HU0S035 - Crime, Media and Culture 18 Jul 2024 - 31 Aug 2028 | Version 1

Associated Module Information

Module Code: HU0S035
Module Title: Crime, Media and Culture
Faculty: Faculty of Business and Creative Industries
Faculty Group: Culture and Animation
Faculty Sub Group: Culture
Module Leader: Andy Croll
Module Team: Rachel Lock-Lewis
First Intended Intake: SEP 2024 Final Year of Intake: 2027
Date Closed:
Credit Value: 20 Credit Level: 3
Language: English
Percentage of Module Taught in Welsh:
Equivalent Module:
HECOS codes:
HECOS Code Weighting:

Document Version Information

Version 1
Valid From 18 Jul 2024
Valid To 31 Aug 2028

Module Aims

To provide students with an overview of key themes and approaches in the field of Media and Cultural Studies with especial reference to understandings of crime in modern Britain

To develop skills in the analysis of media texts, cultural forms and artefacts.

Content Summary

Topics might include:

·         The media ‘effects’ debate: from demoralization to mass fear

·         Theorizing media and crime: strain theory, Marxism, pluralism

·         The construction of crime news

·         Media misogyny: ‘mad’, ‘bad’ mothers and wives

·         Children and crime: ‘innocent victims’ and ‘evil monsters’

·         The moral panic model

·         Censorship and obscenity laws: from the Lady Chatterley trial to Mary Whitehouse

·         Abortion and divorce in post-war Britain

·         The media and the capital punishment debate

·         Homosexuality / sexual offences

The fictional representation of police, perpetrators and victims

Learning and Teaching Methods

Activity Type Hours
Practical Classes and Workshops 36
Independent Study 64
Directed Study (including online independent learning) 100
Total Hours Selected 200

Learning Outcomes

# Learning Outcome
LO1 Understand how conceptions of crime and public morality could change over time
LO2 Understand the role of the modern media in constructing ideas of the ‘criminal’ and the ‘deviant’

Module Requisites

N/A

Assessment Criteria

Assessment Category Assessment Type Description Duration Word Count Weight (%) Best of? Pass Mark
Asynchronous Assessment Portfolio 1 The portfolio consists of two elements: a ten-minute presentation analysing a key source related to crime and deviance with accompanying notes of no more than 500 words. 0 1500 50 No 40
Asynchronous Assessment Essay 1 Essay focusing on social change and the representations of crime and deviance. 0 1500 50 No 40

Assessment Matrix

Assessment Type Learning Outcomes
LO1 LO2
Portfolio 1 ✔ ✔
Essay 1 ✔ ✔

Reading List

Cox, David J. et al, Public Indecency in England, 1857-1960: 'A Serious and Growing Evil' (London: Taylor & Francis, 2015).  

Evans, Mary, Sarah Moore and Hazel Johnstone, Detecting the Social Order and Disorder in Post-1970s Detective Fiction (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

Goode, Erich and Ben-Yehuda, Nachman, Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance (2nd edn. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

Greer, Chris (ed.), Crime and Media: A Reader (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010).

Jewkes, Yvonne, Media and Crime, 3rd edn (London: Sage, 2015).

Kildy, Anne-Marie & Nash, David S., Shame and Modernity in Britain, 1890 to the Present (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 

Pickard, Sarah (ed.), Anti-Social Behaviour in Modern Britain: Victorian and Contemporary Perspectives (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).