Doing criminology on media and crime in Asia

Abstract

This article draws from recent critiques on media criminology in the North. In doing so, we are interested in whether and how these critiques figure in relation to those doing criminology in the South, in particular in Asia. We first describe why media criminology has yet to develop as an area of study in its own right and what lessons we might draw from the development of media criminology in the Northern context. We then examine the contours of crime and media research in the East and Southeast Asian context, looking particularly at how existing studies on media and deviance reinforce or challenge traditional notions about problems and problem populations, and how media and deviance are intertwined in a variety of culturally inflected ways that reflect broader political institutions and political contestations. Third, we begin to sketch out the contributions from other disciplines to inform the study of crime and media in Asia. Here we suggest that some disciplines, particularly the rich tradition of sociology of media studies and cultural studies, may be better placed to analyze media and crime in ways that administrative criminology in the Asian context cannot. Significantly, as our preliminary mapping of media representations of specific crime issues in Asia indicates, studies on reporting crime and fictionalizing crime in Asia have produced critical insights into the construction of the crime landscape (its fears and concerns, its potential victims, and the role of the citizen and government) in the region.