Media Consumption and Fear of Crime in a Large Chinese City

Objective While empirical research on Chinese people's perceptions of crime has developed encouragingly during the past decade, an important issue regarding correlates of such fear – the media effect, frequently found by the Western literature as a critical source of fear – has largely eluded scholarly attention. This study investigates the effects of consumption of different media types on Chinese fear of crime, while taking a wide range of other theoretically relevant and empirically validated factors into consideration. Methods Relying on data collected from a sample of residents in a large Chinese city, this study uses ordinary least squares regression to investigate the correlates of fear of crime. Results Consumption of newspapers and radio reports of news is associated with lower levels of fear, and consumption of political and social news from television and the Internet is connected to higher levels of fear of crime. The vulnerability model, crime and justice model, and community model have also received some support in these data. Conclusion This study provides robust support for the importance of the media in shaping public fear of crime, and indicates that the cultural context in which the media reports on crime is critical to understanding its role and impact.