The 'worst of the worst': punitive justice frames in criminal sentencing clips on YouTube. Issue 4 (2nd October 2021)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- The 'worst of the worst': punitive justice frames in criminal sentencing clips on YouTube. Issue 4 (2nd October 2021)
- Main Title:
- The 'worst of the worst': punitive justice frames in criminal sentencing clips on YouTube
- Authors:
- Revier, Kevin
- Abstract:
- ABSTRACT: Courtroom media is a longstanding genre of news and entertainment, in radio, film, television, and print. Digital streaming platforms such as YouTube, which boasts over 2 billion users, have become a prominent source of courtroom content. In this research, I examine popularized YouTube sentencing clips: fairly short videos (often no more than a few minutes) which generally include a sentence-reaction formula, have little context (case, social, or individual), and are digitally shared, edited, and distributed online, primarily by news outlets and private channels. Specifically, I conduct a frame analysis of 53 sentencing clips from United States' courtrooms. I find that sentencing clips reinforce dominant punitive justice frames, including justice-as-retribution, justice-as-victim-advocacy, and justice-as-entertainment. Moreover, as the majority of clips feature defendants sentenced for violent acts, including sexual assault, murder, and child abuse, they depict the 'worst of the worst' being brought to justice. Thus, in a time of criminal justice reform, of which there has been popular concern regarding the 'relatively innocent, ' the criminal bogeyman remains alive and well on digital media platforms like YouTube. Punitive frames associated with the 'worst of the worst, ' in turn, reinforce a punishment paradigm constitutive of contemporary U.S. criminal justice as a whole.
- Is Part Of:
- Contemporary justice review. Volume 24:Issue 4(2021)
- Journal:
- Contemporary justice review
- Issue:
- Volume 24:Issue 4(2021)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 24, Issue 4 (2021)
- Year:
- 2021
- Volume:
- 24
- Issue:
- 4
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2021-0024-0004-0000
- Page Start:
- 436
- Page End:
- 456
- Publication Date:
- 2021-10-02
- Subjects:
- Visual criminology -- frame analysis -- criminal sentencing -- sentencing clips -- court media -- YouTube
Criminology -- Periodicals
Social justice -- Periodicals
Restorative justice -- Periodicals
Environmental policy -- Periodicals
364 - Journal URLs:
- http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/gcjr20/current ↗
http://www.tandfonline.com/ ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1080/10282580.2021.1981135 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 1028-2580
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - 3425.190200
British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 19946.xml