Margaret T. Gordon

Media and Agenda Setting: Effects on the Public, Interest Group Leaders, Policy Makers, and Policy

Using an experimental design built around a single media event, the authors explored the impact of the media upon the general public, policy makers, interest group leaders, and public policy. The results suggested that the media influenced views about issue importance among the general public and government policy makers. The study suggests, however, that it was not this change in public opinion which led to subsequent policy changes. Instead, policy change resulted from collaboration between journalists and government staff members.

THE IMPACT OF INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING ON PUBLIC OPINION AND POLICYMAKING TARGETING TOXIC WASTE

This article reports the fourth in a continuing series of case studies that explore the impact of news media investigative journalism on the general public, policymakers, and public pol- icy. The media disclosures in this field experiment had limited effects on the general public but were influential in changing the attitudes of policymakers. The study describes how changes in public policymaking resulted from collaboration between journal- ists and government officials. The authors develop a model that is a beginning step toward specifying the conditions under which media investigations influence public attitudes and agendas. This article reports the fourth in a series of field experiments that test the agenda-setting hypothesis (McCombs and Shaw, 1972) for news

Coping with urban crime: Women's use of precautionary behaviors

This investigation examines the impact of three sets of variables, neighborhood conditions, psychological factors, and life circumstances, on womens use of behaviors designed to protect themselves from criminal victimization. Participants in the study were 299 women living in Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. Two types of precautionary behaviors were identified: avoiding dangerous situations (e.g., by not going out alone at night) and managing risks in the face of possible danger (e.g., by asking repairmen for identification). The three sets of variables were better able to predict avoidance than risk-management behavior. Commonality analyses revealed that psychological factors uniquely accounted for the largest proportion of the variance in the use of both types of precautions. In multiple regression analyses, fear, perceived physical competence, race, and education were significant predictors of avoidance, while fear and perceptions of local social disorder had significant regression effects on risk-management. Implications of the results for research and social policies regarding the impact of crime on communities are discussed, and this area is suggested as a rich context for the exploration of styles of coping with environmental stressors.

The Structure of Rape Prevention Beliefs

Factor analyses of the responses of random samples of men and women from three cities indicate the presence of two relatively independent dimensions of rape prevention attitudes: a) beliefs about measures calling for restrictions in womens behavior, and b) beliefs about measures involving changes in the environment, or assertive actions by women. Sex and race differences in ratings of the effectiveness of the two types of prevention measures illustrate the usefulness of this two-dimensional approach for understanding rape prevention beliefs. The implications of these results for attribution theory and for anti-rape policies are discussed.

The impact of crime on urban women.

Although crime in the United States is so widespread that it affects a third of the nations households (Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, 1981), this figure still underestimates the true consequences of crime because the social, emotional and economic costs affect even more people than those directly victimized. Observers for more than a decade have recognized that widespread and increasing fear of crime constitutes a major social problem (e.g., Maltz, 1972). Many people suffer from anxiety in anticipation of victimization, and modify their lives to avoid crime in ways that cost them lost social and work opportunities (McIntyre, 1967; Biderman et al., 1967). The self-imposed isolation of people seeking to prevent victimization also costs their communities in terms of participation in volunteer, leisure and other activities.