Heath, L 1984, 'Impact of newspaper crime reports on fear of crime: multi-methodolical ivestigation', Journal of personality and social psychology

Aim

To examine the effect of newspaper reporting on fear of crime

Method

Content analysis and telephone interviews 

Participants

62 local newspapers, representing all the local press in 42 us cities for one week. 335 participants were selected randomly and interviewed by phone. participants were aged 16-83 years

Procedure

Content analysis - the researchers analyzed the crime reports in the newspapers in terms of proportion of the following :

• local crime - did the crime occur in the geographical area served by the newspaper or not?

• random crime - did the report contain any information that suggested that the victim took any action that made him or her more vulnerable? (if not, this is categorized as a random crime)

• sensationalist  crime - was the crime extremely violent or bizarre?

telephone interviews - these covered newspaper reading habits and various aspects of fear of crime

Results

Those participants who read newspapers that printed a high proportion of local crime reported higher levels of fear if the crime was described as a random or sensationalist. The researchers also conducted a follow up experiment in which 80 students read fictional accounts  of crimes. if these were local and random participants expressed higher levels of fear. interestingly, if the crimes were non local, but random and sensationalist, participants expressed lower levels of fear. the author suggests that this is due to the reports making people feel safer in their own area.