Jones, J. R. (2017). Media and social media’s impact on citizens’ perception of the frequency of crime occurrence in the United States. American International Journal of Social Science, 6(3), 97-102.
Jones’ article offers critical insights into the role of media in shaping the citizens’ perceptions of the frequency of crime in the United States. This article asserts that the media plays a central role in evaluating and reporting of criminal activities across the US. According to Jones (2017), most Americans use the media to get news about politics and crime. However, Jones cautions that while the media plays such an integral role in informing citizens of the criminal activities, the same media can still instill fear in the citizens. The reason for the propagation of this culture of fear is the overemphasis on crime reporting at the expense of other beneficial social issues. Jones establishes that the media creates a fallacy that crime is more prevalent today than it was several years ago. The media succeeds in propagating this fallacy through the repetitive and predictable airing of criminal activities.
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The article establishes that the concerned security organs have used numerous strategies to bring down crime rates significantly. However, the media paints a different picture as it claims that the crime rate has increased significantly, thus creating fear among the Americans. The author who is a professor at Northcentral University California affirms this proposition through a research study. According to the study that included 370 participants, individuals who view local news on the television reported: “increased fear of and concern for crime” (Jones, 2017). Moreover, Americans are likely to believe that they will be the next criminal targets especially if they are frequent viewers of television. The reason for this belief is the fact that television exaggerates criminal activities and events. Instead of helping the concerned agencies to reduce crime, the media glorifies criminals as if to say that they are more powerful than the security agents.
