Race, place and crime through the lens of Toronto’s print media

Abstract

Geographical areas with high concentrations of impoverished racialized groups tend to experience disproportionate rates of violence in Canada. As news media heavily focuses on crime reports, violence often comes to characterize the affected neighbourhoods. News reports can impact audience levels of fear and scholars argue that disproportionate reporting of crime-related events can instil fear among the public. To date, there has been no study that examines a moral panic of neighbourhoods. Therefore, this thesis examines how the racialization of crime and the criminalization of place coalesce to create a moral panic of a neighbourhood. To examine the media’s role in creating fear, two Toronto newspapers were sampled over a 14-year period. A frame analysis was conducted to investigate how Toronto newspapers framed Kingston- Galloway between 1998-2012. Findings suggest that Toronto newspapers racialize crime and criminalize place, which may aid in the construction of a moral panic of a neighbourhood.