A test of a crime and justice infotainment measure

✍ Scribed by Ray Surette; Charles Otto

• Book ID: 104269571
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 127 KB
• Volume: 30
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0047-2352
• DOI: 10.1016/s0047-2352(02)00147-2

✦ Synopsis

In recent years, a new term which combined aspects of both news and entertainment into a single format had been introduced into the crime and justice media vocabulary-infotainment. Media history reflected information and entertainment as usually presented separate and distinct. Early television programming, for example, could easily be recognized and classified as news or entertainment, but recently, the line between news and entertainment had become blurred. Beginning in the late 1980s, contemporary infotainment programs like Geraldo or Unsolved Mysteries began to appear on television and the genre had increased steadily in popularity. Since the 1980s, it had become more difficult for television viewers and media consumers in general to identify what was news and what was entertainment. This article presents a brief history of crime and justice infotainment and develops and tests a measurement refinement of crime and justice infotainment programming. Additionally, it offers research directions for exploring the impact of such programming.