True Crime Exposure and Its Effects on Fear, Punitiveness, and Legal Compliance Among College Students

• In Event: Sociology of Law Section Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Sociology of Law Section Roundtables: Table 6 — Punishment, Governance, and Social Control

Abstract

True crime media – which focuses overwhelmingly on serial killers, notorious murders, and cold cases featuring white, middle class, female victims - has become a popular source of infotainment. To the extent that the genre distorts the frequency of violent crime, who is most at risk of victimization, and the ability of law enforcement to control it, documenting true crime’s effect on men and women’s fears, perceptions of risk, and attitudes about law and punishment is important for understanding how culture shapes citizens relationships to law. Using a novel design that combines experimental methods with in-depth interviewing, our study asks the following questions: 1) How does exposure to true crime narratives that portray women as victims and men as violent perpetrators affect men and women’s fears and perceptions of the likelihood they will be victimized? 2) How does exposure to true crime media affect people’s retributive impulses? 3) How does exposure to true crime media affect people’s intentions to comply with the law? We conducted an experiment in which we randomly assigned college students to a treatment condition (N=75) in which they were exposed to a brief true crime podcast clip or to a control condition (N=76). We then conducted interviews designed to explore people’s fear, punitive attitudes, and legal compliance intentions. Preliminary results show that exposure to true crime media increased women’s fears and perceptions of risks. Additional tests of our other hypotheses are underway.

Authors

• Justine Eatenson Tinkler, University of Georgia

• Sarah K.S. Shannon, University of Georgia

• Deven Douglas, University of Georgia

• Francesca Jepson, University of Georgia

• Naomi Kleber