Psychology Commons^™

Do Age And Media Type Influence The Effects Of Pretrial Publicity On Verdicts?, Akera Williams

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Concerns about Pretrial Publicity (PTP) have grown with the rise of the internet and social media, leading to a near impossibility of selecting a jury that can ignore PTP and focus only on facts presented at trial. Previous research has shown participants exposed to negative PTP were more likely to find the defendant guilty, and tended to misattribute PTP as having been evidence presented during the trial. This study compared jury verdicts among older and younger jurors when PTP was presented in different media formats (text vs video). Results suggest both older and younger jurors tend to misattribute PTP information …