Voices II Ja’Lynn Joyce, Junior, Stiver School for Arts, Ohio Dr. Mara Merlino, Associate Professor, Psychology and Sociology

The Voices Project’s goal was to analyze how public perception of the police matches with individual experience with the police using a survey. Within the survey, participants were asked about their demographics, use of social media, and views about the police. Research done by George Gerbner shows that negative media exposure of the police affects the public’s view and their opinions toward police leads to a sense of mistrust. Public perception of the police is important in the success of the criminal justice system. This paper specifically discusses how older individuals tend to stand by police and have a more positive outlook on them versus younger individuals that tend to more negative perceptions of police. It is also noted that African-Americans do have a more negative view about the police than do Caucasians. That if a person tends to only view positive or negative sources, it does influence positive or negative views about police and if the number of social media sources a person uses where police are portrayed negatively would make them have negative perception of the police. The number of links a person has to outside information about the police does affect how people view them because of the many different stories and points of view. Also that the credibility of those links to outside sources does play a role on how people see the police. And how frequently people are