Criminal Risk, Media Representation and Role of the Criminal Law Culture

First of all the essay is about the media’s redundant emphasis on risks and the elitist specious creation of collective worries, in particular with relation to the criminal phenomenon, presenting the results of criminological researches that validate the empirical demonstration of the media representation’s artificiality of criminal risk. The second part of the essay is dedicated to the influence of the media representation on the legislative choices of criminal politics, in particular in the actual contexts of the so-called ‘liquid democracy’ developed around the new media, focusing the attention on the risks that it might involve with reference to the violation of some fundamental principles in the democratic modern systems. The conclusion is dedicated to the criminal law culture in a possible process of criminal-political paideia adapted to democratic and mass media postmodern needs, trying to track the ontological content of the minimum levels of knowledge of the citizens, such as the internalization of those fundamental values that constitute the ethos of the contemporary civil society.