Media Influence On Serial Killers

Violence is one of the most obsessed concepts in society and will always be a current topic of interest. People are infatuated with crime and the media takes advantage of it. When media presents violent topics, it somehow cures many people’s urges to be violent, these people we would deem as the social norm. Everyday people living an everyday life, they have urges to be violent but they don’t act upon them. That is a rather general idea of the social norm, since the concept of normal changes within different cultures. A deviant person is one who is departing from usual or accepted standards. There is something that is off about them as a person, and they don’t necessarily fit in with the social norm. A serial killer, for example, would be deemed deviant. Obviously serial killers are different, because they go around killing people however, the media finds different negative features to enhance the issue or form a reason as to why they would kill certain people. The media basically labels them as an outcast by saying they were deviant before they started killing, and then go on to blame killings on their deviant characteristic.
One of the reasons serial killers get so much attention is because the media portrays the killer or killers in a way that increases fear within society. The media also grabs people’s attention by using stereotypes by doing this they create a setting for what is deviant and what is socially acceptable. Throughout the years there is a clear distinction between media coverage of historical and contemporary serial killers. Historically I feel that society as a whole had more characteristics that were deemed deviant. Some of those deviant characteristics from back then would now be considered normal. Therefore I feel there are many changes in what media covers now compared to what was covered