Media effects

Media effects on Criminal Justice

10/6/15*

Jury Bias
The effect: potential jurors acquire biasing beliefs
-Regarding specific defendants
-Regarding defendants in general
-Usually anti-defendant, but not always
Various explanations
-Generic hostility towards accused
-Priming and heuristic thinking: unconscious information retention/ Inability
to set aside non-trial information
Social or individual Effect
Individual aspects
-Bias is a beliefThus individual
-Exposure to media differs among individuals

Social aspects
-A verdict is a social decision
-A juror represents peers
-A verdict is a public art
Remedies
Source discounting: Reminding jurors to elaborate
- Voir dire: interviewing prospective jurors
- Judges instructions
Before trial
During trial
Before deliberations
Deliberation

Priming decay: Continuance

Remedies II: create special populations

Change of venue
Imported jury from other location
Sequestration
New Trail

Press coverage and juror Bias

Most pretrial publicity violates ABA Model Rules against divulging prejudicial
information

Most pretrial publicity is against the defendants interest

-Most information comes from police and prosecutors
-Even Positive Information can damage reputation

Pretrial publicity can survive remedies

Can pretrial publicity Help Defendants?

Attract ambitious defense attorneys (e.g., Scott Peterson and Geragos)
Attract witnesses
Motivate Defense
Provide scrutiny to prosecutor and judge
Attract financial supporters
Prosecutors and a High Crime Agenda (Pritchard)
Fewer plea bargains
Less generous plea offers
Tougher sentence requests at trail
Depictions of suspects and priming
Pritchard & Hughes: deviance drives editors choices of crimes to cover
-Status deviance (high status victim)
-Cultural deviance (sympathetic victims)
Dixon: Over-representation of ethnic minorities in crime coverage
Entman: Physical custody of minority suspects and defendants
Depictions of Police: Cultivation
Police procedural shows (e.g., Law & Order) teach methods
--Criminals learn how to hide evidence
-- Audience as amateur sleuths
--CSI effects on jurors
Few sympathetic suspects until 1990s
Police as vigilantes (e.g., Dirty Harry, Die Hard, The shield)
Social learning and cognitive Theory
10/8/15*
Social learning (Albert Bandura)
The effect: Learning specific new behaviors through observation
Independent variables
-Information about outcome
-Motivation to learn
-Capability of performing the behavior

-Reinforcement
-Selective attention and retention
Learning from consequences
Information
-People learn possible outcomes
People estimate likelihoods of good outcomes
Motivation
-Anticipating good outcomes is motivational
-Accurate information enhances this

Reinforcement
-When anticipated results occur, learning is reinforced
-Awareness of causes boosts reinforcement (Contrary to behaviorism)
Processes involved in modeling

Attention Process
-Does the model get attention?
-Is the viewer capable of paying attention?

Retention Process
-is the behavior memorable?
-Is the viewer capable of remembering the behavior?
Motor reproduction Process
-Are there rewards for learning?
-Can the viewer accurately estimate rewards?
The Modeling Process
Observation
Identification with the model
Recognition of the usefulness of the behavior being modeled
Recalling the behavior when the opportunity arises, and reproducing it at
that time
Reinforcement of the behavior (or lack of reinforcement, or punishment)
Repeating the behavior (When appropriate)

Exposure Attention Retention Motor Reproduction Motivation

Learning
Attributes of a Good Model
Similar

 Familiar
Physical attractiveness

Where can good models be found?

Real life people are not always attractive
Busy people might not always be available when we need them
People are inconsistent
-Change behavior in different contexts
-Different standards for different situations
Media figures, particularly fictional characters, are more likely to have the
attributes of a good model
Agenda Planning
10/15/15
Media may not be very successful in telling you what to think but they
succeed in telling you what to think about (Cohen) 1963

The effect
Exposure to media influences peoples agendas
Media have agendas
-System-wide agenda
-Individual outlet agenda
People have agendas
-Collective agenda
-Individual agenda

Studying Agenda Setting

Study the media agenda
Observe multiple outlets
Aggregate references to all agenda items
Survey public about all agenda items, look for correlation
Individual persons agenda
-Offer people a list of agenda items to rank
-Compare peoples ranks to media agenda
-Individuals agendas rarely match medias completely
When is agenda Setting Likely? Need for Orientation

More effect when people feel need for action (e.g., orientation toward
voting)

Relevance and uncertainty (ambiguity) of issue increase effect

Example presidential election

Issues and Attributes of issues

Issues are what to think about
Attributes are how to think about issues
Examples:
Agenda item: leveraged buyouts
Creative destruction in a free market
Vulture capitalism?
Necessary but unpleasant economic reality
Agenda item: Lobbying
Corrupt practice?
Necessary education of lawmakers
Unfair access
Is Agenda Setting Bad?
Where should you learn the public agenda?
Does it matter what you think about?
-Cultivation: Thinking about violence is unhealthy
-Wertham: Thinking about sex is bad for Children
Who should influence the public agenda?
-Elite media?
-Public officials?
-Interest groups?
Agenda-Setting and Priming
Priming provides short-cuts to attitude formation
Connections between issue,attributes,and other objects
-Example: Unemploymentrate (issue), indicator of presidential performance
(attribute), and idealized presidency ( other object)
-Juxtaposition of objects changes attribute agenda
(e.g., replace idealized presidency with class warfaredifferent attitudes
result