News Media and Crime Perceptions: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Nicola Mastrorocco and Luigi Minale

No 11491, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In democracies voters rely on media outlets to learn about politically salient issues. This raises an important question: how strongly can media affect public perceptions? This paper uses a natural experiment – the staggered introduction of the Digital TV signal in Italy – to measure the effect of media persuasion on the perceptions individuals hold. We focus on crime perceptions and, combining channel-specific viewership and content data, we show that the reduced exposure to channels characterized by high levels of crime reporting decreases individual concerns about crime. The effect is driven by individuals aged 50 and over, who turn out to be more exposed to television while using other sources of information less frequently. Finally, we provide some evidence about the effect of the digital introduction on public policies closely related to crime perceptions and on voting behavior.

Keywords: crime perceptions; persuasion; news media; information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D83 K42 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 71 pages
Date: 2018-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-eur, nep-ict, nep-law, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (51)

Published - published in: Journal of Public Economics, 2018, 165, 230-255

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Journal Article: News media and crime perceptions: Evidence from a natural experiment (2018)
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