The current study examines the relationship between social media consumption and fear of violent crime. The goal of our study is to make three contributions to the literature. One is to provide further evidence about social media consumption and the fear of violent crime, as previous research has yet to find a link between the two. A second is to provide evidence on various types of media consumption and their association with fear of violent crime, specifically. While research has evaluated the relationship between multiple types of media consumption and fear of crime in general, little research on fear of violent crime as an outcome variable has been conducted. The third contribution of our study is to provide evidence on the impact of mass communication on fear of violent crime, using samples from several regions. Most existing studies that measured fear of crime as a dependent variable have relied upon young adult samples from one or two schools. All these studies have suggested that future research should use larger, more diverse samples to replicate previous findings. Addressing these gaps in the extant research, the current study empirically builds on research on media consumption and fear of crime by examining a national sample of 1,014 U.S. adults from the American Fears survey.

The COVID-19 pandemic created a racialized social crisis in which Asians and Asian Americans in the United States faced heightened discrimination and concern about hate crime victimization. Using online survey data collected from Korean community members in the United States during summer 2021, this study examines direct and indirect anti-Asian hate crime/discrimination victimization before and after COVID-19 and identifies factors associated with fear of anti-Asian hate crime/discrimination. Contrary to broader national evidence documenting increased anti-Asian hate during the pandemic, the findings indicate that both direct and indirect victimization experiences decreased after COVID-19 within this sample. Multiple regression results further show that income was negatively associated with fear of anti-Asian hate crime/discrimination, while media exposure was positively associated with fear. The findings suggest that the relatively high-income composition of the sample may have reduced exposure to public victimization opportunities during the pandemic, potentially through greater access to remote work and other protective resources. These results highlight the importance of socioeconomic vulnerability and exposure patterns in shaping victimization experiences and fear of anti-Asian hate crime/discrimination among Korean community members during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study also discusses policy-relevant information based on the results.