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Public Perceptions of the Seriousness of Crimes: To What Extent are They Driven by Television Exposure?

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Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between exposure to overall television content and television news on the one hand, and public crime seriousness perceptions, including the two main components of perceived crime seriousness, i.e., perceived wrongfulness and harm severity, on the other hand. Drawing on cultivation theory and additional literature, we have constructed three hypothetical models which, for the first time, also include conservationism and legal cynicism as mediating variables. Using structural equation modelling, we have tested the models empirically in a cross-sectional survey of 1278 adult Dutch-speaking Belgian residents. Our findings indicate that overall exposure to television content is not significantly related to perceived crime seriousness, wrongfulness, harm severity, or any of the mediating variables. Exposure to television news, however, is both directly and indirectly related to perceived crime seriousness, wrongfulness, and harm severity. These findings thus suggest the relevance of television news exposure as a predictor of people’s perceptions of crime seriousness.

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Notes

  1. We note that the relationship between media consumption and public attitudes (on crime) might be reversed as well. However, in the manuscript, we follow the majority of the previous studies and focus on the effect of media consumption on attitudes, rather than of attitudes on media consumption.

  2. Flanders was chosen as target area because the current study was funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) and carried out by Flemish researchers associated with a Flemish university.

  3. ZIP code selection probabilities increased as the number of inhabitants of the ZIP code increased.

  4. This letter contained information about the study, emphasized the anonymity and confidentiality of the answers provided, and explained the procedure for returning the questionnaire.

  5. Drawing from Schwartz et al. (2012), we used the following items: ‘It is important for me to live in secure surroundings. I avoid anything that might endanger my safety’; ‘I believe that people should do what they are told. I think people should follow rules at all times, even when no one is watching’; ‘It is important to me to be humble and modest. I try not to draw attention to myself’; ‘It is important to me that the government insures my safety against all threats. I want the state to be strong so it can defend its citizens’; ‘It is important to me always to behave properly. I want to avoid doing anything people would say is wrong’; and ‘Tradition is important to me. I try to follow the customs handed down by my religion or my family.’

  6. The deleted item was: ‘Tradition is important to me. I try to follow the customs handed down by my religion or my family.’

  7. The five items of Sampson and Bartusch’s (1998) scale are as follows: ‘Laws were made to be broken’; ‘It’s okay to do anything you want as long as you do not hurt anyone’; ‘To make money, there are no right and wrong ways anymore, only easy ways and hard ways’; ‘Fighting between friends or within families is nobody else’s business’; and ‘Nowadays a person has to live pretty much for today and let tomorrow take care of itself.’ We deleted the last two items after pre-test due to factor loading below .40.

  8. For more information about the measurement of the demographics, see Adriaenssen et al. (2018).

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Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. Susanne Karstedt (Griffith University) for suggesting us to consider conservationism and legal cynicism as mediating variables.

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) [grant number ZKC 4097].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. KU Leuven, Faculty of Law, H. Hooverplein 10, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    An Adriaenssen, Jonas Visschers & Letizia Paoli

  2. University of Michigan, Communication Studies, 5369 North Quad, 105 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-1285, USA

    Jan Van den Bulck

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  1. An Adriaenssen
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Correspondence to Letizia Paoli.

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Adriaenssen, A., Visschers, J., Van den Bulck, J. et al. Public Perceptions of the Seriousness of Crimes: To What Extent are They Driven by Television Exposure?. Eur J Crim Policy Res 26, 481–500 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10610-019-09418-2

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