Outline and discuss the view that violence onscreen can cause violence in society "Don't blame the movies Movies don't create killers, movies make killers more creative." Stewart Macher (Matthew Lillard) taken from the movie Scream.

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Outline and discuss the view that violence on

screen can cause violence in society

"Don't blame the movies [] Movies don't create killers, movies make killers more creative." Stewart Macher (Matthew Lillard) taken from the movie Scream.

According to Bandura (1960) and his Bobo Doll experiment, children will imitate violence whether it was seen on screen, in cartoon form, or in real life. However there are many faults with this experiment. The test conditions, the fact the experiment was only done once and not over a period of time, and the fact that children can tell the difference between an inanimate object and a real person. Despite the flaws in this experiment and others done to prove the same thing, people still believe that watching violent programmes or films will increase the chance that a person is, or will become violent in later life.
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If you are looking at violence on television, how can it be classified? Going by Bandura's experiment, children can't even watch cartoon violence, which includes things like Tom and Jerry, Roadrunner, and the Powerpuff Girls. To most adults, these programmes would not encourage them to go out and drop an anvil on someone, or savagely attack their friend, but some people do believe that these programmes will encourage children to do that.

An article from The Independent from 2002 say that "children who watch more than an hour of television every day are more likely to grow ...

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