NCJ Number
170573
Date Published
1998
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This study examined the nature of the relationship between media coverage and increasing public concern about gangs in a Midwestern State.
Abstract
Content analysis of two newspapers in two of the largest cities in the State was used to assess media reporting and the gang-related themes that emerged from 1980 to 1994. The study considered the interested parties, or claimsmakers, and guiding political agendas -- such as the war on crime and war on drugs -- that influence media reporting on gangs as a social problem. The study investigated two key questions: How are media reports on gangs and gang activities influenced by the interests and agendas of various claimsmakers? Moreover, what images do these claimsmakers mobilize in defining gangs, and how does this imagery become salient in media coverage of gangs and gang- related themes? In addressing these questions, the study drew on a social constructionist perspective that presumes that claimsmakers play a significant role in defining gangs as a social problem, and claimsmakers' attempts to associate gangs with threatening imagery such as drug offenses will be a central theme in the definitional process. The findings support a "cultural constructionist" perspective of the gang problem. Unlike objectivist theorists, cultural constructionists emphasize that public concern about gangs does not directly correspond to the actual incidence of gang-related involvement in crime or drug use. Instead, the politicization of "gangs" as an issue is largely a result of larger social, economic, and political forces that cause public insecurity. Guided by prevailing political agendas, the media and claimsmakers feed upon this insecurity and propose perspectives and solutions that serve their own political or economic interests. 2 figures and 2 tables