Fear of Crime and Television Use: A Uses and Gratifications Approach

Abstract

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.

Life according to television. Implications of genre-specific cultivation effects: The Gratification/Cultivation model

“…Tapper, 1995). How intertwined motives and effects are, can be assessed with several studies that follow a uses-andgratifications-paradigm while using the very same data set a cultivation researcher would use (e. g., Oliver and Armstrong, 1995;Minnebo, 2000). However, there is no reason to dismiss one causal hypothesis in favor of the other.…”

Interest Rate Demands and Television Viewing—Is a Single Exposure More Influential Than Routine Viewing?

“…This curtails the potency of using selective exposure as an alternative interpretation of our findings (cf. Minnebo, 2000), but it still should be emphasized that without the trigger of exposure to a shocking news clip non-discriminated viewing alone is not strong enough to leave an effect on interest rate requirements.…”

(In)seguridad, medios y miedos: una mirada desde las experiencias y las prácticas cotidianas en América Latina

“…De hecho, hay toda una línea de investigación sobre la relación entre los medios de comunicación y las percepciones de la delincuencia a partir del paradigma de los usos y gratificaciones (Palmgreen, 1985), que se centra en las características de la audiencia para entender los efectos mediáticos. Incluso, algunos autores han empleado este paradigma, así como la teoría del mood management (Zillmann, 2000), para revertir la dirección de influencia entre consumo de medios y opinión pública, es decir, que aquellos que tienen temor a la delincuencia son más proclives a exponerse a los medios (Gunter, 1987;Minnebo, 2000). Ello, porque cuando existe temor, se instalan mecanismos cognitivos de percepción selectiva y recuerdo selectivo que tienden a verificar el temor y la desconfianza hacia los demás (Helsper y Manzi, 2003;Van del Bulck, 2004).…”