cases that follow. The first show, Born Innocent, brings up the effects argument: show a violent program, reap a violent crime. One of the standard industry replies to the effects argument is the rating system, which alerts responsible adults to potentially harmful programs. Are media practitioners oblivious to the violence they contribute to the culture?

These and other ramifications of crime victims will be elucidated in this paper. Part 1 While some question remains about the effectiveness of investigations, police detective do make a valuable contribution to police work because their skilled interrogation and case-processing techniques are essential to eventual criminal conviction. Nonetheless, a majority of cases that are solved are done so when the perpetrators identified at the scene of the crime by patrol officers. Researched shows that if a crime is reported while in progress, the police have about a 33 % chance of making an arrest; the arrest probability declines to about 10 % if the crime is reported 1 minute later, and 5 % if more than 15 minutes has elapsed. As the time between the crime and the arrest grows, the chances of a conviction are also reduced, probably because the ability to recover evidence is lost. Put another way, once a crime has been completed and the investigation is put in the hands of detectives, the chances of identifying and arresting the perpetrator diminish rapidly.

What means are available for avoiding graphic violence on TV? Certainly viewers can choose not to watch, which is the preferred solution of the networks since it imposes no direct obligations on them. On the other hand, the state would impose limits on TV violence in the same way it regulates cigarette and liquor commercials. The broadcast industry can choose to set its own limits based on steady evidence that TV violence at least creates a culture of suspicion and fear, and fidelity to the belief that violence is never inherently justified. The writers and producers of these news programs though did not sensationalize the actual conditions of juvenile reformatories.

However, it is not obvious that their attempt at realism was morally adequate. NBC decided to air the program in early time, but did not add a warning to viewers. Was this sufficient caution? The shows advertisers and carrying stations can claim a legal right, but in terms of ethics, they are guilty of negligence.

We see from the news that racial bias seems to be the main motivation of the crimes. Approximately 68 percent of the victims were the object of an anti-black prejudice. Number and Time Length (minutes and seconds) of Crime Stories in News Broadcasting, Crime Scene 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Number of times, when this occurred? 4 7 37 45 68 56 67 77 Numerous studies have shown that both the news and entertainment media present distorted views of crime. Chief among the distortions are an over-exaggeration of violent crime and a corresponding under representation of corporate crime. Does this general conclusion from the research literature apply to network television newscasts?

This is a timely question given that criminologists have seldom examined national newscasts, as opposed to local television news. The present study, using the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, examines television nightly newscasts over a thirty-year period. Findings focus on trends in nightly news coverage of corporate crime between 1970 and 2000. According to the broken windows approach, community relations and crime control effectiveness cannot be the province of a few specialized units housed within a traditional police department. Instead, the core police role must be altered if community involvement is to be won and maintained. To accomplish this goal, urban police departments should return to the earlier style of policing in which officers on the beat had intimate contact with the people they served.

Things change and continue to change. Media formats and contents change all the time. Ideas of gender and sexuality, masculinity and femininity, identity and selfhood are in a steady process of change and transformation. Media has a significant but not completely direct relationship with people's sense of gender and identity. In order to deepen ones understanding of the cultural values embedded in media and to explore current values and power structures regarding men and women, it is important to investigate the potential effect that mass media may have in influencing beliefs about gender-appropriate behavior. Part 2 Certainly, mass media is a powerful factor which influences our beliefs, attitudes, and the values we have of ourselves and others as well as the world surrounding us.

Every portrayal of women and men is important in that it contributes some increment to our overall model of social reality. Media does not merely communicate and reflect reality in a more or less truthful way. Instead, media production not only offers us something to see, but also shapes the way in which we see by creating shared perceptual modes. Media messages are used and interpreted by audiences according to their own cultural, social, and individual circumstances. Here are some of the news recently published that report on hate crimes. Lake Tahoe, CA - August 2007: After a racist verbal and physical attack on a man of South Asian descent and his family in July, two perpetrators are charged here with a cousin calling the man relatives of Osama bin Laden.

Chicago, IL - August 2007: A Cook County judge awarded $ 1. 3 million to two hate crime victims. Attackers shouted racial slurs. The judge therefore awarded the victims $ 1 million in punitive damages. Sacramento, CA August 2007: The California Senate has approved the AJR 29, which looks for a stronger federal hate crime laws. This also includes the protection of victims who are attacked because of the sexual orientation and disability. The hate crime victims need more protection.

Much of the public debate on media violence against women and children focuses on physical violence and sexual violence. Media violence can cause aggression in viewers. Often it does so indirectly through the creation and maintenance of an environment that in the eyes of certain viewers violence is tolerated if not encouraged. The issue of women and violence cannot be sufficiently described by any single scale. Campbell observed: violence is "scary" when the "familiar and safe, like the home and parents and loved ones are negatively transformed. Home becomes a killing ground, parents are powerless to protect, dolls become killers" (p. 26).

What effect does massive exposure to the social morality play of television drama have on viewers? "Television tends to confirm and cultivate the traditional distribution of power in the symbolic and real worlds domination by white males. It tells us who can get away with what against whom, where the safe or dangerous places are, and what one's chances of encountering or falling victim to violence may be. We would thus postulate that the lessons of violence, and especially victimization, are fear, intimidation, and a sense of vulnerability. Specifically those who view more television will express greater interpersonal mistrust and perceive the world as a "mean" place as well as endorse statements that reflect alienation and gloom. " (Signorielli, p. 88). Women, older people and minorities are most often victims of media violence. The cultivation hypothesis predicts that, since these groups have the most to fear, they should show the strongest changes toward fear and mistrust.

Researchers using the cultivation model (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan & Signorielli, 1986; Signorielli, 1990) argue that while aggression may be a rare consequence of television violence, the predominant effects of media violence are to instill fear and mistrust in viewers the more people watch television, the more fearful they will become. Given a link between television and violence, Gerbner makes the crucial observation: "A child is born into a home in which the set tends to be on most of the day or evening. Violence is inescapable. There is not 'before' exposure. " (p. 27) Gender portrayal is a field where "violence against women" in the overt sense of physical assaults, shootings, and so on. In relation to this is threatened violence - the gun is pointed or the fist is raised, but no physical harm results. Another is the fact that there are situations that imply violence is possible.

Such a condition is created and maintained by a large number of characteristics of gender portrayal, such as the fact that more men carry weapons; that men are given the technical capability to carry out acts of violence while women are not; that men have the power, money, and position to organize violence while women generally do not, and so on. In other words, this inequality in power, competence, and opportunity is characteristic of gender portrayal across the whole spectrum of television and radio programming, whether violence is an issue or not (Malamuth and Briere, p. 82). Televisions departure from reality is another issue. Television fails to represent adequately working class people, racial and ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, and other groups. Are women and men portrayed equally by the mass media?

The answer is clearly that they are not. Numerous studies of television, radio, and print media around the world have consistently documented the types of inequality that occur. Gender imbalance in the mass media is a stable, worldwide phenomenon. For the past several decades, men have dominated the mass media. This is true of both radio and television, and of various types of programming drama, news, sports, children's programs, and so on.

It is probably fair to say that television drama exemplifies almost every common gender stereotype in our culture. Signorielli observes: "Women are seen less often than men and in many respects may be considered less important. When women appear they are usually younger than men, more attractive and nurturing, portrayed in the context of romantic interests, home and family, and are more likely to be victimized... Men, on the other hand, are older. They tend to be more powerful and potent than women, and proportionately fewer are presented as married. Significantly more men are employed outside the home, and they usually work in high prestige and traditionally masculine occupations such as doctors, lawyers, police, and other high status jobs. " (p. 352).

Would television content and, therefore, the effects of television on society be different if the industry were dominated by women instead of men or even if women comprised half the industry? An editorial in the British journal Media Development, under the title "Women's values could liberate public communication, " argues: "Women's reform movements of the media are no longer centered on the portrayal of women in cultural products, including advertising, though that issue is still important and unresolved. Likewise, the recruitment of women to the media, their rights and promotion to managerial positions are no longer the panacea of the struggle. It is rather the qualitative differences which women can make to the communication environment as a whole which are now at the core of the debate. " (p. 1) The level of certain behaviors depicted on television should closely reflect the real world. U. S.

television, for example, has been criticized for a pernicious concentration on crime and violence - this narrow focus, among other factors, ensures that the diversity of human experience does not find its way to the TV screen. The solution involves reducing the portrayal of violence on television, not arming female characters more heavily. Media messages are diverse, scattered and contradictory. Rather than being zapped straight into people's brains, ideas about lifestyle and identity that appear in the media are resources which individuals use to think through their sense of self and modes of expression. In addition to this conscious use of media, a wealth of other messages may breeze through the awareness of individuals every day. People are changing, building new identities founded not on the certainties of the past, but organized around the new order of modern living, where the meanings of gender, sexuality and identity are increasingly open.

Part 3 Learning Insights Many police officers feel unappreciated by the public they serve, which may be due to the underlying conflicts inherent in the police role. Police may want to be proactive crime fighters who initiate actions against law violators; yet most remain reactive, responding when a citizen calls for service. The desire for direct action is often blunted because police are expected to perform many civic duties that in earlier times was the responsibility of every citizen: keeping the peace, performing emergency medical care, dealing with family problems, helping during civil emergencies. While most of us agree that a neighborhood brawl must be stopped, that shelter must be found for the homeless, and that the inebriate must be taken safely home, few of us want to personally jump into the fray; we would rather call the cops. The police officer has become a social handyman called in to fix up problems that the average citizen wishes would simply go away. Police officers are viewed as the fire it takes to fight.

The public needs the police to perform those duties that the average citizens finds distasteful or dangerous, such as breaking up s domestic quarrel. At the same time, the public resents the power the police have use to force, to arrest people, and to deny people their vices. Put another way, the average citizens wants the police to crack down on undesirable members of society while excluding his or her own behavior from legal scrutiny. Because of these natural role conflicts, the relationship between the police and the public has been the subject of a great deal of concern. As you may recall, the respect Americans have for police effectiveness, courtesy, honesty, and conduct seems to be dwindling. Citizens may be less likely to go to police for help, to report crimes, to step forward as witness, or to cooperate with and aid police.

Victim surveys indicate that many citizens have so little faith in the police that they will not report even serious crimes, such as rape or burglary. In some communities, citizen self-help groups have sprung up to supplement police protection. In return, police officers often feel ambivalent and uncertain about the public they are sworn to protect. Because of this ambivalence and role conflict, more communities are adopting new models of policing that reflect the changing role of the police. Some administrators now recognize that police officers are better equipped to be civic problem solvers than effective crime fighters.

Rather than ignore, deny, or fight this reality, police departments are being reorganized to maximize their strengths and minimize their weakness. What has emerged is the community policing movement, a new concept of policing designed to bridge the gulf between police agencies and the communities they serve. Other Learning Insights The self-reflection of the rules and regulations is a big step toward responsible media. It stretches the mind and draws out the issues, even if it reaches no conclusions. Ultimate moral duty must fall to those who are most directly involved in the guidance and growth of children. While not absolving producers and writers, moral reasoning assumes that the parent / guardian -child relationship is primary for the teaching of values.

REFERENCES Campbell, S. (Oct-Nov 1972). A new report on television violence Federation of Women Teachers Association of Ontario Newsletter, pp. 22 - 28. Gallagher, M. (1981). United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Gerbner, G. Violence and Terror in the Media: UNESCO Report No. 102 on Mass Communications, UNESCO, 1988. Gerbner, G. , Gross, L. , Morgan M. & Signorielli, N. (1986).

Living with television: The dynamics of the cultivation process. In J. Bryant & Zillman (Eds. ). Perspectives on media effects. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Malamuth, N. & Briere, J. (1986). Sexual violence in the media: Indirect effects on aggression against women. Journal of Social Issues Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 75 - 92. Media Development. (1991).

Women's values could liberate public communication. Editorial. Vol, XXXVIII, No. 2. Signorielli, N. (1990). Television's mean and dangerous world: A continuation of the cultural indicators perspective. N In.

Signorielli and M. Morgan (Eds. ). Cultivation Analysis: New Directions in Media Effects Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Signorielli, N. (1989). Television and conception about sex roles: Maintaining conventionality and the status quo.

Sex Roles Vol. 2 1.


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