Trial by Media?: Media Use, Fear of Crime, and Attitudes Toward Police

ABSTRACT

This study examined the cultivation effects of local news media use on Chicago residents’ fear of crime and attitudes toward police. Chicago, IL was chosen because of the city's struggles with gang violence and with police misconduct, both which have been covered extensively by local news media. Controlling for individual level variables, including previous crime victimization and neighborhood level contexts, a survey of Chicago residents found support for local news’ cultivation of residents’ fear of crime, particularly by radio and TV. It is suggested that the brief and sensationalistic formats used by news media to report crime stoke residents’ fear of crime. Local media also have positive effects on local residents’ general attitudes toward police. Regarding a widely publicized incident of police misconduct, this study found that race moderated residents’ attitudes toward the White police officer who shot and killed an unarmed Black teenager. The results showed that media shaped negative perceptions of the police only for the non-Caucasians (mostly African Americans) surveyed. It was found that fear of crime only mediated the effects of media on attitudes toward police when the specific event involved an incident of police misconduct, although the effects were minimal.

KEYWORDS:

• Fear of crime
• attitudes toward police
• cultivation theory
• police effectiveness
• local media use
• police use of force

Acknowledgements

The research project was reviewed by the Institutional Review Board at Michigan State University and was determined to be exempted from further review.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Authors are listed in alphabetical order by last name.

Notes

1 This variable had four categories: (1) respondents’ general perceptions of police, (2) their evaluations of the quality and effectiveness of (satisfaction with) policing, such as crime/problem prevention and solving, (3) their perceptions of the procedural justice meted out by police in terms of treating the public in general, and (4) their perceptions of how police treat different races and use force.

2 The analysis is based on 5,000 bootstraps with news media use as a predictor, fear of crime as a mediator, race as a moderator (0 = Caucasian, 1 = Other), and attitudes towards Van Dyke as an outcome variable. Age, gender, education, political affiliation, and victimization experiences were included as covariates.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Mass Communication & Society Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (https://aejmc.us/mcs/awards/research-awards/research-award/).