“Join Our War”: The Construction of Ideology in a Newspaper Crimefighting Campaign

Abstract

An analysis of the content, language, and ideology of the 1982 New York Daily News Crimefighters Campaign was performed. It is concluded that the Campaign—molded as it was with apocalyptic language suggesting a society terminally ill with crime—presented the issue of crimefighting in a way that excluded any purposive, social policies from the range of acceptable remedies for crime. Instead, the Campaign depicted a world in which unpredictability and randomness dictated violent individual measures to protect one's self and property. While announced to “stem the awful tide of crime,” the Campaign actually implied the contradictory message that crime is beyond any remedy.