ABSTRACT
How do you learn about domestic violence or other social problems, like juvenile delinquency, rape, corporate crime, homelessness, poverty, or pollution? Have you experienced these problems firsthand? How much of your knowledge is from the media? The sources of information that we use to help understand social problems can be thought of as tour guides that lead us through the complex social problem landscapes. When people visit a city they do not know, they may go on a tour to get an overview of the community. Imagine that they decide to take two tours. Their first tour guide highlights the tourist attractions, while the second guide focuses on the extreme class differences present in the city’s various neighborhoods. These two tours would be quite different even though they focused on the same city. In the same way, depending on the guide, tours through a social problem landscape can depict different pictures of the problem.
