Government Crime Reporting & Xenophobia: An Examination of the Effects of Perpetrator Depictions In Kuwaiti News

Abstract

Drug crimes are one of Kuwait’s major social issues, comprising the majority of crimes in the country. Despite both Kuwaitis and expatriates committing drug crimes at almost equal rates, the onus of criminality perceptions has fallen predominantly on expatriates. With social identity theory as the guiding framework, this study examines the effects of the inclusion of ingroup and outgroup perpetrator ethnicities in government crime news on xenophobia with an experiment. The study also explores whether the relationship between perpetrator identity in crime news and xenophobia is mediated by perceptions of expatriate criminality and moderated by crime news media consumption, finding no significant effect for either variable. Notably, the study explores ingroup members’ exposure to ingroup versus outgroup perpetrators, finding that exposure to outgroup perpetrators results in significantly higher levels of xenophobia compared to both the ingroup perpetrator and control (no stimulus) conditions.