From Burlesque to Grand Theft Auto: An Historical Analysis of the Treatment of the Media-Crime Relationship in Criminology Texts

Authors

Lisa A. Kort-Butler, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Michael Killingsworth, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Abstract

"The degree to which criminological scholarship on the mediacrime relationship has been subject to the tides of moral panics is not well-understood, although there are theoretical reasons to hypothesize about the role of scientists in moral panics. Textbooks are one location in which a discipline chronicles its scholarly history and speaks to the public, making texts an important site for understanding how scholars interpret the media-crime relationship. A content analysis of over 200 criminology texts, ranging in publication dates from 1880 to 2012, was conducted. Almost half the texts covered the media-crime relationship. These texts often appeared to be responding to and concurring with public debates brought on by moral panics. Textbooks most frequently took a negative stance on the media-crime relationship, as opposed to a more neutral stance or balanced approach. Proportionally, the media-crime relationship received the most coverage in the 1950s, 1990s, and 2000s, decades that correspond to surges of public debates about comics and video games. The decision of many authors to take a negative position in texts, while others cited contrary evidence, may reflect scholarly authors’ participation, intentionally or not, in the panic process."

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Kort-Butler, Lisa A. and Killingsworth, Michael (2015) "From Burlesque to Grand Theft Auto: An Historical Analysis of the Treatment of the Media-Crime Relationship in Criminology Texts," Qualitative Criminology (QC): Vol. 3: No. 1, Article 1.
Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/qc/vol3/iss1/1