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Media Consumption's Effect on Public Attitudes

Media consumption affects the public's perception of the justice system through the relationship of fear about crime, the perceived effectiveness of law enforcement, and attitudes about punishment for crime. The law and legal system has continually been portrayed in the mass media through negative portrayals of criminals, deviants, law enforcement officials, affecting the perception by the public. A research study done by Dowler in 2003, showed that the effects of media consumption does influence public attitudes regarding crime and justice. In this study a relationship between media and crime was found to be dependent on characteristics of the message and receiving audience, where substantial amounts of local crimes reported raised fear, while lower crime amounts lead to a feeling of safety.

A study conducted by Chermak, McGarrell, & Gruenewald focused on media coverage of police misconduct which produced results where the more the citizens consumed the misconduct media the more they believed in the officer’s guilt.

Law & Order: SVU Television viewers of crime based shows are more fearful of crime.

George Gerbner’s empirical studies of the impact of media consumption discovered that television viewers of crime based shows are more fearful of crime than those who are not consuming that type of media.

Article Peer-Review

Hi Arios1794,

I like what you did with incorporating the three studies that support the facts behind "Media Consumption's Effect on Public Attitudes". I think an even stronger way to support this is by potentially adding some statistics about crime itself in the United States and even crime displayed solely in the media and how realistic it actually is. I noticed how you began by discussing affects that were both positive and negative in your introduction, for example when you stated, "In this study a relationship between media and crime was found to be dependent on characteristics of the message and receiving audience, where substantial amounts of local crimes reported raised fear, while lower crime amounts lead to a feeling of safety" (lines 4-6). I thought this was a great way to lead into the affects of crime portrayed in the media on attitude, and that it adhered to Wikipedia's encyclopedic form very well. Although, I also think this paragraph tends to skew a slight bias in the negative attitudes that are a result from the portrayal of crime in the media. Maybe by adding some more examples (by either statistics or results of other studies) that support a positive impact on attitude toward crime could be a good idea. I think that by doing this you can make sure you're maintaining a neutral standpoint. Also, I thought another interesting thing you could add that would help support the article is to include various depictions of crime in the media by adding some statistics on shows or movies. For example, Law & Order, Criminal Minds, and /or CSI would be a great example of the media portrayal of crime, and I am sure there is a myriad of information about how it impact's societiy's view of crime in the real world as well as the perceived effectiveness of law enforcement. I saw that was one of the points you made in the very beginning of your paragraph (line 1-2), and I think that by doing this you would have a significantly stronger article.Arutkowska (talk) 19:10, 20 October 2017 (UTC)