Predicting crime story salience: The effects of crime, victim, and defendant characteristics

✍ Scribed by Steven Chermak

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 779 KB
• Volume: 26
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0047-2352
• DOI: 10.1016/s0047-2352(97)00055-x

✦ Synopsis

This article examines how various crime, victim, and defendant characteristics affect the amount oJ space and attention provided to newspaper crime stories. Although there is a rather large body of research documenting the presentation of crime in the news, few studies have used multivariate statistical applications. This study uses multiple regression to identify the important variables that increase the salience of crime stories. The findings indicate that the number of victims affected by a crime is the best predictor of increased story salience. The type of offense also had some influence. Other variables tested, such as victim and defendant characteristics, had very little influence on the space and attention provided to newspaper crime stories.