Citizen Journalism and Public Cynicism toward Police in the USA

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of the source of media imagery on participant cynicism toward the police and explore the relationship between media source and the severity of sanctions imposed on police as a result of the portrayed actions. Participants (N = 93) completed a semantic differential scale measuring participants’ attitudes toward members of various occupations followed by a survey to measure baseline cynicism. Then, participants viewed a video of police behavior which was manipulated according to media source and completed a second cynicism measure and demographic survey. Participants were then asked whether to impose a sanction on the police officers. Results indicated that there were no differences in cynicism between groups prior to viewing the video; however, there were statistically significant differences in cynicism between groups after exposure to Citizen Video Journalism (CVJ) from different media sources revealing that cynicism was greater with the group that viewed CVJ from the social media source than from the broadcast media source. Furthermore, results indicated statistical significance between groups and severity of sanctions imposed on police after CVJ video exposure.