Why Crime Feels Like It Is Rising Even When It Is Not

Introduce cultivation theory, resonance, and mainstreaming to explain how repeated crime exposure shapes perceived reality. Set up the paper's central question: how media volume and framing distort crime perception and policy preferences.

Cultivation theory holds that heavy television viewers develop perceptions of the world that mirror television's world—more violent, more dangerous, and more threatening than statistical reality. When that theory was developed, the primary mechanism was broadcast television. Today, social media algorithms can deliver a personalized, continuous stream of crime content calibrated to the emotional reactions it reliably produces.

This post maps the gap between crime statistics and public perception, and introduces the three concepts—cultivation, resonance, and mainstreaming—that explain how that gap is manufactured and maintained.