Author Description
Crime and punishment fascinate. Overwhelming in their media dominance, they present us with our most popular television programs, films, novels, art works, video games, podcasts, social media streams and hashtags.The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Crime, Media and Popular Culture, a massive and unprecedented undertaking, offers a foundational space for understanding the cultural life and imaginative force and power of crime and punishment. Across five areas foundational to the study of crime and media, leading scholars from five continents engage cutting edge scholarship in order to provide definitive overviews of over 120 topics.In the context of an unprecedented global proliferation in the production of images, they take up the perennial and emergent problems of crime's celebrity and fascination; stereotypes and innovations in portrayals of crime and criminals; and the logics of representation that follow police, courts, capital punishment, prisons, and legal systems across the world. They also engage new, timely, and historically overlooked categories of offense and their representations, including child sexual abuse, violence against women, and human trafficking. A series of entries on mediums and methods provide a much needed set of critical approaches at a historical moment when doing media and visual research is a daunting, formidable undertaking.This is also a volume that stretches our understanding of conventional categories of crime representation. One example of this is homicide, where entries include work on the ever-popular serial killer but also extend to filicide, infanticide, school shootings, aboriginal deaths in custody, lynchings, terrorism and genocide. Readers will be will be hard-pressed to find a convention, trope, or genre of crime representation that is not, in some way, both present and enlarged. From film noir to police procedurals, courtroom dramas and comedies to comic books, crime news to true crime and reality TV, gaming to sexting,
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
This three-volume set investigates how crime and punishment function as central, pervasive themes within global media and popular culture. Editors Michelle Brown and Nicole H. Rafter, both established scholars in the field of criminology, curate a collection of over 120 entries from international experts. The work provides a comprehensive framework for analyzing how criminal justice systems, legal processes, and specific offenses are represented, consumed, and mythologized across various digital and traditional media platforms.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- Analysis of crime representation across film, television, literature, video games, and social media.
- Critical examination of systemic issues including police procedures, courtroom dynamics, and capital punishment.
- Exploration of diverse offense categories ranging from serial homicide to terrorism, genocide, and human trafficking.
- Methodological guides for conducting visual and media research in a digital-heavy landscape.
Scope Limits
- The work focuses primarily on the cultural and representational aspects of crime rather than providing legal or forensic procedural manuals.
- It does not offer an exhaustive historical archive of every crime ever committed, but rather focuses on the cultural tropes and media narratives surrounding them.
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Experts identify this collection as a foundational reference for students and researchers in criminology and media studies. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose and the breadth of the interdisciplinary approach, which bridges the gap between sociological theory and popular media analysis.
Page Count:
2232
Publication Date:
2018-03-22
ISBN-10:
0190494670
ISBN-13:
9780190494674
Criminology
Media Studies
Reference
Sociology