Relationship of media usage to attitudes toward police

ABSTRACT

The present study examined the contribution of exposure to entertainment and news media to attitudes toward police. Using a survey of young adults (N = 321), various media repertoires as well as other contributory variables, such as race and political affiliation, were regressed on theoretically derived attitudes toward police. Significant major predictor variables included race (African Americans), political point of view (liberal) and liberal media news outlets such as CNN and news satire shows (“The Daily Show”), all significantly associated with negative attitudes toward police. More positive associations were found for exposure to mainstream local and national TV news outlets. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Attitudes toward police
• media usage
• media repertoires
• cultivation

Most Americans have little direct experience with crime or the criminal justice system (Britto et al., 2007; Intravia et al., 2018; Roche et al., 2016). For example, Harrell and Davis (2020) reported that less than 24% of U.S. residents 16 years and older had face-to-face contact with the police in 2018, up from 21% in 2015. Previous research suggests that much of society learns about crime, policy, and the criminal justice system not through personal experience, but by media exposure (Britto et al., 2007; Intravia et al., 2018; Roche et al., 2016). As such, the perception of victims, criminals, and law enforcement is largely influenced by their representations within the media (Dowler & Zawilski, 2007).

As Callanan and Rosenberger (2011) note, crime has long been a staple of both news and entertainment media with local and national news outlets devoting substantial coverage to stories about crime and criminal justice. This coverage has spanned across television, radio, print, and online media sources. In a study of three TV local news stations in Orlando, Fla., researchers found most broadcasts began with a crime story and about a quarter of the stories covered on-air were crime related (Eschholz, 2003). National news broadcasts also have also devoted an “enormous amount of time” to crime stories with crime comprising a significant percentage of news coverage, consistently ranking as one of the top five story categories covered by national news broadcasts (Callanan & Rosenberger, 2011; Center for Media and Public Affairs, 2007). O’Hear (2020) reported finding crime stories about once every three days on the front page of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel over a one-year period. An analysis of a leading Milwaukee news/talk radio station’s (WTMJ) web site over a similar period of time found about 1.3 crime stories per day, or about four times the rate of that in the newspaper (O’Hear, 2020).

Crime dramas and police procedurals have consistently ranked among the most watched entertainment programs on TV (Donovan & Klahm, 2015; Estep & Macdonald, 1983; Koplin, 2023). In the year data for this study was collected (2021), eight of the top 20 shows according to the Nielsen TV ratings were crime or police dramas. These included the top three series for the year, “NCIS,” “The Equalizer” and “FBI” (Schneider, 2021). “Law & Order: SVU” become the longest-running live-action primetime series in American TV history with its 21^st season in 2019, surpassing its predecessor “Law & Order” record of 20 seasons (Porter, 2019). According to Dowler and Zawilski (2007) over 40% of viewers believe TV crime shows to be accurate or somewhat accurate. Colbran (2014), a former police drama scriptwriter, reports this perception is purposively perpetuated by TV shows’ producers and writers who see educating the public about police issues as part of their job.

Given the above, the scarcity of studies examining the influence of media usage on the public’s attitudes toward police seems somewhat surprising (Callanan & Rosenberger, 2011; Intravia et al., 2018). Arguably, findings from the relatively few studies that have been done have been somewhat inconsistent and hard to compare due to (1) the variety of measures used to assess attitudes toward police (Intravia et al., 2018) as well as (2) the use of individual media modalities in surveys as opposed to media repertoires to assess media usage. As Kim (2016) notes, in today’s media environment with its proliferation of news sources, researchers have found that media users receive an abundant supply of media content from multiple media. As such, media usage studies have begun to focus more on media repertoires, a collection of media sources that people regularly use, to assess how people actually use news media in the current media environment (Kim, 2016; Stromback et al., 2018).

The objective of this study then is to examine the potential cultivation effects of media usage, including viewers’ media news repertoires, on their attitudes toward police using a theoretically-derived measure for the latter.

Literature review

In the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd, TV police shows in particular came under renewed scrutiny by critics for their glamorization of police, including normalizing police misconduct, depicting excessive police force as necessary and effective, and downplaying issues of racism (Color of Change, 2020; Foreman, 2020; Lawler, 2020; Porter, 2019). Much of this criticism has been supported by content analyses of the media. In his seminal study of crime and law enforcement on prime-time television Dominick (1973) found violent crimes to account for 60% of all crimes – “nearly the opposite of the real world” – of which almost 90% were solved, compared to 23% in real life, and 11% of police officers on TV, predominantly White Americans, were found to have engaged in illegal or questionable means to solve a crime or gather evidence typically (p. 245). Little has changed over the years. Violent crimes are still prevalent, most crimes are solved by the police, and police misconduct is still present but seldom if ever punished (Britto et al., 2007; Donovan & Klahm, 2015). News media outlets, as noted by Britto et al. (2007), have also focused disproportionately on violent crime and murder relative to other criminal activities in their crime news reporting. In a content analysis of cable and network news programs Dixon and Williams (2015) found 60% contained at least one perpetrator accused of a crime, about half of which were violent crimes. This emphasis on violent crime and the uncanny ability of police to solve cases even at times using questionable tactics, has tended to paint a positive picture of police on TV. In a classic cultivation study, Donovan and Klahm (2015) performed a content analysis and then a survey based on their findings from the content analysis and found exposure to TV crime dramas associated with the perception of police being successful at reducing crime, police misconduct not leading to false confessions and the force used by police usually being necessary. As such, the following is predicted:

H1:

Exposure to (a) TV crime dramas and (b) TV police reality shows will be positively associated with viewers’ attitudes toward police.

Attitudes toward police

Studies of attitudes toward police have focused almost exclusively on explanatory variables such as age, race, gender, and contact with the police rather than looking at how the measurement of public attitudes toward police is theoretically operationalized (Zhao & Ren, 2015). As a result, there has been a lack of consistency in measures of ATP with different items being used to measure the same or similar dimensions. For example, Callanan and Rosenberger (2011) operationalized confidence in police as protection from crime (1 item), whereas Eschholz et al. (2002) used overall job performance (4 items) in their operationalization of confidence in police. And Dowler (2002) combines items estimating confidence in police, fairness, and use of force into one measure assessing police effectiveness. Overall, media usage researchers have used a variety of constructs as dependent variables to measure attitudes toward police, including police legitimacy (Intravia et al., 2018), expansion of police powers (Roche et al., 2016), confidence in police (Callanan & Roseberger, 2011; Eschholz et al., 2002); police misconduct and discrimination Donovan & Klahm, 2015; Dowler & Zawilski, 2007), police fairness (Callanan & Rosenberger, 2011), use of force (Callanan & Rosenberger, 2011; Donovan & Klahm, 2015;) and police effectiveness (Dowler, 2002). As a result, comparable findings have been somewhat elusive. For example, Intravia et al. (2018) found a significant negative relationship between police legitimacy and online news, but no relationship for local or national TV news, crime shows, local newspaper, and social media. On the other hand, Roche et al. (2016) reported null findings for online news, and Callanan and Rosenberger (2011) found viewing reality police shows as well as local and national news significantly increased respondents’ confidence in police and perceptions of police fairness.

Perhaps a more systematic approach to measuring attitudes toward police is offered by Tyler’s (2003, 2006) procedural justice model for which police legitimacy is a core concept. According to Tyler (2006), when organizations and institutions are viewed as legitimate, their rules and decisions are more willingly accepted and followed. Without this sort of public support, police organizations would not be able to achieve their tasks as most crimes are reported to the police by citizens, and the police need information from victims and witnesses to identify perpetrators (Van Damme, 2017). In addition, judgments of legitimacy are also thought to shape people’s compliance with the law by increasing public support for police deterrence-based strategies such as increasing criminal arrests or the number of officers on the street (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003).

Past research has identified a number of contributors to police legitimacy, including perceptions of procedural justice, police effectiveness and moral alignment (Hough et al., 2010; Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler, 2006; Van Damme, 2017). Procedural justice is defined as the fairness of the manner in which the police and the courts are believed to treat citizens when exercising their authority (Tyler, 2003). The more police officials are perceived as treating people fairly, neutrally and respectfully, the more likely they will be perceived as legitimate (Liu et al., 2020; Van Damme, 2017). Moral alignment is the belief that the values and tenets of law enforcement authorities are consistent with one’s personal beliefs about right and wrong. People are more likely to comply and cooperate with the police when they perceive the police share their moral values (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003). Researchers have also found that police are viewed as more legitimate if they are perceived as performing more effectively in fighting crime (controlling violent crime, drugs, burglary; respond quickly to calls for help) Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Van Damme, 2017).

Media pepertoires

As mentioned above, previous studies have focused on individual media modalities (newspapers, TV news, radio, etc.). An example would be Roche et al. (2016) who regressed each media variable independently – Internet news, national TV news, local TV news, and TV crime shows – and found associations with punitive attitudes toward criminals (local TV news and TV crime shows) but none for expanding police powers (“stopping and questioning individuals based on the way they look,” “allowing police to use more force against suspects”) or for Internet news, a major emphasis of the study. One reason for the latter might be that participants were asked how often they used the Internet to visit news websites such as MSNBC.com, Foxnews.com, NYTimes.com. This mixing of political ideologies in media modalities was prevalent in other studies as well (Dowler & Zawilski, 2007 for cable news; Intravia et al., 2018 for national TV news) and in each case resulted in null findings for the particular modality being assessed.

An issue with using individual media modalities to assess media usage is that people in the current media environment, which offers hundreds of television channels, mobile phone technologies, and virtually unlimited online news options, do not rely on just one medium, but instead regularly use a “media repertoire”, or a subset of media platforms and content types, to cope with the abundance of media choices (Edgerly, 2015; Kim, 2016). To truly understand the effects of media use on outcome variables such as, in this case, attitudes toward police, what matters most then is not peoples’ use of any particular medium, but their combined use of multiple media sources (Stromback et al., 2018). As Hasebrink and Popp (2006) note:

[I]n multimedia environments media effects research cannot rely on the influences of single media. As an example, analyses of cultivation processes have to consider that the whole range of media provides information on a specific field of reality; thus, in order to analyze cultivation processes, one has to take into account the repertoire of different sources of information actually used by the users. (p. 370)

Although there is general agreement in terms of the construct of repertoire – a subsample of media sources used by individuals – there is no agreement upon the best approach to measuring repertoires or the subsequent repertoires that emerge (Edgerly et al., 2018; Geers, 2020). According to Hasebrink and Popp (2006), a repertoire can consist of media in general (TV, radio, Internet, etc.), certain content (news, politics, sports, etc.) or even certain genres (drama, comedy, etc.). Researchers have typically reported anywhere from four to six news repertoires consisting of combinations of various media types (cable TV, newspapers; Kim, 2016), frequency uses (minimalists, news junkies or omnivores; Geers, 2020, Mourão et al., 2018), and media content/ideology (conservative, liberal; Edgerly, 2015).

Accompanying the increased availability and variety of news sources today has been the emergence of ideological sources typified by cable news channels such as Fox News and MSNBC, along with many partisan Internet blogs and online news sites (Edgerly, 2015). As a result, today’s news environment offers a steady diet of ideological news commentary that makes it easier for news consumers to select content that aligns with their political views. Theoretically, such a content selection process has its roots in Festinger’s cognitive dissonance theory, which hypothesizes that people strive to avoid cognitive discomfort by seeking out information that agrees with their prior attitudes (Festinger, 1957). Not only does this new, more diversified media market make it possible for individuals to seek out the news they find agreeable, but the resulting increase in competition also provides an economic incentive for news media to offer increasingly partisan points of view (Mullainathan & Schleifer, 2005). As such, the following research question is posed:

RQ1:

What news media repertoires will have a significant influence on public attitudes toward police?

Theoretical Perspective

Previous research has largely relied on Gerbner and Gross (1976) cultivation hypothesis for a theoretical approach to understanding the influence of media usage on attitudes toward police (Callanan & Rosenberger, 2011; Donovan & Klahm, 2015; Eschholz et al., 2002; Intravia et al., 2018; Roche et al., 2016). Gerbner and his associates argue that since its introduction in the 1950s television has assumed a central place in the lives of viewers and become a major source of socialization (Gerbner et al., 1986). Contrary to other media effects theories that predict behavior and attitude changes after exposure to televised aggression, cultivation theory posits that viewers exposed to continued, heavy doses of television will eventually adopt the “assumptions, images, and conceptions reflecting the institutional characteristics and interests of the medium itself” such that heavy viewers, when asked questions about their perceptions about social reality, will be more likely to provide a “television answer” (Gerbner et al., 1986, p. 38). In other words, the more time one spends sitting in front of the television, the more likely one will learn the lessons about life and society depicted on television (Carlson, 1983).

The initial cultivation view that any and all television regardless of content increases viewer’s perceptions of a mean and scary world has been refined and modified to account for different program genres, such as TV police dramas, as well as audience characteristics such as race/ethnicity (Eschholz et al., 2004). Accounting for audience characteristics would be important in the current study as various sociodemographic variables such as age, race, contact with police and the type of neighborhood one lives in have been shown to influence individuals’ attitudes toward police (Brown & Benedict, 2002). Hawkins and Pingree (1982) categorized cultivation measures into two types. First order-measures are those that ask respondents to make estimates of the real-life occurrence of certain things they may have seen on TV (Potter, 1991). An example would include asking respondents their chances of being involved in some type of violence (Gerbner & Gross, 1976). A second-order measure would assess more generalized beliefs, values, and perspectives theoretically extrapolated from first-order information (Potter, 1991). An example would be, given the scarcity of female representation on TV, whether women have more limited abilities and interests than men (Gerbner et al., 1986). The current study will use second-order cultivation measures (attitudes toward police) to examine the underlying value system cultivated in audiences by repeated exposure to news media and police TV dramas.

The Role of Demographics on Attitudes Toward Police

Research has found that older people are more likely to think the police are doing a good job; African Americans tend to hold more negative views toward police than Caucasians; the more contact people have with the police the more negative their views tend to be; and the more residents perceive their neighborhoods as crime-ridden, the more likely they will hold less favorable opinions of the police (O’Connor, 2008; Schuck et al., 2008; Webb & Marshall, 1995). More recently, researchers have included political ideology, finding conservatives and Republicans to be typically more supportive of police (Callanan & Rosenberger, 2011; Donovan & Klahm, 2015) Findings for other sociodemographic variables such as gender, education and income have been somewhat mixed (O’Connor, 2008). As such, the following are predicted:

H2:

There will be a positive relationship between age and attitudes toward police.

H3:

There will be negative relationships between (a) African Americans, (b) police contact, (c) neighborhood problems, (d) fear of crime, (e) liberal political viewpoints and attitudes toward police.

The intent of the current study is to offer an updated and more theoretically operationalized examination into the potential impact of media usage on individual attitudes toward police. Previous studies have relied upon a vast array of dependent variables and news media choices based on modalities. Using media repertoires as opposed to modalities should allow a more accurate assessment of how people use the media today and as a result how they might be influenced. In a world that now offers a plethora of media choices, it is argued here that it is the content that dictates media use, as opposed to the modality. Using a more theoretically driven measure for attitudes toward police should allow for a more accurate accounting of the existent influence of media usage on the public’s attitude toward police. In addition, such a measure should offer a more consistent and comparable assessment for use in future research.

Methods

Participants

The sample was drawn from an online research pool in the School of Communication at a mid-sized state university in the Midwest during the fall and spring of the 2021–22 academic year. Participants could voluntarily participate by going to the school website and completing an online survey via Qualtrics for extra credit in basic and graduate level communication courses. Administration of the study was approved by the university’s Institutional Research Broad (IRB). In total there were 321 participants. Ages ranged from 18 to 50 years (M = 21.91, SD = 3.77). Most respondents were White (71.3%) and women (71%). Participants were mostly freshman (30.5%) followed by juniors (25.5%), seniors (24.6%), then sophomores (10.9%) and graduate students (8.4%). A majority reported having a parent who graduated from college (56.4%). Almost half (47.4%) reported liberal leanings, whereas 30.2% reported being moderate and 22.4% identified with conservative political viewpoints.

Measurement

Media Consumption

Based on previous research (Dowler & Zawilski, 2007; Edgerly, 2015; Intravia et al., 2018; Mourão et al., 2018; Park & Kaye, 2020), news media consumption was measured by asking respondents, “How often do you get your news from the following” types of media? (1) network morning news (e.g. “The Today Show,””Good Morning America”), (2) news satire programs (e.g. “The Daily Show,” “John Oliver,” “Bill Maher”), (3) CNN (e.g. “CNN Newsroom,” Anderson Cooper), (4) MSNBC (e.g. “Morning Joe,” Rachel Maddow), (5) Fox (e.g. “FoxNews,” Sean Hannity), (6) news on PBS (“News Hour”), (7) network evening news (CBS, ABC, NBC), (8) local television news about your area (9) news programming on NPR (radio, podcasts, Websites, e.g. “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered”), (10) national newspaper, online or print (e.g. New York Times, Washington Post), (11) local newspaper (online or print), (11) local radio news, (12) conservative political blogs (e.g. Breitbart, NewsMax), (13) liberal political blogs (e.g. Daily Kos, Mother Jones), (14) Internet news aggregators (e.g. Google News, Yahoo News, Apple News), (15) conservative talk radio (e.g. Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity), (16) social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat), and (17) receive news through social networking or e-mail. Response categories ranged from 1 = “never” to 4 = “often.” Crime show exposure was measured for TV dramas well as reality programming by asking respondents “In a typical week how much time do you spend watching television crime shows such as CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds, and Law & Order?” and “In a typical week how much time do you spend watch crime reality shows such as Cops, America’s Most Wanted?” Response categories ranged from 1 = “not at all” to 4 = “A lot.”

Attitudes Toward Police

Three sub-scales were used to measure attitudes toward the police. Procedural justice, moral alignment and police effectiveness were adopted from scales developed by Van Damme (2017) based on Tyler’s procedural justice model. Items capturing trust in procedural justice and moral alignment were measured on Likert scales ranging from 1 (“Strongly agree”) to 5 (“Strongly disagree”). Items regarding trust in police effectiveness were measured on a Likert scale from 1 (‘Not effective at all) to 5 (‘Extremely effective). Examples of items measuring procedural justice included “The police treat citizens with respect,” and “The police make fair and impartial decisions.” Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was .94. Examples of moral alignment items included “The police stand up for values that are important to people like me,” and “I generally support how the police usually act.” Cronbach’s alpha for moral alignment was .92. Police effectiveness examples included “How effective do you think the police are at … preventing crime? solving crimes?” Cronbach’s alpha for police effectiveness was .89. Procedural justice, moral alignment and police misconduct were reverse coded for the regression analysis.

Sociodemographic Variables

Based on previous research there were a number of sociodemographic variables included in the analysis including age in years, gender (1=female, 2=male, 3=other), year in school measured from freshman (coded 1) to graduate (coded 5), race/ethnicity (African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Caucasian, Hispanic/Latino, and other), parent’s education measured from less than a high school degree (coded 1) to a doctorate, law or medical degree (coded 6). Political ideology was measured on a 7-point Likert scale from extremely conservative (1) to extremely liberal (7) Table 1.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics for select independent variables.

	n	%
Gender
Female	228	71.0
Male	91	28.3
Other	2	.6
Age	M = 20.9, SD = 3.8
Race/Ethnicity
African American	42	13.1
Asian/Pacific Islander	10	3.1
Caucasian	229	71.3
Latino/Hispanic	22	6.9
Other	18	5.6
Highest Level of Parents’ Education
Less than high school	6	1.9
High school degree	38	11.8
Some college, technical or associate degree	96	29.9
Bachelor’s degree	109	34.0
Master’s degree	56	17.4
Doctorate, law or medical degree	16	5.0
Political Views
Extremely conservative	3	.9
Conservative	34	10.6
Slightly conservative	35	10.9
Moderate	97	30.2
Slightly liberal	44	13.7
Liberal	84	26.2
Extremely liberal	24	7.5

Neighborhood problems was based on a scale by Barrett et al. (2021) that asks respondents how much of a problem the following situations are “in your neighborhood at home:” (1) noisy neighbors or loud parties; (2) people hanging around on the streets; (3) people sleeping on the streets or in other public places; (4) garbage or litter lying around; (5) vandalism, graffiti, and other deliberate damage to properties or vehicles; (6) people being attacked or harassed because of their skin color, ethnic origin, or religion; (7) people using or dealing drugs; and (8) people being drunk or rowdy in public places. Response categories consisted of “a very big problem,” “somewhat of a problem,” and “not at problem at all.” Cronbach’s alpha was .89.

Police contact was measured by asking respondents if they had contact with police during the past 5 years (1 = No, 2 = Yes) and if yes to indicate their level of satisfaction on a 5-point Likert-scale from 1 = “Very dissatisfied” to 5 = “Very satisfied” (Van Damme, 2017). Fear of crime was measured using seven items asking respondents how often they worried about crimes such as being a victim of sexual assault, getting mugged or robbed while out at night, and being burglarized while not at home (Dowler, 2002). Response categories ranged from 1 = “Very frequently” to 4 = “Never.” Cronbach’s alpha was .91. Neighborhood problems and fear of crime were also reverse coded for the regression analysis.

Procedure

Previous studies have used various methods to analyze media repertoires including cluster analysis (Edgerly, 2015; Edgerly et al., 2018; Hasebrink & Popp, 2006), latent class/profile analysis (Geers, 2020; Geers & Vliebenthart, 2021; Mourão et al., 2018; Stromback et al., 2018), conditional logit modeling (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009), and principal component factor analysis (Kim, 2016). Since the objective was to assess both content and frequency of use a principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation was used to analyze the data in this study.

Ordinary least squares regression analysis was conducted to estimate the contributions of media and sociodemographic variables on the following perceptions about police: procedural justice, moral alignment, effectiveness. VIF values were between 1 and 4 for each independent variable for each analysis, indicating the assumption of non-multicollinearity was met.

Results

As can be seen in Table 2 the factor analysis resulted in five factors with all but Social (.60) having acceptable Cronbach’s alphas. The Fox News factor loading was split between Conservative Media and TV News; however, it was placed in the Conservative Media factor since that seemed to be the most appropriate in terms of construct validity. The media repertoires used for the study were Liberal, Conservative, Print/radio, TV News, and Social Media.

Table 2. Factor analysis for media repertoires.

Survey Item	Liberal	Conservative	TV News	Print/radio	Social
Network morning news	.371	.237	.601	.176	.087
News satire programs	.641	.213	.201	.145	−.019
CNN	.706	−.007	.286	.109	.098
MSNBC	.795	.122	.101	.138	.003
FOX	.181	.557	.524	−.097	.247
News on PBS	.721	.311	.198	.055	.023
Network evening news	.409	.070	.675	.149	.090
Local television news	.164	.073	.789	.266	.023
News programming on NPR	.554	.138	.140	.233	.192
National newspaper	.410	.050	.012	.669	.081
Local newspaper	.196	.162	.178	.843	.008
Local radio news	.046	.158	.302	.673	.124
Conservative political blogs	.091	.884	.163	.152	−.022
Liberal political blogs	.418	.700	−.023	.192	−.039
Internet news aggregators	.131	.048	.191	.008	.667
Conservative talk radio	.162	.883	.116	.128	−.032
Social Media	−.066	−.213	.067	−.038	.799
Social networking or e-mail	.102	.151	−.091	.248	.744
Eigenvalue	6.11	1.93	1.45	1.24	1.08
% of Variance	33.93	10.74	8.04	6.89	5.98
Cronbach’s alpha	.80	.81	.76	.73	.60

Note. Boldface factor coefficients show factor loadings for the corresponding items and factors.

Table 3 presents the research findings that address the queries posed by RQ1. Exposure to liberal media such as CNN, PBS and NPR was negatively associated with respondents’ perceptions of procedural justice, moral alignment and police effectiveness. Viewership of TV news was positively associated with moral alignment and police effectiveness. Exposure to mostly conservative media outlets such as radio talk shows, political blogs, and Fox News was marginally related to police effectiveness, b = .12, SE = .09, p = .07.

Table 3. OLS regression analyses for procedural justice, moral alignment, police effectiveness, and misconduct.

	Procedural Justice	Moral Alignment	Effectiveness
Age	.07 (.01)	.13** (.01)	.06 (.01)
Gender^a	−.02 (.13)	−.02 (.13)	−.04 (.11)
Race^b	−.16** (.15)	−.21*** (.16)	−.18*** (.13)
Parents’ education	.03 (.05)	.04 (.05)	.09 (.04)
Political ideology^c	−.46*** (.04)	−.47*** (.04)	−.34*** (.04)
Police contact	−.14** (.11)	−.10* (.11)	−.10* (.09)
Neighborhood	.15** (.09)	.09 (.10)	.07 (.08)
Fear of crime	−.14* (.07)	−.17** (.07)	−.17** (.06)
Liberal media	−.24*** (.11)	−.28*** (.11)	−.27*** (.09)
Conservative media	−.01 (.11)	.03 (.11)	.12 (.09)
TV news	.10 (.08)	.14* (.09)	.14* (.08)
Newspaper/radio	.04 (.08)	.03 (.08)	.02 (.07)
Social	.04 (.07)	.01 (.07)	.02 (.06)
Police TV dramas	−.05 (.06)	−.03 (.06)	−.02 (.05)
Police reality TV	.01 (.08)	.05 (.08)	.04 (.07)
Constant	5.16***	5.56***	4.30***
R^2	.39	.47	.34

Note. Standard errors in parentheses.

^a1 = females, 2 = males, all other = system missing

^b1 = all others, 2 = Black

^c1 = extremely conservative, 7 = extremely liberal

*p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

There was no support for H1 in that neither police TV dramas nor police reality shows were found to be associated with attitudes toward police. There was a positive relationship between age and moral alignment, partially supporting H2. Negative associations were found between African Americans, previous contact with police, fear of crime and political ideology (liberal) and attitudes toward police, supporting most of H3. Perceptions of neighborhood problems were a positive predictor of procedural justice, contrary to what was predicted in H3(c).

There was a high positive correlation between perceptions of moral alignment and procedural justice, r = .88, p < .001. Perceptions of police effectiveness was positively correlated with both moral alignment, r = .68, p < .001, and procedural justice, r = .62, p < .001.

Discussion

The purpose of the current study was to access and understand the role of exposure to entertainment and news media on attitudes toward police. The news repertoire consisting of the more liberal media outlets such as CNN, PBS and MSNBC was found to be negatively associated with all three dimensions of attitudes toward police – procedural justice, moral alignment, and effectiveness. There is some recent research, albeit limited, to support the finding that liberal leaning media could cultivate negative attitudes toward police. In a content analysis of six media outlets during the height of the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests, Cox (2022) found that the more liberal media such as CNN tended to depict police officers in a more negative light (being aggressive or violent, committing murder, needing regulation) than conservative media outlets such as Fox News. Add to this, the growing popularity, especially among young adults, of cable news channels such as CNN, it seems reasonable to posit, based on cultivation theory and the results reported here, that repeated exposure to liberal media and their negative coverage of police, can and does cultivate more negative attitudes toward police (Cox, 2022; Ellefson, 2020). Such negatively could lead to much-needed reform in the law enforcement field, however, as Tyler and his colleagues (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003; Tyler, 2003, 2006) have noted, judgments of police legitimacy can shape people’s compliance with the law. When the police are viewed as legitimate, their rules and decisions are more willingly accepted and followed. Any lessening of the public’s perception of police legitimacy would seem to pose a threat to the public order. And one has to wonder if more balanced news coverage during times of civil unrest and protests would to some extent provide needed moderation.

Other findings revealed positive relationships between media consumption and attitudes toward police. Exposure to local and network TV news was found to contribute to perceptions of police effectiveness and a moral alignment with one’s own beliefs of right and wrong. This seems comparable to previous studies linking exposure to TV news to greater confidence in the police as well more positive perceptions of police fairness (Callanan & Rosenberger, 2011; Eschholz et al., 2002). Callanan and Rosenberger (2011) argue that it is the TV news shows’ reliance on crime scenes, police investigations and arrests that may lead to viewers’ gaining confidence in the police’s ability to solve crimes, which would contribute to perceptions of police effectiveness. The conservative media repertoire was positively, but only marginally related to police effectiveness. While the relationship seems to be in the right direction, a larger, more diverse sample may have been required to achieve statistical significance. Null findings for the newspaper/local radio repertoire seem consistent with the reputation of local news for objectivity as well as the lack of exposure for both, as few young adults today (ages 18–29) report using newspapers (3%) or radio (7%) as regular sources for news (Schearer, 2021). Null findings were also reported for the social media repertoire. In the current survey, participants were asked about their social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, and aggregate news sources such as Google News. However, on the surface these sites do not convey any sort of a political ideology. Perhaps a more nuanced questionnaire tapping into actual news sources followed within sites such as Facebook or Twitter would have allowed more precision here. Regardless, the development of a content-based scale for social media news usage is a suggestion for future research.

No significant findings among the police legitimacy variables were found for exposure to either TV crime dramas or police reality shows. There could be several reasons for this. Exposure to these shows among the current sample was minimal with most respondents reporting “Not at all” or “A little” when asked how much they time they spent viewing TV dramas (77%) or crime reality shows (92.5%). Recent criticisms by organizations such as the Color of Change (2020) for the way police were over-glamourized on police procedurals may also have contributed viewers’ being able to distinguish between fictional and real characterizations of law enforcement thereby weakening any potential cultivation effects. And finally, with the inclusion of other variables such as race and political ideology as well as the use of a more inclusive, theoretically based measure for attitudes toward police, the cultivation process may not have risen to the level of second-order effects for these media usage variables.

Findings for the demographic variables seemed more or less consistent with previous studies. The most significant predictor was political ideology, which was accessed in just two of the media usage studies reviewed previously (Callanan & Rosenberger, 2011; Donovan & Klahm, 2015). The more liberal an individual was in their political views, the more they negatively they perceived the legitimacy of the police. Based on cognitive dissonance theory it seems reasonable to presume that individuals with liberal ideologies would be attracted to liberal media such as CNN where they would be exposed to, at times, continuous, unfavorable coverage of law enforcement transgressions. The negative associations between race/ethnicity, fear of crime and police contact were consistent with previous studies. Prior research has consistently found that African Americans have more negative opinions of police than Whites (Callanan & Rosenberger, 2011; Donovan & Klahm, 2015; Dowler, 2002; Dowler & Zawilski, 2007; Eschholz et al., 2002; Intravia et al., 2018;). Given that the survey for this study was administered shortly after the George Floyd death at the hands of police and resulting Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, it seems likely the distrust between African Americans and the police would only have increased during this time. Neighborhood problems were positively associated with procedural justice and marginally associated with moral alignment (b = .09 SE = .10, p = .06). It seems participants in this study perceived the police were dealing with their neighborhood problems in a fair-minded way and were supportive of that. It is also likely that most respondents did not live in high-crime neighborhoods (neighborhood problems, M = 1.72; SD = .60 with 1 = “not a problem at all” to 3 = “a very big problem”), and as such did not hold the police responsible for not being more effective in reducing crime. Finally, age, which in some previous studies has been found to be positively related to confidence in police and police fairness (Callanan & Rosenberger, 2011; Eschholz et al., 2002), may have been somewhat limited by the range of the current sample (college-age adults) as it was found to be positively associated with moral alignment, but not procedural justice or police effectiveness.

Limitations

A limitation of the current study would be the homogeneity of the sample, which was comprised of college educated youths, mostly women, and almost half (47.4%) of whom reported being at least slightly liberal (vs. 22.4% reporting being at least slightly conservative). It is possible that a broader sample of the U.S. population might have yielded more notable results for exposure to conservative media than the marginally significant finding here for viewers’ positive perceptions of police effectiveness. Certainly, a study using a broader sample of the population would be recommended for future research. One advantage of using a subset of college students as subjects in this case would be is that it could provide a glimpse into attitudes toward police and their influencers among those most likely to be involved (college educated adults) in future policy making decisions regarding police reform and oversight.

An additional limitation of the study would be the cross-sectional nature of the survey which renders the issue of causation somewhat tenuous. Although it seems likely that frequent exposure to liberal news media and their negative framing of police cultivates negative attitudes toward police, the opposite causal position should be acknowledged. This is, viewers’ attitudes toward police may influence which TV shows and media they attend to and how often. To help clarify the causal order, longitudinal investigations, perhaps a cross-lagged survey, would be a suggestion for future research. An additional suggestion for future research would be more detailed and broader content analyses of news coverage of events such as police killings and Black Lives Matter protests. Cox’s (2022) content analysis examined Facebook postings of major news outlets. An analysis that included not only the content but also the depth of coverage (i.e., the number of hours broadcast or space devoted to) would seem helpful from a cultivation perspective.

Conclusion

Contributions of the current study to the literature would include the use of media repertoires to more realistically measure how individuals in today’s media environment actually consume media, thus allowing a deeper understanding of how individual media usage might affect attitudes toward police. The finding in the current study that exposure to liberal media outlets may cultivate negative attitudes toward police seems more nuanced than the modality probes of previous studies and arguably demonstrates the utility of using media repertoires to more accurately assess media usage. As mentioned previously, modalities with mixed ideologies have typically reported null results. Continued findings along these lines could eventually contribute to a greater awareness of the ramifications of partisan media in today’s more open media environment and perhaps idealistically inspire a more tempered and balanced media usage strategy among at least some participants. Overall, such an approach could also help moderate the increasingly partisan rhetoric all-to-present in public life today.

As Zhao and Ren (2015) have noted, there has been a lack of consistency in measures of public attitudes toward police. One explanation could be that, at least in the area of media effects, one-item measures and scales constructed without any theorical basis have proliferated. One exception would be Intravia et al. (2018) who used a construct, police legitimacy, also based on Tyler’s procedural justice model as a dependent variable in their study. Intravia et al. (2018) reported a negative relationship between online news and police legitimacy, which at the time seemed contrary to most media usage studies that had reported positive relationships between media consumption and attitudes toward police. The researchers concluded that their finding could be due to chance, given the large number of regression models used in the study, and “ultimately awaits replication” (Intravia et al., 2018, p. 970). However, a closer look at the media consumption variable used in the study, “reading news online (such as CNN.com or NYtimes.com)” could provide an explanation since the examples referred to here would fit a liberal media agenda, thereby demonstrating results comparable to those of the current study. Hopefully such a replication in terms of media usage and police legitimacy will not be lost on future researchers and encourage the use of media repertoires as well as the adoption of a standard, theoretically based measure for attitudes toward police that would allow for more consistent comparisons among study results.

Given the associations found between political ideology, partisan media and attitudes toward police, the results here seem supportive of the notion, based on cognitive dissonance and cultivation theories, that partisan media outlets, which seem to be a fixture in the new media environment, appeal to and attract individuals with similar ideologues whose beliefs and attitudes are then cultivated and/or reinforced as they receive and learn additional selective information. Such a process seems especially plausible in an era characterized by increasing polarization and contentious politics.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jack Glascock

Jack Glascock (Ph.D., Michigan State University, 1996) was an associate professor in the School of Communication at Illinois State University.