Applied to the relationship between television exposure and fear of crime, uses and gratifications theory predicts that people who are fearful will expose themselves to media content that helps them to reduce this fear. Previous research found that fear of crime leads to an increase in exposure to crime drama, since most crime drama depicts a just world, where criminals are ultimately punished. The present article takes this reasoning one step further, hypothesizing that an increase in the 'relevance 9 of fear of crime (i.e. more personal experience with crime and a lower estimation of one's own ability to cope with a threat) leads to an increase in actual fear of crime, thus influencing media exposure. It is predicted that the more relevant fear of crime is to a person, the more this person will expose him or herself not only to crime drama but to crime shows and reality-TV as well, since these programmes can be read as offering advice on how to avoid victimization and how to improve coping ability. Using a structural equation analysis, this theory was tested on a sample of 328 undergraduate students in Flanders, Belgium. Results confirm the hypothesis, although slight differences exist between men and women.

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Becoming a crime victim is often associated with the development of psychological distress symptoms. In turn, these symptoms have been found to be related to a decrease in perceived social support by the victim. From a uses and gratifications point of view, the increase in distress and the decrease in perceived social support could well affect a victim's television use. Furthermore, the compensation hypothesis (Davis and Kraus, 1989) proposes that people with little social contact use mass media to compensate for social isolation. It could therefore be hypothesized that increased use of television for reasons of companionship is related to higher levels of psychological distress and lower levels of perceived social support. The present study used a structural equation model to test this hypothesis. The sample consisted of 212 Flemish victims of crime. The results confirm the proposed relationships and hypotheses. Directions for future research are discussed.

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