Nusikaltimų baimės konstravimas žiniasklaidoje ; The construction of crime fear in mass media
This article discusses one of the most relevant contemporary criminological problems – crime fears. The issue of crime fears emerged four decades ago and became of big importance to political, professional and public discourses. Many practitioners consider the problem of crime fears not less significant than crime problem itself. The article discusses the gravity of this topic in modern society, provides major theoretical models of fear of crime, analyses what function do fears take in political discourse and explains their interaction with mass media, which are one of the main disseminators of criminal fears in contemporary society. Simultaneously, it is important to emphasize that media's crime fear discourse and narratives are not autonomous, since "the fear of crime feedback loop" includes different social agents that enable its functioning. Thus, we may discuss a certain relation between mass media and crime fears, but not the direct causality between the two.