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The Washington, D.C. mayor's November 2023 declaration of youth violence as a public emergency has sparked growing public concerns and intensified media attention. In 2025, President Donald Trump called to “fight crime in D.C.,” further drawing attention to the issue. This study aims to explore the role of solutions-oriented news framing and its “reason-giving” function in shaping effective policy efforts to curb urban youth crime. It examines how solutions-oriented versus problem-oriented news stories, along with societal versus individual-responsibility framing, influence policy preferences while shaping emotions and perceptions of social inequality. An online experiment involving 466 D.C. residents found that solutions-oriented frame increases public support for rehabilitative policies and reduces support for punitive measures by fostering empathy and enhancing perceptions of social inequality. While responsibility framing did not directly influence policy preferences, news stories highlighting societal responsibility without offering solutions led readers to favor punitive measures more than those exposed to societal responsibility framing combined with a solutions-oriented frame. The implications for urban journalism, constructive reporting, and policy development are discussed.
Koo et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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