The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of the source of media imagery on participant cynicism toward the police and explore the relationship between media source and the severity of sanctions imposed on police as a result of the portrayed actions. Participants (N = 93) completed a semantic differential scale measuring participants’ attitudes toward members of various occupations followed by a survey to measure baseline cynicism. Then, participants viewed a video of police behavior which was manipulated according to media source and completed a second cynicism measure and demographic survey. Participants were then asked whether to impose a sanction on the police officers. Results indicated that there were no differences in cynicism between groups prior to viewing the video; however, there were statistically significant differences in cynicism between groups after exposure to Citizen Video Journalism (CVJ) from different media sources revealing that cynicism was greater with the group that viewed CVJ from the social media source than from the broadcast media source. Furthermore, results indicated statistical significance between groups and severity of sanctions imposed on police after CVJ video exposure.

本研究的目的是检验媒体形象的来源对参与者对警察的冷嘲热讽的影响，并探讨媒体来源与由于所描绘的行为而对警察施加的制裁的严重程度之间的关系。参与者 ( N = 93) 完成了测量参与者对各种职业成员态度的语义差异量表，然后进行了一项测量基线犬儒主义的调查。然后，参与者观看了根据媒体来源操纵的警察行为视频，并完成了第二次犬儒主义测量和人口调查。随后，参与者被问及是否对警察实施制裁。结果表明，在观看视频之前，各组之间的愤世嫉俗没有差异；然而，在接触来自不同媒体来源的公民视频新闻 (CVJ) 后，各组之间的犬儒主义在统计学上存在显着差异，这表明从社交媒体来源观看 CVJ 的群体比从广播媒体来源观看 CVJ 的群体更大。此外，