Media, Mind, and Crime: Psychological and Communicative Dimensions of Criminal Representation

This study examined how media representations of crime influenced public psychology and communicative meaning-making within contemporary digital and news environments. Focusing on the interaction between media framing, emotional processing, and audience interpretation, the research investigated how crime narratives shaped fear of crime, trust in criminal justice institutions, and perceived social risk. A mixed-methods design was employed, combining a systematic content analysis of crime-related media with a survey of media users to assess psychological and attitudinal outcomes. The results showed that higher exposure to crime-focused media was associated with increased fear, heightened perceptions of crime severity, and declining confidence in law enforcement and judicial systems. Sensationalized framing significantly intensified emotional arousal and threat perception, whereas contextualized reporting produced more balanced and less fear-driven evaluations. These findings indicated that media narratives did not simply reflect crime but actively constructed symbolic meanings about danger, morality, and social order. The study also found that digital platforms and true-crime formats amplified these effects by encouraging emotional engagement, repetition, and participatory interpretation of criminal events. By integrating psychological theories of fear, attention, and narrative processing with communication theories of framing and media effects, the research offered a comprehensive model explaining how crime representations shaped both individual cognition and collective attitudes. The study contributed to media psychology and criminological communication by demonstrating that mediated crime narratives played a central role in shaping public consciousness, with important implications for journalism ethics, digital platform governance, and public trust in justice systems. References Albrecht, K., Horvath, L., & Heikel, M. (2022). 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