The Communication of Fear: Factors of Crime News Impacting Engagement on Social Networks

This research analyzes the impact of crime news on users’ digital engagement on social networks. Specifically, this study reviews the influence of presentation format, crime details, and news or discursive values on people’s interaction with media content. To achieve the study’s objective, 1000 posts from the social network Instagram about crimes in the main media outlets of Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, and Ecuador were reviewed. Content analysis was employed to code the variables, while negative binomial regression models were used to assess their impact on engagement, measured through likes and comments received on the posts. The findings show that shorter videos and image collections generate more engagement than other formats, while the type of crime did not show significant differences in interaction, suggesting a possible normalization of violence among the analyzed viewers. Among the news values, inseparability had a positive effect on engagement, while consonance and references to elite figures demonstrated negative effects. The original value of this research lies in empirically verifying how the characteristics of crime news influence engagement, providing relevant information for understanding the interaction between electronic media and the perception of criminality among Latin American viewers.