Does the media and the amount of exposure to specific news media affect fear of crime? This question is examined in a survey with data collected from three universities in the United States and one in Canada; The Impact of Media on Fear of Crime among University Students: A Cross-National Comparison, goes over the results. It’s believed that fear in itself can be debilitating leading to harmful social outcomes. Vincent Sacco believes there are three dimensions to fear of crime: cognitive, emotional and behavioral. Cognitive looks at a how a person assesses their likelihood of being victimized. Emotional is how someone feels about crime, and behavioral is a person’s response to fear of their perceived likelihood of being victimized. …show more content…
The following universities were given a self-administered survey as part of the current study this article was based on: Colorado State University (CSU), University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), and Florida State University (FSU) and one Canadian, University of Winnipeg (UW). The campuses of UTA, FSU and UW are located in higher crime urban areas. In Florida and Texas, violent and property crime rates are higher than the national average. Winnipeg’s violent and property crimes rates are also higher than the rest of Canada 's crimes levels. Criminal Justice or Criminology majors reported a lower fear of crime compared to other majors or students who were yet undecided.
The survey also showed that there was a similar rate of concern between both nations; reporting on a scale of 1-10 the average was seven, clearly showing a somewhat high concern for crime. In summary, the findings for the survey are as follows: women, whites, non-criminal justice/criminology majors reported having more fear of crime. A general concern about crime was relatively the same between the American and Canadian students though Canadians had higher rate of fear for risk of violent victimization and Americans had a higher rate for property victimization.
The media plays a substantial role in determining the amount of fear of crime that people hold. This comes from the fact that the media extensively and disproportionately cover crime stories. But how does
Media can impact individuals understanding about the operations of the criminal justice system in different ways. Three ways media impacts individuals are based off the fear of crime, attitudes, and police effectiveness.
(Torres, S. 1998) Research indicates that fear of crime, whether self-imposed or realistic, can immobilize individuals, harm the local economy and negatively impact social interactions as well as the quality of life (Albanese, 1990 Skogan (1987) argues that crime victims believe that more crime exists, are worried about victimization and attempt to protect themselves. Parker and Ray (1990) as well as Krannich et al. (1989) revealed victimization to be a predictor related to fear of crime. Additional support for these findings was provided by Smith and Hill (1991), who showed that actual victimization appears to increase fear of crime by increasing the perception of vulnerability. (Torres, S. 1998) Research also shows that fear of crime among minorities and those of lower socioeconomic status is related to their vulnerability in the urban environment (Liska et al., 1982). The elderly who are physically vulnerable and less agile are more fearful of crime even though they are less likely to be victims. (Torres, S. 1998) The proliferation and presence of gangs in the United States is also linked to the concept of social incivilities and increased fear of crime. This problem of fear does not go away. The people not only have a constant fear, it continues to the next generation of people in
Criminology is continuously changing and developing. Advances of technology have made media our primary news source for crime. We believe the stories told by our local news media, not doubting a word because these sources are supposedly reliable. Nevertheless, they sometimes do spread false information. It may be intentional or unintentional. According to Cohen, media presence amplifies a problem which did not previously exist (Steeves and Milford, 2015) thus creating a moral panic. As media influence increases, it is necessary for criminologists to study moral panics, such as the Columbine School shootings or the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.
Pop culture media, like Law and Order, has a way of showing people how crime is portrayed. Case (2013), mentions that past studies about the representation of crime in the media has increasingly shown fear to the public and portraying unrealistic standards of how crime is in the real world. Media likes to exaggerate how things truly are in the real world, which is why people believe what the media portrays. People will believe that everything they see in a television show can truly happen in the real world, which certain things can happen but not everything. If people end up believing in how the media portrays crime then people will be living in fear of their society being more violent than it actually is (Case, 2013).
Assess sociological explanations of the role of the mass media in creating moral panics about crime and deviance:
There are several ways that fear of crime has a relationship with violence. In many communities have experience higher fear of crime levels? Franklin (2009) in his current research he tested the vulnerability of female and male to indicated if fear of crime was increase by age. In his finding this facts are significant since there is a higher level among age for males while females tend to reduce fear. Age also plays a big role when fear of crime is concern in the communities.
The role the mass media plays in the public perception of Law Enforcement and the Criminal Justice System is potentially important in relation to the viewer’s attitude and beliefs. Does the general public support law enforcement or does the media create a negative perception of the police in the press and on network television? The CSI Effect has gained huge popularity among researchers, what is it; and how does it affects the public’s role in criminal proceedings? In relation to the mass media, how important of a role do common demographic variables such as race and age play a part in the public’s perception of law enforcement?
Many times, the media is the main cause in contributing and encouraging the creation of crime myths. The mass media have responsibilities to update the public on the activities occurring domestically and internationally. Stories or reports have to grab the attention of viewers and often times this is accomplished through methods of dramatizing and sensationalizing stories. Instead of stating solely fact, mass media reports have become bias opinions, allowing for it to evolve into more of an entertainment business rather than news.
According the to the authors, measuring the relationship between where people live and the fear of crime is one approach to specifying the race-specific crime threat hypothesis. Another method was to measure directly the extent to which people associate crime with blacks. People used to support their data were adults 18 years of age and older, 56.5 percent female 79.8 percent white, 11.4 percent black and 7.5 percent Hispanic. 44 percent of the sample had graduated from college. The median age was 46
on a person’s perception of crime, which can cultivate an unhealthy fear of crime that’s not warranted.
Already existing data and research proves that experience higher levels of fear of crime than. The article provides evidence for this and evidence of research that states that there is a correlation between gender and the consumption of crime related media. Combining these two angles of research not only creates a platform for the author's’ argument it creates an undeniable wall of evidence for their claim. The two authors of this article provide the research, the evidence, and then combine the two to provide
Chiricos and his colleagues (1995) found that television news associated with crime was significantly related to higher fear of crime for white women between the ages 30-54 in particular. Other findings of their research, was that the only significant relationship between fear of crime and listening to Radio News is reported for both, white and black women. The TV news effects are found primarily for female, white, and the middle-age audience and those with recent victim experiences, low income, and living in disproportionately black neighborhoods. Regardless of being recent victims of crime or not and living in high income or low income neighborhoods, women showed the most significant television news effect, which concluded that other factors other than resonance was at play. Therefore, their data clearly indicate the relationship between television news and fear of crime is entirely exclusive to white women, despite the fact that they are at low victim risk, according to Chiricos (1995) and his colleagues’
It has been shown that “people’s opinion about crime and criminal justice is shaped by the indirect information obtained from the media” (Living). CSI was one of the first shows to display the forensics side of solving crimes. This was many peoples first look into what labs do and how they solve crimes and, unfortunately, it is not very accurate. In one article by Lisa A. Kort-Butler it was stated that, “the results [of the study] support the idea that program type matters when it comes to understanding people’s fear of crime and their attitudes about criminal justice,” showing that there is a correlation between what is shown on TV and what people believe (Kort-Butler 2011). This means that people become more fearful of crime or being a victim of crime if they watch crime shows.
The importance given to certain crimes in the daily newspapers and other media sources shows us proof to the fact that crime is a topic that has the public’s interest and is a focus of their worries (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2001). It goes on to discuss the fact that crime as reported on by the media increases the public’s levels of fears and that there is little or no correlation to actual levels of violent crime in our society today.
Fear, in this topic, can be defined as an anticipation of victimization, rather than fear of an actual victimization. This type of fear relates to how vulnerable a person feels. In his article, Fear of crime: A review of the literature, Hale suggests that the mass media frequently create