When Knowledge isn’t Power, but Fear: Cultivating a Fear of Crime Through Media

• In Event: Media Depictions of Crime Perpetration: Bias, Stereotypes, and Trends

Abstract

Extant literature has examined the application of cultivation theory to perceptions of crime prevalence and severity in an individual’s community (Callahan, 2012), but research on how media fosters such a phenomenon is sparse. To explore this, our team analyzed data from a nationwide survey of 500 people, in which both perceptions of crime and crime-based news reporting were collected and delineated by news type (website, newspaper, Instagram post, etc.) and news source (CNN, Fox, etc.). Our results indicate that the source of one’s news significantly impacts their perception of crime rate and severity within their community, as well as nationwide. These findings suggest that the American public receives different interpretations of factual events relating to crime due to biased reporting and the politicization of news media.

Authors

• Matthew J. Dolliver, University of Alabama

• Tova Cohen, University of Alabama