Violence and the media✅

Violence and the media

• Violence, including pornography, on the internet, in computer games, in TV news reports, and dramas, in books, and in films and DVDs, is now part of popular culture, and more people are exposed to such violence than ever before.

• The new media mean that violent imagery is found everywhere, and people can access it whenever they want, and it is almost impossible to control. Digital technology means media violence is now also interactive - people not only consume violent images, but can also take part in that violence as they play computer games or upload violent imagery to YouTube and other websites.

• Questions about media violence and whether the media cause violent behaviour have been a feature of media discussion for almost as long as mass media have existed. Every so often, there’s a new moral panic about the effects of violent video games, television shows, movies, song lyrics and music views, and Internet pornography, with suggestions of a society that is slipping into violent depravity, and consequent calls to do something about it.

• Such media violence is often blamed for increasing crime and violence in society. A high profile example of this was the murder in 1993 of 2 year old James Bulger by two 10 year old boys. The judge in the case commented: ‘I suspect that exposure to violent video films may in part be an explanation.’ This view was disputed by the police, who said they could find no evidence that videos viewed by the family could have encouraged the boys to batter a toddler to death, or that the boys had even seen the films mentioned.

• Assertions, like that in the Bulger murder case, that media violence generates real-life violence are commonplace. Masses of research has been done to investigate whether such a link really exists, particularly in relation to children. Typical of this was the report by Newson which opened with a reference to the case the previous year, and asserted that violent videos could lead to violent actions. His review gained enormous media attention, and was reported as conclusively establishing a link between video violence and real-world violence, a link that was allegedly even stronger than the one established between smoking and lung cancer.

• Similarly, a review by Anderson et al claimed that research showed indisputably that media violence increased the likelihood of aggressive and violent behaviour, both immediately and in the long term. Although much of the experimental research claims to have established some links between viewing violent TV and violent behaviour, such claims have been very strongly disputed.

• Cumberbatch, for example, heavily criticised Newton’s report, arguing its findings were nothing more than speculation fuelled by the popular press. A review of more than 1000 studies concluded that the link between media violence and violent behaviour was ‘not prove’, and children displaying tendencies to violents may have had such tendencies regardless of television viewing.

• A 2003 report by the Broadcasting Standards Commission found that children are sophisticated media users and are fully aware that television production is a process and that they are not watching reality, with the report concluding: ‘They are able to make judgements…they are not blank sheets of paper on whom messages can be imprinted’.

• A review of the research evidence by Cumberbatch found the evidence for the view that violence on television caused violence in society to be quite weak. Cumberbatch cites a review that claims there are only around 200 separate scientific studies that directly asses the effects of exposure to media violence, and that this evidence does not support the view that media violence causes aggression.

• Ferguson was critical of previous laboratory studies (considered shortly) and studied instances of violence in films between 1920 and 2005 compared with levels of real life violence (as measured by homicide rates) in society. In a second study, consumption of violent video games was measured against youth violence rates in the previous 20 years. He found no evidence of long term links between media violence and real life violence, and indeed in both cases more violence on screen and more people playing violent video games was associated with a decline in violence in wider society.

Some competing claims about the effects of violence in the media

• The uncertainty of the effects of violence in the media on violence in real life, despite the mass of research that has been carried out, is shown by the range of different and contradictory conclusions reached, which are summarised below:

1. Copycatting or imitation. Like a hypodermic syringe injecting drug, exposure to media violence causes children to copy what they see and behave more aggressively in the real world (Bandura et al’s Bobo Doll experiment)

2. Catharsis. Media violence does not make viewers more aggressive, but reduces violence as it allows people to live out their violent tendencies in the fantasy world of the media rather than in the real world

3. Desensitisation. Repeated exposure of children to media violence has gradual ‘drip-drip’ long-term effects, socialising audiences into accepting a culture of violence in which violence is seen as a normal part of life and a legitimate means of solving problems. This means people become ‘comfortably numb’ - less sensitive and disturbed when they witness real world violence, have less sympathy for its victims and have an increased risk of aggressive behaviour as adults

4. Sensitisation. Exposure to violence in the media can make people more sensitive to the consequences of violence, and less tolerant of real life violence

5. Media violence causes psychological disturbance in some children. Watching media violence frightens young children, causing nightmares, sleeplessness, anxiety and depression, and these effects may be long lasting

6. The exaggeration of the fear of violence. Even if what is shown by the media will not make people violent, it may lead people to believe that we live in a violent society. Those who watch more TV, and are therefore exposed to greater amounts of violence, have exaggerated fears about crime. They are more likely to overestimate their risk of being victimised by criminals, to believe that neighbourhoods are unsafe, to see crime as a serious personal problem, and to assume the crime rate is increasing, even when it is not

Methodological problems of research media violence

• Research into the area of whether violence in the media generates real-life violence is fraught with difficulty. Even if agreement is reached on what violence is, how can the effects be measured? Livingstone points out that any link between media violence and violent behaviour does not mean media violence causes the behaviour. For example, having shown that those who watch more violent television tend to be more aggressive, researchers must resolve three questions:

1. Whether more aggressive people choose to watch violent programmes (i.e. selective exposure)

2. Whether violent programmes make viewers aggressive (i.e. media effects)

3. Whether certain social circumstances both make people more aggressive and lead them to watch more violent television (i.e. a common third cause)

• Livingstone and Ferguson each point out that media effects models have tried to resolve these issues by using the experimental method of research, with research exposing small samples to media violence in artificial laboratory conditions to see whether they then behave violently. Apart from the ethical issues related to deliberately exposing people, particularly children, to violence imagery to test their reactions to it, there are also several questions about the validity of findings obtained by such experimental research, as well as other problems of research into the effects of violence in the media.

1. There is a problem with how ‘media violence’ is defined in the first place. Boxing and wrestling fights, shooting and murders in TV dramas, parents hitting children, police attacking protesters, cartoon fights and news film of warfare all depict violent scenes, but they may not be seen by researchers in the same way. There is a difference between scenes showing real life violence, fictional violence and cartoon violence, and it is likely that people are able to distinguish between them and react in different ways to them.

2. The hypodermic syringe model of media effects underlies much of the research. This doesn’t deal with how people interpret what they see, with the context in which they view the violence (such as discussing with others or the uses they are making of the media), or with the wider range of influences on peoples behaviours, apart from the media.

3. It is almost impossible to avoid the Hawthorne Effect - whereby people who are aware they are subjects of research change their behaviour. People may behave quite differently in real life, and they may alter their behaviour or stated attitudes to media violence as a response to being observed or questioned, and the presence, appearance and gender of an observer can affect behaviour, particularly in children.

4. Laboratory experiments only last for a short time, and therefore can only measure the immediate effects of media violence in the experimental situation. This doesn’t mean these effects are long lasting. Even if there is violent behaviour in the long term, a laboratory experiment wouldn’t prove it was the effects of violence in the media that caused this, rather than other social explanations such as being brought up in a violent family or neighbourhood.

5. Laboratory experiments are necessarily small scale, using small samples. This raises questions over whether the results can be applied to or generalised to the whole population.

6. It is difficult to separate out the effects of violent media imagery from other possible causes of peoples reactions. Wider issues of socialisation or peer group influences might mean that people react in different ways to the same violent images, even in experimental conditions.

7. It is almost impossible to find a group that hasn’t been exposed to media violence. To test whether media violence causes violent behaviour, it is necessary to compare a group that has been exposed to violence with one that hasn’t. Yet, in a media saturated society where everyone is constantly bombarded by media imagery from across the globe, it is almost impossible to find anyone who has not been exposed to violent media imagery of some kind.

8. The new media makes it almost impossible to test media effects. Audience increasingly surf across different media and watch bits of programmes across multiple TV channels. The meanings of whole programmes, such as the causes of violence or the final punishment meted out to the violent and guys, may not actually be watched. This makes it extremely difficult to know in the real world what media are watched, what violence people are exposed to, the context in which it occurs, and what meanings audiences give to what they see.

Conclusion on violence and the media

• Despite all the research, combined with a range of methodological problems, there is little reliable and undisputed evidence about whether violence in the media leads to an increase in aggressive behaviour.

• Gauntlett suggests that one conclusion to be drawn from the failure to identify the direct effects of media upon people’s behaviour, despite detailed analysis of hundreds of research studies, is that they are simply not there to be found.