The Effects of Crime News

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Audiences have to be observers in the passive visual media such as TV news, films and television dramas and music videos, even though emerging interactive visual media like the Internet and video games. In other words, audiences only have a passive approach to receive the information of crime news. However, the media more considers their own benefit on the basis of analysis before, this could lead people to a worse way to express their thoughts and feelings.

One of the worse performances is fear. Fear might produce terrible and harmful social results. It will create protective and avoidance behaviours involving in constraining socialization and restricting movement, both of them could prevent the life satisfaction and destroy the informal control (Clemente and Kleiman 1977; Dobbs, Waid, and Shelley 2009; Ferraro 1995, 1996; Hale 1996; Warr 1984, 2000, cited in Kohm et al., 2012). Crime news could make audiences feel fear. According to Sacco (2005, cited in Kohm et al, 2012), he advises that fear of crime has several aspects including cognitive, emotional, and behavioural. Cognition could focus on people’s assessment of their likelihood of victimization. It might be impacted by emotion that is the centre of feeling about crime. Then behaviours will concentrate on the response of people about crime. Similarly, Kohm et al. discuss the relationship between the media and people’s emotion especially fear of crime as well. They mention crime news can be regarded as the second-hand information. It not directly experiences with crime, but it increases the public’s fear and make them feel that the victimization is possible. Therefore, people who receive the messages from the media about crime become the indirect victim by their fear. For example, an audience lives in a certain place where happened a murder, this will cause the person to feel fear and rather keep himself or herself at home to view more news about this crime. This example shows two possibilities. One is media consumption. There is a cultivation theory mentioned in Kohm and his colleagues’ article. It points out that crime news stories could increase the consumptions from the public, particularly television news. The other is people would like to choose items that resonate with their worldview (Shrum, 2002, cited in Kohm et al., 2012). It seems like conflicting because audiences receive indirect information and it is hard to judge whether the news is objective. Thus, those people whose voluntary consumption is completely relative to their emotion. Huma reports that females are much more influenced by the effect of crime news than males in her research (2015). Furthermore, Kohm et al. point out that not only gender could exist distinction but also race and region can present differences about fear of crime. However, there is a limited result about age. It cannot be ensured that different ages will produce different outcomes as well. Even more an interesting finding from Kohm and his colleagues’ article is that the effect of internet on people about fear of crime news is the smallest because of its various degrees of accuracy and credibility. But it also is important because it is a good opportunity that people could participate in any discussions and communicate their worries. This behaviour might be more positive than other impulsive behaviours to vent fear of crime.

From the perspectives of people, some behaviours might be positive feedback after viewing crime news. Jackson argues that fear of crime could be harmful as well as helpful. Because it motivates some people to take precautions, and this behaviour might make them feel safer (Jackson, 2009). He identifies a new study which finds people to transform their worries from being victims into solving the problems. This will lead people to taking practical action against crime. Based on the study, there are some precautions that people could choose, such as avoiding public transport, installing alarms in the front of the door, and prepensely hiding valuables. Though crime news coverage could reduce the quality of people’s life, it also depends on their attitudes. Jackson’s investigation which interviewed 2,844 persons is designed to ask about the relations between crime and precautions. It can be classified as three groups which are the unworried, the dysfunctionally worried, and the functionally worried. The unworried people felt no anxiety about crime even though they took precautions. Those people who are classified as the dysfunctionally worried show they would take precautions because of fear of crime. That means their quality of life was seriously impaired. However, those functionally worried people also worried about crime and took precautions, their quality of life was not obviously affected. This results imply that fear of crime could benefit people to improve their self-production awareness. As the same as Huma and Kohm et al., Jackson analyses the gender’s distinction of impact on fear of crime. It proves that females are more markedly worried about crime than males again. It is true that people have nuanced and complex reactions to fear of crime. Combining with the effect of the media, it might show a critical problem. People who are more worried and more anxious about crime could have a positive and healthy psychology. In contrast, those persons who have indifferent attitude even feel excited could be a potential threaten of society.

Conclusion

The crime news coverage seems like an objective existence of the public’s life. They cannot be separated. People have to rely on the media to learn more information about crime. However, the information is broadcasted by the media as a second-hand source. It is hard to be fair and just for the media because of profit motivation. Furthermore, the media might broadcast the information with personal emotion and subjective assume by the journalists. Because the journalists are persons, whose emotion will also be impacted by crime news. The media affects the public’s emotion and behaviours on the basis of above analysis. Women are the most vulnerable groups. How to balance crime news coverage and people’s emotions and behaviours becomes a thought-provoking course. Moreover, “Are there any different responses in the different ages about one crime news” could be deeply explored in the future research.

Reference:

Graham C. L. Davey, 2012, The psychological effects of TV news, Psychology Today, viewed at 5 September, 2016 <https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/why-we-worry/201206/the-psychological-effects-tv-news>.

Huma ZE, 2015, Effects of crime news on emotional response of audience, J Mass