How news consumption in modern media landscapes relates to threats perceptions and fears in public spaces. A scoping review

A high percentage of current news media covers topics relevant to the public such as wars, crime, and terrorist attacks, making threat perceptions and fears in public spaces (TPF-PS) more salient. Due to the unique challenges involved with current media landscapes, research examining how news consumption (NC) is related TPF-PS is still attracting scholarly interest. Therefore, we conducted a scoping review of N = 72 empirical studies since the advent of the smartphone era. The review detects cultivation theory as the main theoretical approach as well as a prevalence of quantitative methods and cross-sectional surveys. Furthermore, most empirical studies are carried out in North America and draw on non-probability sampling methods. Moreover, the review detects (region-based) research trends by breaking down N = 307 identified operationalizations into main classifications of TPF-PS and NC. Additionally, the review indicates a predominance of no associations between NC and TPF-PS. Implications for future research are discussed.