This research updates and expands upon Decker’s article “Citizen attitudes toward the police: a review of past findings and suggestions for future policy” by summarizing the findings from more than 100 articles on perceptions of and attitudes toward the police. Initially, the value of research on attitudes toward the police is discussed. Then the research pertaining to the impact of individual level variables (e.g. race) and contextual level variables (e.g. neighborhood) on perceptions of the police is reviewed. Studies of juveniles’ attitudes toward the police, perceptions of police policies and practices, methodological issues and conceptual issues are also discussed. This review of the literature indicates that only four variables (age, contact with police, neighborhood, and race) have consistently been proven to affect attitudes toward the police. However, there are interactive effects between these and other variables which are not yet understood; a finding which indicates that theoretical generalizations about attitudes toward police should be made with caution.

Perceptions of the police

Just about everyone seems to have views about language. Language attitudes and language ideologies permeate our daily lives. Our competence, intelligence, friendliness, trustworthiness, social status, group memberships, and so on, are often judged from the way we communicate. Even the speed at which we speak can evoke reactions. And we often try to anticipate such judgements as we communicate. In this lively introduction, Peter Garrett draws upon research carried out over recent decades in order to discuss such attitudes and the implications they have for our use of language, for social advantage or discrimination, and for social identity. Using a range of examples that includes punctuation, words, grammar, pronunciation, accents, dialects and languages, this book explores the intricate and fascinating ways in which language influences our everyday thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

/pdf/attitudes-to-language-57oklx51te.pdf

Attitudes to Language

Understanding the processes of influence in societies has intrigued generations of scholars. One method of studying such influence in modern democracy is to investigate mass media, public, and policy agendas, defined as issues or events that are viewed at a point in time as ranked in a hierarchy of importance. Research by communication scholars and other social scientists has typically conceptualized either the mass media agenda, the public agenda, or the policy agenda as a dependent variable in order to explain how it is influenced by other factors. This chapter (1) analyzes past research on agenda-setting in order to learn where this research literature is deficient and where it is sufficient and (2) synthesizes this research literature with a view toward learning important theoretical and methodological lessons for future agenda-setting research.

Agenda-Setting Research: Where Has It Been, Where Is It Going?

Research on the agenda-setting role of the news media has often been guided by a rather narrow conception of how media content affects members of the public. In particular, reliance on a "mirror-image" model of media effects, and a focus on "the agenda" as an overall ranking of issues, has not shed much light on the processes linking public issue salience to varying media attention. This study introduces an "audience-effects" model which treats issue-specific audience sensitivities as modulators, and news coverage as a trigger stimulus, of media impact on issue salience, issue by issue. An analysis of "most important national problem" mentions in the 1974 National Election Study, augmented by data on front-page content in the newspapers read by respondents and on "real-world" conditions in the respondents' commuLnities, provides considerable empirical support for the proposed audience-contingent effects model. In addition, secondary diffusion of problem salience through networks of informal social communication is shown to eventually override early news media impact. Our findings underscore the need for research on agenda-setting to focus on both the temporal and the social dimension of media impact.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2110923.pdf

Front-Page News and Real-World Cues: A New Look at Agenda-Setting by the Media

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.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2748703.pdf

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

, A traditional focus of mass communication research has been investigating the effects of the media in influencing elections, centering around the impact of the media on voting behaviors. More recently, interest has centered on another area of effects: the media's influence on the political information the public has and the issues the public considers salient. This has come to be known as the \"agenda-setting\" function of the mass media and is succintly characterized by Cohen:

Media Agenda-Setting in City and State Election Campaigns.

The present investigation was concerned with the effect of using profanity in a communication on receiver attitude change and speaker credibility ratings. Results of the investigation found no support for the superiority of a persuasive communication using profanity of a religious, excretory, or sexual nature over the same communication devoid of such profanity. It was found, however, that if one of the above three types of profanity is included in a communication, greater attitude change can be expected to occur if the communicator is a female using any one of the three profanity-types mentioned than if the communicator is a male using the same types of profanity. Finally, it was found that using profanity in a communication generally has a detrimental effect on the perceived credibility of the communicator.

The Effects of Three Types of Profane Language in Persuasive Messages

The study investigated the effects of pro and con, one and two-sided messages on receiver attitude change when the Ss were required to either publicly commit themsclves on the issue prior to message reception or were not required to publicly commit themselves. In the public commitment treatment condition, Ss were first required to express in writing their attitude on the chosen topic and give two or three reasons why they held this position, after which they read either a one- or two-sided, pro or con counterattitudinal message. Ss in the no commitment treatment groups merely received the one- or two-sided, pro or con messages without publicly commiting themselves on the issue. After reading the appropriate one- or twosided message, Ss again expressed their attitude toward the issue. The experimental hypothesis tested stipulated that when Ss were not required to commit themselves publicly to an issue, they would change their attitudes toward the topic significantly more than would Ss required to publicly commit themselves. Further, it was hypothesized that this effect would be significantly more pronounced for Ss receiving a one-sided message arguing in favor of the topic than it would for Ss receiving either a one-sided message arguing against the topic or a two-sided, pro or con message. The data confirmed the hypothesis.

John R. Baseheart

Papers

Media Agenda-Setting in City and State Election Campaigns.

The Effects of Three Types of Profane Language in Persuasive Messages

Some Specific Factors Affecting Attitude Change

Message opinionation and approval‐dependence as determinants of receiver attitude change and recall

Effects of police use of profanity on a receiver's perceptions of credibility