Explaining the Absence of the Media in Stories of Law and Legal Consciousness

Abstract

The role of the mass media as a resource for making sense of law has seldom been directly examined. Instead, it is simply assumed that the media have a strong impact on people’s perceptions of the law. However, I argue that the media may be unimportant to groups and individuals whose first-hand legal experiences are predominantly negative and confrontational. This is the most important finding to arise from the small case study I discuss in this article. In the lives of the individuals I interviewed, law tends to be strongly present, resulting in the perception that it is predominantly a burden. As a result, media representations of law are often overshadowed by personal experience, which helps to explain why research participants made very few explicit references to the media.

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Gies, L., (2016) “Explaining the Absence of the Media in Stories of Law and Legal Consciousness”, Entertainment and Sports Law Journal 2(1), 2. doi: https://doi.org/10.16997/eslj.147

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Lieve Gies (Lecturer at the Department of Law, Keele University)

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

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This article has been peer reviewed.

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