ABSTRACT
At some point in their life, people may have had someone warn about the dangers of hanging around with certain people. This is the basis of differential association theory as it attempts to explain the involvement in criminal behaviour by looking at the kind of people we associate with. Church et al. argue that the tendency towards criminal behaviour comes about from a combination of these approaches, in that differential association explains the motivation for crime and social control explains how crime is kept going. Once again, this suggests that the general idea of differential association isn't enough on its own to explain crime and that there are specific social factors that play a major part in the push towards criminal behaviour. One of the issues facing society today is the problematic use of social media, with groups putting forwards racist and xenophobic views as well as groups promoting and supporting acts of terror and mass murder.
