Perceived safety in digital information environments: objective violence, online disinformation, internet use, and victimization across Europe, 2002-2023.

Introduction: Perceived safety is a psychologically consequential judgment shaped by objective threats, prior victimization, and mediated information. However, few studies jointly examine longitudinal crime data, national digital-information environments, and individual Internet use. Methods: We integrated European Social Survey Rounds 1-11 with homicide data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Digital Society Project indicators, and World Development Indicators. Study 1 examined 308 country-round-year cells from 38 European countries, representing 442,100 respondents, using weighted country and survey-round fixed-effects models. Study 2 analyzed 408,149 respondents from 37 countries and 345 country-round-year cells using cell fixed-effects models. Results: In Study 1, conventional country-clustered models indicated that within-country increases in lagged homicide were associated with lower perceived safety (-1.42 percentage points per within-country SD, 95% CI [-2.47, -0.38], Discussion: The national-level findings should be considered provisional. The individual-level findings are consistent with-but do not establish-mechanisms involving access to information, social support, or perceived efficacy. Given the observational design, all results represent conditional associations rather than causal effects.