Mídia e criminalidade: acertos e impasses no agenda-setting e no accoutability

Abstract

The emergence of TV as a preferred means of social communication, in the 1960s, coincided with the rise in crime rates in the West. TV not only changed the rules of political discourse, but also reduced the sense of distance that separated the middle class from crime. The hypothesis raised in this paper is that the media, particularly electronics, has an important role in the formation of the complex of crime in late modernity by exploring, enacting and reinforcing a new public experience of deep psychological resonance. In doing so, the media, along with popular culture and the built environment, have helped to institutionalize such an experience by providing daily opportunities for expressing the emotions of fear, anger, resentment, revenge, and fascination that personal experience of crime normally brings about. This "institutionalization" re-directed the attention of the public, not to the crime problem in itself, still less to the official crime rates, but to their representations.