exposed to the news with stories about the police as part of overall media exposure does determine their opinions about the police.

To answer the research question regarding whether public perceptions of police match individual experiences with police, we came up with a list of questions under three categories: general demographics, social and news media, and feelings toward the police. We used Survey Monkey to create a variety of open ended and multiple choice questions. Participants also completed questions using the semantic differential scale to gauge their general opinions of the police. The semantic differential measures the meaning of attitude objects using a bipolar adjective structure that addresses the dimensions of evaluation strength and agency. When the survey was completed, it was then deployed to the public through Facebook, Twitter, and various web links. Some of the specific questions asked were: How often do you use social media? What social media outlets do you use? What kind of links do you click on? How credible would you consider the information provided in these links? A total of fifty-six questions were developed for the survey.

Once the data was extracted from the survey, we then coded all of the answers provided from the sixty-seven participants. For instance, group one would equal yes and group two would equal no or group one would equal female and group two would equal male. After the coding was finished, we begin testing our hypotheses using SPSS statistical software. In order to analyze the relationship between race and their perception of the police, a t-test was conducted. A t-test was also conducted to distinguish the relationship between whether a person was more likely to click on negative or positive types of information and the impacts on their perception of police. A correlation was performed to assess whether the number of social media sources (media exposure) or the individuals age significantly affected how they feel about the police. Correlations were also performed to assess if how often an individual watches the news affects their view of the police, whether the credibility of the news reports or information changes their view, and if the number to outside information from web links affects their opinions about the police.

To answer our research question, we came up with a number of hypotheses regarding social media and news programs. One hypothesis that we explored was that race does determine