Although historically ignored, crime victims are now very firmly on the map. For politicians, newspapers, the media and the public at large, criminal injury and loss are a source of constant concern and anxiety. Criminologists and media analysts have studied much of this concern in recent years but what has not been investigated is how communities experience high profile crimes and the media intrusion that inevitably follows. This book seeks to address this gap by exploring how the communities of Soham and Dunblane, that witnessed high profile crimes, lived with the tragic events at the time and the attention of the world’s media afterwards.
Based on a two-year qualitative study of these communities, this book looks beneath the surface of the relationships, dilemmas and unexpected triumphs of communities struggling to come to terms with the most harrowing of events, within the glare of the media spotlight. Combining empirical observations with media analysis and social theory, this book offers something new to the criminological audience: the concept of the victim community.
Author(s): Nicola O’Leary
Series: Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 219
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Contents
1: Introduction
Mumbai, India, 2008
Oslo/Utoya, Norway, 2011
Cologne, Germany, New Year’s Eve, 2015/2016
Introducing the Notion of a ‘Victim Community’
The Victimological and the Cultural
Bearing Witness and Je Suis Charlie
The Research
Outline of the Book
References
2: The Paradoxes and Contradictions of ‘Victim’ and ‘Community’
What (and Who) Is a ‘Victim’?
Some Limitations to Our Victimological Knowledge
Exploring Victim Identity
From the Re-emergence of the ‘Victim’ to Cultural Victimology
Expanding Understandings of Victim Identity
Secondary and ‘Other’ Victims of Crime
Vicarious Victims
Labelling, Stigma and Spoiled Identity
Community, Stigma and Spoiled Identity
‘Others’, Identity and Stigma
Notions of Community
Criminogenic Communities: The Link Between Communities and Crime
Imagined and Symbolic Communities: The Search for Belonging
Communitas and Liminality
Community in Late Modernity: A Search for Belonging
References
3: Crime News, Media and Identity
Media: Production and Reception
Constructing Crime News
How ‘News’ Makes the News
Primacy of the Visual
Signal Crimes
Playing with Identity: The Media
The Centrality of Victim Discourse
Media and Collective Identity
The Media’s Cultural Turn
Vicarious Grief and Imagined Community
References
4: Dunblane: A United Community Divided
Vignette: 13 March 1996
Impact and Consequences
Press Headlines: A Snapshot
A Sense of Place
Unity and Division
Private or Public Grief?
A More Hostile Environment
The ‘Victim’ Community of Dunblane
The Fluidity of Identity
Initial Impact: A Liminal Experience
A Changing Sense of Community
Moving on: Back to the Future
Unity and Division: Vehicles for Community and Identity
United Community Divided
Whose Crime Is It Anyway?
Embarrassment of Riches
Public/Private Grief: Blurred Boundaries
Our Town as a Focus for Grief
Media and Blurred Boundaries
References
5: Soham: The Litany of a ‘Tragic Town’
Vignette—4 August 2002
Impact and Consequences
Press Headlines: A Snapshot
Insider/Outsider
The Good the Bad and the Ugly: The Reality of Media Intrusion
The Legacy of Tragic Towns
Collective Security and Risk
The Victim Community of Soham
Identity and Stigma
The Stigma of an ‘Insider’ Offender
Community (Insider) Identity
Community Through Tragedy
Community Closing Ranks: Keep Calm and Carry on
The Consequences of Private/Public Grief: The Media Circus Rolls on
Collective Victim Identity and the Cultural Imagination
Grief Tourism and Vicarious Emotion
Stigmatisation and ‘Tragic’ Towns
Grief at a Distance
References
6: Making Sense of ‘Victim Communities’: Negotiating Collective Identity
The Ironies of Public Sympathy
The Gift of Giving
An Amplification Spiral of Victimisation
The Litany of Tragic Towns
Expanding the Victimological Kaleidoscope
The Late-Modern Victim Community: Invention or Recycling?
‘Place’ and the Grounding of Identity
The Consumption of Grief: Sorrow as Entertainment
References
7: Conclusion
References
Appendix A: Notes on Methodology
Relations in the Field
Fieldwork Phase
Appendix B: Overview of News Content Analysis
Overall Number of Articles Analysed 477
Appendix C: Interviewee Characteristics
Index
