9 ~,~i - National Criminal Justice Reference Service

428 BECKET1"
Nisbet 1971), their emphasis is nonetheless on the nature and extent of those social conditions
that are defined as problematic.
Specifically, objectivists argue that the increased incidence of "street crime" and drug use
has led to increased public concern about those issues. In this view, the Nixon, Reagan, and
Bush administrations' "get tough" approach to crime has been a response to public concern,
itself a consequence of the increased incidence of crime. For example, one major analysis of
trends in public opinion concludes that Increased fear of "crime and support for punitive
measures "have been shaped largely by objective shifts in the level of criminal activity"
(Niemi, Mueller, and Smith 1989:133). Similarly, Mayer (1992:274) claims that "rising crime
rates led to growing public support for the death penalty and a tougher criminal justice system."
The argument that there has been "an objective shift in criminal activity" is based on
official crime statistics that suggest such a trend. Thus, while the theoretical premise of objectivism
does not necessarily imply an acceptance of official statistics as an accurate reflection of
the actual incidence of social phenomena, objectivists rely on such statistics for their information.about
social conditions. As a result, objectivists anticipate that these measures will be
associated with public concern 3 (see Morgamhau and Miller 1986; Niemi, Mueller, and
Smith 1989).
Objectivist accounts of the crime and drug issues also tend to conflate objectivism with
the pluralist assumption that state actors primarily react to, rather than attempt to shape,
public opinion. For example, Wilson ( 1975:xvi) argues that "public opinion was well ahead of
political opinion in calling attention to the rising problem of crime." This approach thus
presumes that state initiative on the crime issue was a response to a prior increase in public
concern about crime.
The following hypotheses can be derived from this model: first, the objectivist hypothesis
(H 1 ) anticipates a positive relationship between the reported incidence of crime/drug use and
subsequent levels of public concern regarding these issues; second, the pluralist hypothesis
(H2) predicts that shifts in the level of public concern precede corresponding shifts in the level
of state anti-crime and anti-drug activity.
The Constructionist Model
The constructionist model emphasizes the social nature of assessments of those phenomena
that are defined as social problems. For constructionists, reality is not known directly, but
must be comprehended through "maps of meaning" or "frames" which select, order, and
interpret that reality (Hall et al. 1978). These "frames" give meaning and coherence to events
and phenomena (Gamson et al. 1992), including social problems. Because each issue frame
has a different set of political implications, a variety of social actors may compete in sponsoring
their preferred frames 4 (Edeiman 1988; Gamson et al. 1992). In sum, constructionists
emphasize the subjective, social and political dimension of social problems.
A constructionist account of the crime and drug issues antidpates that the public's assessment
of the nature of those problems will be shaped by their popular representation. This
approach therefore rejects the objectivist hypothesis (HI) that levels of public concern will
necessarily correspond to the reported incidence of crime/drug use. Instead, the constructionist
hypothesis (H3) anticipates a strong association between media and state daimsmaking
activities on the one hand and levels of public concern on the other. However, there is some
3. I therefore use these statistics to test the objectivist hypothesis that the reported rate of crime/drug use shapes
public concern around those issues.
4. The construction of meaning and the struggle to imbue public discourse around events and issues with this
meaning is an ongoing political process. For this reason, media discourse may be fruitfully conceptualized as an independent
rather than dependent variable (Gamson et al. 1992:385).
4