AustLII Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback

Current Issues in Criminal Justice

Current Issues in Criminal Justice (CICrimJust)
You are here:  AustLII >> Databases >> Current Issues in Criminal Justice >> 2015 >> [2015] CICrimJust 17

Database Search | Name Search | Recent Articles | Noteup | LawCite | Author Info | Download | Help

Mcgovern, Alyce --- "Introduction to the Special Issue" [2015] CICrimJust 17; (2015) 27(2) Current Issues in Criminal Justice 137


Introduction

Crime, Media and New Technologies

Special Issue Editor: Alyce McGovern

The seeds of this Special Issue were sown a few years ago, through various conversations with colleagues about the growing influence of the internet and new technologies on our chosen areas of research. For my own research into the relationship between police and the media, the rapid uptake of social media by policing organisations both in Australia and overseas signalled a new direction in police communications activities (McGovern 2011; Lee and McGovern 2013). In an astonishingly short space of time, police were suddenly grappling with a whole new way of communicating, one that enabled them to speak directly to the public, complementing (and at times even bypassing) traditional police media strategies and often engaging a whole new audience in the process. In that specific arena, it was almost impossible to foreshadow just how influential social media platforms and new technologies would be on the way in which police managed their media and communications activities. This is just one example of myriad ways in which new media and technologies have transformed issues in, perspectives of, and approaches towards crime and justice.

As this Special Issue explores, new media and technologies have broader implications for those interested in the crime–media nexus. While the relationship between the media and crime has been extensively documented — and, indeed, there has long been a fascination with crime in the media — new and online technologies and platforms have transformed the ways in which information about crime is being produced, framed and disseminated. As Jewkes and Yar (2012:2) argue, ‘we now see a “blurring” of boundaries between media, as “old” media take on a new life in the online environment’.

This ‘blurring’ is a theme explored by Ray Surette in his article on performance crime. As Surette argues, new media and technologies have enabled audiences and consumers to play a more active role in the production and broadcast of crime and justice, altering the way crime is committed, how cases are processed, and the public’s experience of justice. So while technological developments have enhanced the capacities of criminal justice and media organisations to generate and disseminate media content in their own right, they have also increased the capacity for new and alternative narratives and depictions of crime and justice to be ‘performed’ and more widely circulated. For Surette, performance crimes include offenders posting confessions and/or images of their crimes online, as we saw recently in the Virginia television news shooting (Lewis, Yuhas and Teague 2015), or highly orchestrated social media ‘performances’ of terrorist organisations (Weimann 2006; Coker and Flynn 2015). Just as Surette draws our intention to new media manipulation, Ian Warren delves into the world of fallen sports stars, their media coverage and use of autobiography to obfuscate public and media judgment in his review of Majid Yar’s Crime, Deviance and Doping: Fallen Sports Stars, Autobiography and the Management of Stigma.

Furthering this idea of ‘blurring’, Leah Findlay’s Contemporary Comment on the use of social media in the courtroom also touches on how ‘old’ and ‘new’ media come together in ways that both reflect and transform the principle of open justice and public engagement with criminal justice proceedings. As Findlay outlines, new social media technologies enable journalists to provide different insight into and much more detailed accounts of court proceedings than their traditional publishing methods and outlets allowed. No longer must we sit in the public gallery of a courtroom to gain an appreciation of the day’s proceedings; rather, we can scan our Twitter feeds throughout the day as court reporters tweet updates, insights and commentary, engaging public interest in a new way. With new media come new risks, however, and Findlay advocates guidelines on courtroom social media reportage that apply to journalists, court staff and gallery members alike.

However, it is not only media agencies acknowledging the benefits of new technologies in the courtroom. As Laura McDonald, David Tait, Meredith Rossner, Karen Gelb and Blake McKimmie explore in their article, the jury room is a site where new technologies may be used to help facilitate the decision-making process. Mobile devices, such as iPads and tablets, may even enhance the delivery of justice through increased efficiency and group deliberation in the jury room. With around 50 per cent of Australians owning a tablet device of some kind (Australian Communications and Media Authority 2014), the usage of such technology by jurors is almost inevitable, highlighting an important need for research on intersections between justice and technology.

Although traditional media outlets and audiences, and even criminal justice agencies, might welcome the benefits of new and online platforms and technologies, that is not to say that the more conventional media formats of television, print and radio no longer influence public understandings of crime. As Cassandra Cross and Kelly Richards explore, it is often through these conventional platforms that the public seek information, or reparation, with regards to ‘new’ crimes. Cross and Richards discuss the resonance of popular television news programs, such as Australia’s A Current Affair, with fraud victims. Their study demonstrates that many victims of technologically facilitated crimes frame their expectations of law enforcement through what they see and hear on current affairs platforms. Perceived failures in the criminal justice process often lead victims to seek assistance from these programs, which are seen as potentially being more effective in resolving their concerns than the judicial process. That said, victims’ expectations of such programs may need adjustment as well.

As well as the potential for new and social media and technologies to advance or evolve discourses around crime and victimisation, these platforms have opened up a whole new range of challenges and opportunities when it comes to researching crime. As technologies develop, so do their capabilities as platforms for conducting or disseminating research in which that criminologists engage. One realm fast gaining the attention of academics is the potential for new media platforms and technologies to expand our research repertoires. As Jeremy Prichard, Paul Watters, Tony Krone, Caroline Spiranovic and Helen Cockburn discuss, there is utility in the analysis of social media sentiment as a way for criminologists to better understand and advance our knowledge about public perceptions of and attitudes towards crime. Similarly, Johannes Wheeldon and Danielle Harris advocate for criminologists to engage in the visual as a method for not only making information more accessible, but also for reaching a wider audience. In particular, they advocate for the use of social media as a dissemination tool, something which a number of academics are already experimenting with and funding bodies are encouraging (see, for example, the London School of Economic and Political Sciences ‘Impact Blog’ <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/> ). Perhaps then, as well as changing the ways academics speak to one another about issues of crime and justice, such developments will also change the ways we communicate with non-academics, or public criminologies (see, for example, Uggen and Inderbitzin 2010).

As my colleague Dr Sanja Milivojevic and I have argued elsewhere, ‘criminologists should be bold enough to engage with the challenges that new information technologies and especially social media bring to criminological inquiry’ (Milivojevic and McGovern 2014:34). This Special Issue of Current Issues in Criminal Justice goes some way towards meeting this challenge, bringing together original empirical and theoretical research on crime, media and new technologies that advances criminological knowledge about this quickly evolving area of research. The pieces included demonstrate the diversity of criminological research in this area and together represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of what criminologists are, could be, and will be examining when it comes to crime, media and new technologies as each continues to evolve.

Dr Alyce McGovern is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of New South Wales. She has undertaken and published research on a range of topics relating to the intersection of crime and media, including police–media relations, police use of social media, and sexting and young people. She is also interested in criminology higher education. Her recent publications include Policing and Media: Public Relations, Simulations and Communications (with Murray Lee, Routledge 2014) and Sexting and Young People (with Thomas Crofts, Murray Lee and Sanja Milivojevic, Palgrave Macmillan 2015). Alyce is currently working on a monograph for Palgrave Macmillan examining craftivism and yarn bombing from a criminological perspective. Email: a.mcgovern@unsw.edu.au; mail:

Room G40, Morven Brown Building, School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales NSW 2052, Australia.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the contributors to this Special Issue, who have provided for a diverse and engaging issue, reflective of the diversity of studies into crime, media and new technologies. Thanks must also go to the academics who reviewed submissions for this issue; your judicious and timely feedback helped make it come to fruition.

Special thanks go to the journal’s Managing Editor, Melanie Eslick, for her mentorship, guidance and dedication to the issue over the past few months. It has been a pleasure. And to journal Editor Associate Professor Murray Lee, thank you for providing me with the opportunity to guest edit this Special Issue.

References

Australian Communications and Media Authority (2014) Communications Report 2013–14, Commonwealth of Australia <http://www.acma.gov.au/theACMA/Library/Corporate-library/Corporate

-publications/communications-report>

Coker M and Flynn A (2015) ‘Islamic State Tries to Show It Can Govern in Iraq and Syria’, The Wall Street Journal (online), 13 October 2015 <http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-a-shift-islamic-state-tries-to-show-it-can-govern-1444779561>

Jewkes Y and Yar M (2010) ‘Introduction: The Internet, Cybercrime and the Challenges of the Twenty-First Century’ in Y Jewkes and M Yar (eds), Handbook of Internet Crime, Willan Publishing 1–15

Lee M and McGovern A (2013) Policing and the Media: Public Relations, Simulations and Communications, Routledge

Lewis P, Yuhas A and Teague M (2015) ‘Virginia TV Journalists Shot Dead on Air in Attack Staged by Former Colleague’, The Guardian (online), 22 August 2015 <http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/26/virginia-gunman-kills-reporter-cameraman>

McGovern A (2011) ‘Tweeting the News: Criminal Justice Agencies and their Use of Social Networking Sites’, The Australian and New Zealand Critical Criminology Conference Proceedings 2010, Sydney Institute of Criminology, 1–6

Milivojevic S and McGovern A (2014) ‘The Death of Jill Meagher: Crime and Punishment on Social Media’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 3(3), 22–39 <https://www.crimejusticejournal.com/article/view/144>

Uggen C and Inderbitzin M (2010) ‘Public Criminologies’, Criminology and Public Policy 9(4),

725–49

Weimann G (2006) Terror on the Internet: The New Arena, the New Challenges, United States Institute of Peace Press


AustLII: Copyright Policy | Disclaimers | Privacy Policy | Feedback
URL: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/CICrimJust/2015/17.html