Net legitimacy: internet and social media exposure and attitudes toward the police

Abstract

Prior research suggests that exposure to adverse news stories involving the police negatively impacts consumers’ attitudes toward these actors. Yet, most investigations have neglected to examine contemporary media diets, such as online consumption and engagement, and attitudes toward the police. Using a sample of mostly young adults, the current study contributes to the media effects literature by examining the relationships between online (Internet and social media) consumption and engagement and attitudes toward police legitimacy. Results indicate that consuming negative police stories on the Internet is associated with perceiving the police as less legitimate. Furthermore, this relationship varies by political ideology but not race. Findings and direction for future research are discussed.

Notes

Notes

1 There may be differences in attitudes toward the police between aspiring law enforcement officers and other criminal justice majors (Sethuraju et al. 2019). Unfortunately, however, we do not have additional measures of career aspirations.

2 We also replicated the analysis in Table 3 by separating the two domains of police legitimacy (willingness to obey and normative alignment) as opposed to the single scale presented. One difference the full models did emerge. Specifically, consuming negative police stories on the Internet was negatively related to willingness to obey and normative alignment at p < .10 when considered independently. There were no differences in the other key media independent variables or controls.

3 As suggested by a reviewer, we also ran the models controlling for location (1 = Northeast, 0 = Midwest). No differences in the full models emerged between our key media variables and policing outcomes.

4 Owing to the small sample of black respondents in the sample (N = 59), we disaggregate race by white and non-white respondents.

5 Consistent to previous research on media effects (Intravia et al. 2018; Intravia 2019; Intravia and Pickett 2019; Roche et al. 2016), political ideology was dichotomized (1 = conservative and 0 = liberal/moderate) in the disaggregated analysis.