Newsmaking criminology in Australia and New Zealand: Results from a mixed methods study of criminologists’ media engagement
| Date | 01 March 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865819854794 |
| Published date | 01 March 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Newsmaking criminology in
Australia and New Zealand:
Results from a mixed
methods study of
criminologists’
media engagement
Mary Iliadis and Imogen Richards
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University,
Victoria, Australia
Mark A Wood
School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Abstract
‘Newsmaking criminology’, as described by Barak, is the process by which criminologists
contribute to the generation of ‘newsworthy’ media content about crime and justice, often
through their engagement with broadcast and other news media. While newsmaking crim-
inological practices have been the subject of detailed practitioner testimonials and theoretical
treatise, there has been scarce empirical research on newsmaking criminology, particularly in
relation to countries outside of the United States and United Kingdom. To illuminate the
state of play of newsmaking criminology in Australia and New Zealand, in this paper we
analyse findings from 116 survey responses and nine interviews with criminologists working
in universities in these two countries, which provide insight into the extent and nature of
their news media engagement, and their related perceptions. Our findings indicate that most
criminologists working in Australia or New Zealand have made at least one news media
appearance in the past two years, and the majority of respondents view news media engage-
ment as a professional ‘duty’. Participants also identified key political, ethical, and logistical
issues relevant to their news media engagement, with several expressing a view that radio
Corresponding author:
Mary Iliadis, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University – Melbourne Burwood Campus, 221
Burwood Hwy, Burwood, Victoria 3125, Australia.
Email: mary.iliadis@deakin.edu.au
Australian & New Zealand Journal of
Criminology
2020, Vol. 53(1) 84–101
!The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865819854794
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and television interviewers can influence criminologists to say things that they
deem ‘newsworthy’.
Keywords
Australia and New Zealand, broadcast media, newsmaking criminology, public criminology
Date received: 26 September 2018; accepted: 13 May 2019
Introduction
In a recent editorial for the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology,
Goldsmith and Halsey (2017) emphasised the importance of open, public-facing schol-
arship addressing criminological issues in the public eye. Noting a lack of researcher
engagement with issues dominating public conversations about crime and justice,
Goldsmith and Halsey (2017, p. 472, emphasis in original) exhort criminologists to
pursue what they term a ‘criminology of the public’:
As criminologists, while we are duty-bound to undertake our research in an ethical manner
that includes due sensitivity to our subjects, we only contribute to our irrelevance to others
if we persist in ignoring the ‘elephants in the room’ that make up a significant part of what
we might call the criminology of the public. By this, we mean (as distinct from public crim-
inology) the folk knowledge, understandings, and policy priorities surrounding matters of
crime and criminal justice that those outside the discipline of criminology, and indeed the
wider academy, who read the paper, listen to the news, and vote, hold and are concerned
about. Public criminology is slightly different, focusing on how criminologists position
themselves to contribute to public policy debates on crime and justice.
In this article, we explore one key domain in which the ‘criminology of the public’ and
‘public criminology’ often intersect: criminologists’ practices of ‘newsmaking’, where
they appear in news media as experts, ‘interpreting, influencing, or shaping the presen-
tation of “newsworthy” items about crime and justice’ (Barak, 1988, p. 566). While
newsmaking criminology has been the subject of many think pieces, manifestos
(Barak, 1988), and ‘cookbooks’ providing ‘recipes’ for ‘going public’ with research
(Carrier, 2014, p. 86), empirical studies of newsmaking criminology practices are rela-
tively few and far between, particularly beyond the US (Tewksbury, Miller, &
DeMichele, 2006) and UK (Groombridge, 2007).
To date, there have been no in-depth empirical studies of ‘newsmaking criminology’
that draw attention to the extent and nature of criminologists’ news media engagement
in Australia and New Zealand henceforth (ANZ), or the context-dependent climate in
these countries for criminological newsmaking. Drawing on an analysis of 116 survey
responses and nine interviews with criminologists working in ANZ universities, our
research aims to address this dearth of knowledge by shedding light on the extent
and nature of ANZ criminologists’ news media engagement, their practices of news-
making, and their attitudes toward broadcast media.
Iliadis et al. 85
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