Realtionship Between the Media, Public Perceptions of...

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