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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