ABSTRACT
The relationships between crime and the media have long been the subject of intense debate. In particular, a preoccupation with the supposed harmful effects of popular culture on public morality has been a recurring theme in social commentary since at least the sixteenth century – when it was argued that popular songs were especially dangerous as they all too often presented criminals as heroes (Barker and Petley, 1997: 7).As we will see, debates over the harmful effects of the media are driven by a powerful combination of class antagonism, generational fear, social change, symbolic decline and technological development.
