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Law&Order Svu
The Role of Science in a media
Law and Order: Special Victims Unit Science plays a major role in the story line of NBC’s police-procedural drama, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit; more specifically, forensic science. From beginning to end, the characters depend on the use and their understanding of forensic science to uncover the mysteries of each examined case. The advancements in technology along with the psychological approach used by detectives to solve each case make the serious and critical role that science plays more than evident to the audience. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit series premiered on the NBC network in the fall of 1999 as the first spin-off of the successful crime drama, Law & Order. Law & Order: SVU instantly took off and, over time, became the highest rated series of all the Law & Order series. SVU was the first of the Law & Order franchise to win an Emmy in 2006 along with numerous other nominations and awards. Since then, the series has been recognized as the highest-rated scripted drama of the NBC network to date. The series is centered around a hardworking police unit focused on solving the most complicated of sexually-based crimes. The use of science is heavily relied upon in order to solve the mysteries that come along with these intricate plots, and is most often the determining factor of these cases. As in the same fashion as the other Law & Order series, the cases examined by SVU are often “ripped from the headlines” of real newspapers and are loosely based on real crimes that received media attention. The show follows the detectives of the 16th precinct of the New York Police Department as they go about solving each individual case story. Because the show is based on sexually-charged offenses, many of the scenes are located in or guided off of details and evidence found in the hospitals and medical examiner’s office. The information given by officials in these fields is most significant when



Cited: Green, Susan; Dawn, Randee (2009), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: The Unofficial Companion, Dallas: BenBella Books Bible, Stephanie, Michael Nicastro, and Chris Todd. "A Brief Background of Forensic Science." VizProto HOME. Web. <http:www.//vizproto.prism.asu.edu>. Amirall, Jose R. and Kenneth G. Furton. The Evolution, Practice and Future of the Use of Science in the Administration of Justice. Standardization News. Vol. 23, Number 4. April 1995 "Law & Order: SVU." Wikipedia. Web. <http://www.wikipedia.org/>. "Forensic Science." Wikipedia. Web. <http://www.wikipedia.org/>.

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