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Crime victimization, exposure to crime news and social trust among adolescentsVenla Salmi, PhD, is a researcher at the National Research Institute of Legal Policy, Helsinki, Finland. She recently gained her doctoral degree (University of Helsinki) with a thesis on self-reported juvenile delinquency. Her research on social capital and delinquency is financed by the Academy of Finland. She has published on this topic in, for example, European Journal of Criminology. Address: National Research Institute of Legal Policy, PO Box 444, FI-00531, Helsinki. [email: venla.salmi{at}om.fi]
Mirka Smolej, M.Soc.Sc., is a researcher at the National Research Institute of Legal Policy, Helsinki, Finland and a PhD student at the Department of Sociology, University of Helsinki, Finland. Her PhD research examines the links between media images of crime, people's crime perceptions, and fear of crime. Address: National Research Institute of Legal Policy, PO Box 444, FI-00531, Helsinki. [email: mirka.smolej{at}om.fi]
Janne Kivivuori, D.Soc.Sc., is the research director of the criminological unit of the National Research Institute of Legal Policy, Helsinki, Finland. He has conducted research on juvenile delinquency and homicide. He has published on these topics in British Journal of Criminology, Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention, Acta Sociologica and European Journal of Criminology. Address: National Research Institute of Legal Policy, PO Box 444, FI-00531, Helsinki. [email: janne.kivivuori{at}om.fi] Interpersonal trust has recently emerged at the centre of research in social science as an important component of social capital. Earlier, it has been theorized that exposure to media cultivates a suspicious and distrusting ‘mean–world’ outlook on life (cultivation theory). In this article, we aim to bind these separate but obviously interconnected theoretical discussions in a combined empirical analysis, by exploring several potential correlates of social trust. As criminologists, our main interest lies in the possible association between victimization, fear of crime, use of crime news media and trust. We categorize victimization experiences as either persistent or occasional ones. In addition, we add a set of social and structural factors to our analysis. Our cross–sectional survey data consists of a nationally representative sample of 15–16 year–old Finnish adolescents (N = 5142). The results of the multivariate analyses indicate that both victimization and fear of crime are related to lower levels of interpersonal trust. As expected, there is a more robust association between persistent victimization and the level of trust than is the case with occasional victimization. Viewing regularly television crime reality programmes is also robustly related to lower levels of trust, a finding that supports the cultivation theory. Of social interaction variables, social support and supervision by parents and teachers are positively related to trust. Contrary to this, participation in civic life (such as religious and various secular associations) is not related to social trust among Finnish adolescents. This and other results are here discussed applying social capital theory and cultivation theory of media effects.
Key Words: victimization • trust • adolescence • social capital • cultivation theory • crime news • Finland
Young, Vol. 15, No. 3,
255-272 (2007) |
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