ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the more prominent themes to have emerged over the course of the book. It begins by proposing that rather than treat media effects in its most simplistic form as denoting a direct causal relationship between media messaging and passive audiences, the media effects concept should be applied broadly and inclusively to an array of phenomena, recognizing the multiple ways both news reporting and crime drama affect not only audiences but also legal institutions and crime policy formation. The chapter also considers the numerous ways the boundaries between real crime and fictional depictions are increasingly blurred, and what that might tell us, for example, about the possible ways dramatized representations can help audiences understand the operation of the criminal justice system within the context of social and cultural transformations. Blurring is also evident in the various symbiotic relationships we have identified in the book, including in the slippage between factual and fiction representations of serial killing and the symbiotic model of organized crime. The chapter concludes by looking at how the mainstream mass media might be conceived as criminogenic in the sense it provides a false and distorted account of crime in society, and in the way media representations might instill fear of crime, which is used by governments to justify increased criminalization via the implementation of punitive ‘law and order’ measures. On a more sanguine note, digital activism and citizen-led social media campaigning around crime and justice issues, sometimes conducted in partnership with older media organizations and actors, can provide important correctives to the criminogenic tendencies of the mass media.
