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Historicizing CSI and its Effect(s): The Real and the Representational in American Scientific Detective Fiction and Print News Media, 1902–1935
Abstract
Over the past decade, CBS’s hit television show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation has been characterized as novel and innovative, as one of the first times forensic science was made palatable to a popular audience. Because of its subject matter and its popularity, the show has also sparked debates about the effects of scientific representations. In this essay, I contend that both CSI and its potential effects would be better understood as part of a longer genealogy, one that accounts for debates concerning the real and the representational in American scientific detective fiction. Using a mixed methods approach from literature and science studies, I contextualize CSI via several other cultural ‘texts’: American scientific detective fiction (1909–1919) and a historical newspaper archive concerning anxieties about fictional portrayals of scientific detective work (1894–1935). By triangulating CSI and its effects with earlier representations of scientific detective work and their uptake in print news media, I draw attention to similarities between historical and contemporary debates: the relative worth of the real and the representational, the role of the media in identifying and/or constructing American anxiety about forensic science and detective work, the relative authority of (forensic) science and the police, and the differing standards of judgment for science and law.
... Yet, such impacts of media portrayals of (forensic and) police work are not new. Littlefield (2011) demonstrates very well how similar effects (educating perpetrators, causing misperceptions of police work etc.) were accredited to the early books on fictional police officers and detectives. Still, the combined strength and persuasiveness of the media content delivered via television, the sheer number of forensic and criminal investigative TV series and how they are designed can have a somewhat greater effect. ...
... Austin et al., 2002) have shown, information imparted by the media on which people base their attitudes, perceptions and knowledge is compared with individuals' real-life experience. In situations where there is no real-life experience, media content is the only source of information and therefore is unable to be validated or discredited (also see Georgette, 2010;Littlefield, 2011;Rhineberger-Dunn et al., 2017;Tyler, 2006). The work of police and investigators is clearly a field in which only a certain share of the population has any real-life experience, thereby rendering media content the only source used in shaping perceptions regarding the nature of such work (Mason, 2003;Surette, 2011). ...
Research on ‘the CSI effect’ is accumulating and accounts for a substantive body of knowledge not just in the United States of America, but also elsewhere in the world. The paper investigates one aspect of the CSI effect whereby university faculties offering forensic or criminal investigative curricula are seeing an increase in the number of students enrolling. A research study was conducted on first-year students of the Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security (Slovenia) in which they were directly asked to state the extent to which TV series and films influenced their enrollment decision. The results indicate that some students were motivated by TV series and films, although more detailed statistical inquiries only provide partial and limited support for such claims. Therefore, a more in-depth research study is required to provide better insights into this dimension of the CSI effect.
... Along with increasing individual fear and creating 'false knowledge', some argue that this misrepresentation of crime can lead to a more punitive criminal justice system and more state control (Boda, and Szabó, 2011). Since most people are not personally victims of crime, it is argued that we develop our opinions about crime from media exposure (Cheatwood, 2010;Littlefield, 2011) and these public opinions, which are based on a false understanding of crime drive public policy and the creation of laws. Furthermore, the media representation of crime has been linked to agenda setting for political action as well as a means for critiquing and/or creating an attitude of distrust or incompetence in the criminal justice system (Holbrook, and Hill, 2005;Cheatwood, 2010). ...
... Humphies (1981) argued that media representations of crime conform with publically held opinion. Fabianic makes the same argument in 1997 as do Cheatwood (2010) and Littlefield (2011) more than a decade later. ...
Social researchers have paid significant interest to the portrayal of non-whites and members of the lower classes in both news broadcasts and the fictional crime drama. They have also explored whether social programming uses educational entertainment to positively sway public opinion or as propaganda to support the status quo. Little has been done recently to determine the representation of intra- versus interracial crime in the crime drama. Also, there is the underlying assumption that may be taken almost a priori by viewers that criminals are more often portrayed as poor and non-white and victims are more often portrayed as whites with more resources. This study utilizes the first ten year of Law and Order, an immensely successful crime drama. It explores both the portrayal of victims and perpetrators by race and social class as well as an examination of how these topics are framed and communicated to the public. Descriptive statistics are used to determine whether the portrayal by race and social class is reflective of crime rates during the decades. A content analysis is used to determine if topics that deal specifically with these factors are designed to educate, maintain the status quo, or perhaps accomplish both goals.
... One of the most outstanding examples of this is the relationship between crime and the media, a subject that has been debated for dozens of years, with the argument that a superficial media culture constantly erodes moral standards. In this context, social deviance and crime in particular are perceived as a type of entertainment in the form of "police shows": television series, crime dramas, documentaries of staged reality shows, editorials, etc. (Garland & Bilby, 2011;Littlefield, 2011). This pattern makes it even harder to differentiate between factual and fictional reality. ...
In 2009, the Israeli eight former president Katzav was accused of two counts of rape against an employee working under his authority during his time as Minister of Tourism. The story of the conviction of the eighth Israeli president of sex offences turned into a high-priority media story, which stayed at the top of the Israeli media agenda for a relatively long period. This qualitative paper, is aiming to identify and analyze the various rhetorical techniques utilized by Katsav, to replace the new criminal identity attributed to him with a victimized self-identity. The victimized rhetoric which is based on justifications and accounts such as: "Reverse character assassination", "Attack the attackers" or "Contradiction technique", had served the former president as a means to reduce his responsibility, to deny it and to build an alternative narrative that presents the alleged perpetrator as a persecuted victim. Never the less, the conviction and jailing of a president for sex crimes has greatly increased the awareness of sex offences in the workplace committed by people of power and authority.
... 49 Melissa Littlefield's analysis of the ''edutainment'' value of early twentieth-century detective fiction reaches a similar conclusion: that these stories actively engaged debates about how modern forensic investigation should be conducted, serving, in effect, as ''literary advertisements for the sciences they employed.'' 50 The crime historian Haia Shpayer-Makov's account of detective policing in Victorian and Edwardian England-the second half of which surveys representations of detectives in journals and newspapers, in novels and short stories, and in memoirs-also concludes that the fictional detective was an inescapable point of reference for his factual counterpart. In police memoirs, for example, Holmes is a constant (and largely infuriating) presence, with few such texts, even into the postwar era, failing to invoke him and his exploits. ...
This article explores the articulation of the crime scene as a distinct space of theory and practice in the early twentieth century. In particular it focuses on the evidentiary hopes invested in what would at first seem an unpromising forensic object: dust. Ubiquitous and, to the uninitiated, characterless, dust nevertheless featured as an exemplary object of cutting-edge forensic analysis in two contemporary domains: writings of criminologists and works of detective fiction. The article considers how in these texts dust came to mark the furthest reach of a new forensic capacity they were promoting, one that drew freely upon the imagination to invest crime scene traces with meaning.
... Rather than rely on unreliable witness accounts, the detective Auguste Dupin looks for physical evidence and finds a hair at the crime scene that leads him to the real killer: an orangutan. Poe's 6 See Thomas (2004), Caudill (2011), andLittlefield (2011). 7 Thomas (2004), p. 10. 8 utilisation of forensic evidence in his storytelling sets up the common tropes and themes found in detective fiction throughout the nineteenth century: a police force whose methods are not scientific and who often are at a loss in a case deciding to put away an innocent person based on their faulty documentary evidence and eyewitness accounts, and a private detective who uses the power of reasoning to come to a conclusion based on the physical evidence. ...
This essay uses interviews with television creators, writers, and producers to examine how media practitioners utilise, negotiate and transform forensic science in the production of televisual stories including the creation of unique visuals, character exploration, narrative progression, plot complication, thematic development, and adding a sense of authenticity. Television as a medium has its own structures and conventions, including adherence to a show's franchise, which put constraints on how stories are told. I demonstrate how television writers find forensic science to be an ideal tool in navigating television's narrative constraints by using forensics to create conflicts, new obstacles, potential solutions, and final solutions in their stories. I show how television writers utilise forensic science to provide the scientific certainty their characters require to catch the criminal, but also how uncertainty is introduced in a story through the interpretation of the forensics by the show's characters. I also argue that televisual storytellers maintain a flexible notion of scientific realism based on the notion of possibility that puts them at odds with scientists who take a more demanding conception of scientific accuracy based on the concept of probability.
This study examines changes over time in 40 different Sherlock Holmes films and 39 television series and movies spanning from 1900 to 2017. Quantitative observations were mixed with a qualitative examination. Perceptions of law enforcement became more positive over time, the types of crime did not vary, and representation of race and gender improved over time with incrementally positive changes in the representation of queer, mentally ill, and physically handicapped individuals. The exact nature of these trends is discussed. Additionally, the trends of different decades are explored and compared. Sherlock Holmes is mostly used as a vehicle for storytelling rather than for the salacious crimes that he solves, making the identification of perceptions of crime in different decades difficult. The reasons for why different Sherlock Holmes projects were created in different eras and for different purposes are discussed.
Purpose: The article analyzes the image of Sherlock Holmes in the works of some of the contemporary authors. The great detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a major impact not only on literature but on the world culture as a whole. This image spawned a lot of works featuring similar characters or even himself long before the series became public domain, and after that point, the number of works featuring Sherlock Holmes raised drastically. Methodology: The primary method is comparative analysis; we use it to compare the original image of Sherlock Homes with later versions Result: As one would assume, the perception of the image is different from author to author and therefore is different from the original created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In this article, we will analyze several works of fiction of contemporary authors (for example, Neil Gaiman and Mitch Cullen), the image of the great detective presented in then and compare it with the one from the original literature series. In conclusion we will discuss Sherlock Holmes as a modern archetype and its most prominent features. Applications: This research can be used for universities, teachers, and students. Novelty/Originality: In this research, the model of The Image of Sherlock Holmes in Contemporary British-American Fiction is presented in a comprehensive and complete manner.
This book addresses a significant gap in the literature and provides a comprehensive overview of the sociology of forensic science. Drawing on a wealth of international research and case studies, this book explores the intersection of science, technology, law and society and examines the production of forensic knowledge. This book explores a range of key topics such as: The integration of science into police work and criminal investigation, The relationship between law and science, Ethical and social issues raised by new forensic technology including DNA analysis, Media portrayals of forensic science, Forensic policy and the international agenda for forensic science. This book is important and compelling reading for students taking a range of courses, including criminal investigation, policing, forensic science, and the sociology of science and technology.
This book identifies, traces, and interrogates contemporary American culture's seemingly endless fascination with forensic science. It looks to the many different sites, genres, and media where the forensic has become a cultural commonplace. It turns firstly to the most visible spaces where forensic science has captured the collective imagination: crime films and television programmes. In contemporary screen culture, crime is increasingly framed as an area of scientific inquiry and, even more frequently, as an area of concern for female experts. One of the central concerns of this book is the gendered nature of expert scientific knowledge, as embodied by the ubiquitous character of the female investigator. Steenberg argues that our fascination with the forensic depends on our equal fascination with (and suspicion of) women's bodies-with the bodies of the women investigating and with the bodies of the mostly female victims under investigation.
This article considers the role of animal rights-based journalism and its connection to teaching media law and ethics to undergraduate students in an Australian university arts faculty. An anecdotal discussion of a reflective practice informing the teaching of an undergraduate course in a journalism major relates questions of ethics and law to broader considerations of the role of advocacy in and around journalism, and media practice. It is argued that animal rights-related stories have a role in training media professionals, and also in inspiring journalists to envision their own work as part of the democratic mechanisms of social and legal reform in Australia.
Over the past decade, popular media has promulgated claims that the television program CSI and its spinoffs and imitators have had a pernicious effect on the public understanding of forensic science, the so-called "CSI effect." This paper analyzes those media claims by documenting the ways in which the media claims that CSI "distorts" an imagined "reality." It shows that the media appropriated the analytic stance usually adopted by science advocates, portraying the CSI effect as a social problem in science communication. This appropriation was idiosyncratic in that it posited, as a social problem, a "surfeit" of knowledge and positive imagery about science, rather than the more familiar "deficits." In addition, the media simultaneously appropriated both "traditional" and "critical" PUS discourses. Despite this apparent contradiction, the paper concludes that, in both discourses, the media and its expert informants insist upon their hegemony over "the public" to articulate the "reality" of forensic science.
The "CSI effect" is a term that legal authorities and the mass media have coined to describe a supposed influence that watching the television show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation has on juror behavior. Some have claimed that jurors who see the high-quality forensic evidence presented on CSI raise their standards in real trials, in which actual evidence is typically more flawed and uncertain. As a result, these CSI-affected jurors are alleged to acquit defendants more frequently. This Review argues that, while some existing evidence on juror decisionmaking is consistent with the CSI effect, it is equally plausible that watching CSI has the opposite impact on jurors and increases their tendency to convict. The perceived rise in acquittals can also plausibly be explained without any reference either to watching CSI or to viewing crime dramas more generally. For these reasons, and because no direct research supports the existence or delineates the nature of the CSI effect, calls for changes to the legal system are premature. More generally, the issues raised by current attention to the CSI effect illustrate the problems that arise when proposed changes in the legal system are supported by plausible, but empirically untested, "factual" assertions.
The simultaneous publication in 1992 of two texts dealing with a global decline in sperm potency, P. D. James's The Children of Men and Elisabeth Carlsen's "Evidence for Decreasing Quality of Semen during the Past 50 Years," inaugurates the exploration of another kind of sterility: the failure of feminist literary criticism and feminist science studies to converge as a fertile zone of inquiry and analysis. This article considers the modern discipline of literary studies, as well as feminist literary criticism and feminist science studies, and suggests how Latour's seven rules of method might be adapted to produce cross-fertilization between these fields. . .
Police perceptions as to the influence of CSI and similar forensic and/or police procedural television programs on public expectations of the investigative process in the field is the focus of the present study. Through qualitative interviews with 31 members of Canadian police forces, I explore the question of whether police investigative personnel view media representations of their work as negatively influencing public expectations, thereby creating a source of occupational role strain for police officers. What is revealed is that the majority of investigative personnel interviewed have experienced citizen queries and demands attributed to consumption of unrealistic images of police work in television programs. Where a minority of investigators report feelings of frustration due to the role strain associated with having their expert knowledge and work methods questioned, the majority of those interviewed saw such queries as opportunities for educating the public about the realities of policing.
Describes the development of the ways in which psychology has been used in the fictional world of the mystery/detective novel. Application of psychology has included (1) the use of experimental techniques, such as laboratory techniques and deductive reasoning, and (2) the use of applied theories, such as those on motivation or personality, by detectives, psychological consultants, and psychologist-detectives to solve crimes in popular literature. Some of these stories, such as those of C. D. King, a fiction writer who was also a psychologist, mock the usefulness of psychology. Other writers have been optimistic about psychology's helpfulness. The psychology of the detective story can be a fruitful area for exploring the usefulness of psychology to the solution of crimes and mysteries. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
CSI has consistently been among the top rated television programs since its debut in 2000. What is the secret to its popularity? Our analysis reveals that CSI combines the traditions of television's crime genre, especially the police procedural, with a creative sense of forensic realism. CSI constructs the illusion of science through its strategic web of forensic facticity. Ironically, although CSI depicts unrealistic crimes in a melodramatic fashion, this crime drama does so in a manner that suggests that its science is valid, that the audience understands science and can use it to solve crimes.
Since it first aired in 2000, CSI has consistently been among the top-rated television programs in the United States. In this article, we analyze CSI’s debut season and also include observations about the program today as well as its two spin-offs: CSI: NY and CSI: Miami. We are interested in the cultural meanings conveyed in this very popular forensic crime drama, especially in terms of the moral authority of the police and of science. We consider how CSI uses the conventions of the crime genre to assert the police as a moral authority. We also demonstrate how CSI portrays a sense of forensic realism, and, in so doing, asserts the veracity of science. We conclude with a discussion of what these meanings suggest about the legitimacy of policing and of science.
Although the popular television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation presents cutting-edge images and laboratory techniques, it reiterates the reassuring ideological message and the glorification of the man of science that typify Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. While the Holmes stories use reassuring, formulaic narratives to consolidate a normative national identity and counter increasing disenchantment with empire, CSI replays a similar sort of procedural detective story to reassure viewers with the fantasy that the United States can be secured amidst threats of violence and terrorism, that individual identity, as well as national identity, can be fixed and scientifically assured.
The use of social science - of psychology in particular - to inform legal theory and practice is fast becoming the latest craze in the pages of legal academia. Despite this increase in research, practitioners in both disciplines have been frustrated, as well. Social scientists and others have viewed the legal system as underusing, misusing, or ignoring their theories and research. At the same time, the law has typically viewed social science as atheoretical, or as not yet having reached sufficient consensus to have anything helpful to say to the legal system. In the present paper I address a number of these issues: the peculiar relationship between psychology and law; traditional areas that psycholegal scholars have examined and the successes and failures in those areas; evaluation of some of the current trends of incorporating social science work into legal academia (e.g., behavioral law and economics, law and the emotions); and, especially, suggestions for how to ameliorate some of the tension between the two disciplines that has led to frustration on both "sides." In addition to descriptive accounts of successful and unsuccessful interdisciplinary work by both legal scholars and social scientists, I try to identify ways of addressing some of the tensions between law and social science - some may be irremediable, but for others I suggest concrete ways to resolve them. First, I discuss substantive areas in which interdisciplinary communication can be developed. I also emphasize methodological steps social scientists can take to most usefully present research to the legal system, focusing on meta-analytic techniques in particular. In the article's final sections I address tensions less conducive to remedy, but I close with optimism about the present and future of law and social science in the twenty-first century.
Two of a number of hypotheses loosely referred to as the CSI Effect suggest that the television program and its spin-offs, which wildy exaggerate and glorify forensic science, affect the public, and in turn affect trials either by (a) burdening the prosecution by creating greater expectations about forensic science than can be delivered or (b) burden the defense by creating exaggerated faith in the capabilities and reliability of the forensic sciences. Surprisingly, no published empirical research puts these hypotheses to a test. The present study did so by presenting to mock jurors a simulated trial transcript which included the testimony of a forensic scientist. The case for conviction was relatively weak, unless the expert testimony could carry the case across the threshold of reasonable doubt. In addition to reacting to the trial evidence, respondents were asked about their television viewing habits. Findings: Compared to non-CSI viewers, CSI viewers were more critical of the forensic evidence presented at the trial, finding it less believable. Regarding their verdicts, 29% of non-CSI viewers said they would convict, compared to 18% of CSI viewers (not a statistically significant difference). Forensic science viewers expressed more confidence in their verdicts than did non-viewers. Viewers of general crime program, however, did not differ significantly from their non-viewing counterparts on any of the other dependent measures, suggesting that skepticism toward the forensic science testimony was specific to those whose diet consisted of heavy doses of forensic science television programs.
The Yearbook of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature
- M D Obuchowski