A Sociological Explanation of Reflection of Crime in the Press

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Abstract

The press plays an important role in the public sphere, and for many people it is still the first source of news. The function of the media in the information age in the entire area is undeniable. One important aspect of the media activities is collecting, editing and publishing criminal news. They make their audience aware of criminal phenomena and current complex and busy world. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to analyze the content of criminal incidents in some newspapers including: Shargh, Jam-e-Jam, Keyhan, Hamshahri and Ettelaat in a period of one year (the second half of 2014 and the first half of 2015). The results of the statistical analysis in this study shows that Iran newspaper has the largest amount of articles (21/20 percent) and Ettelaat newspaper (15.7 percent) has the lowest content of the events. The highest percentage of crimes has published in the October 2014 (12.8%) and the lowest was 7.8 percent in August 2015. Based on gender criteria, men were the subjects and objects of crimes more than women. The findings show that crime occurrence with 33.74 percent, arrest of criminals 23.83 percent and detecting of crimes with 10.99 are existed in the headlines with news of crime. Headlines related to conflict and destruction with 0.73 percent have the lowest portion.

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References

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