"Violence on Television may have behavioural effects, emotional effects or ideological effects." (Buckingham in Barker and Petley(eds) 1997:39). Comment critically on the notion of television's effects under these three headings.

Amy Best

Audiences and Impacts

Batar 2

Carole O’Reilly

3. “Violence on Television may have behavioural effects, emotional effects or ideological effects.” (Buckingham in Barker and Petley(eds) 1997:39). Comment critically on the notion of television’s effects under these three headings and demonstrate how the available evidence remains contradictory.

Concern about violence within popular media has a long history. Plato proposed to ban poets from his ideal republic, because he feared that their stories about immoral behaviour would corrupt young minds. In modern times, moral pressure groups have tried to 'protect' people, especially children from television, the cinema, and 'video nasties'. It's important to see the issue of television violence and it’s link with behaviour in a social, cultural and historical context, and to also know that the media is often used as a scapegoat. For example, tremendous violence is almost always seen in classic Shakespearean theatre and yet it is considered necessary and educational in today’s society. Blaming the media helps to divert attention from other causes of change, and so claims about the 'effects of television' can be massively exaggerated.

The extremely broad and often ambiguous nature of violence seen on television can and has resulted in many disagreements concerning the degree of effects this can have on an audience. There has been much research into this concept, some partially successful in concluding an answer, some not and often proving highly contradictory. However there has yet to be a study that fully proves that violence seen in the media is directly linked to human behavioural, emotional or ideological effects.

There has been a considerable amount of research into the relationships between the viewing of violent films, videos and TV programmes and aggressive behaviour by the viewers of that material, in particular the behaviour of children. Many theorists in the past, such as the Frankfurt School (1922), have simply viewed the audience as a passive mass, absorbing the information given to them without reaction or hesitation. Due to this concept being commonly used and respected it was therefore inevitable that behaviour would be directly linked to any information gathered by that individual from television, as it was not generally considered that a person could resist or filter the footage they had seen.

Behavioural effects

Many people believe that behavioural patterns can be traced and linked directly to violence seen on television. In many of the early studies concerning this theorists simply did not address other factors that may be relevant when conducting such studies including gender, temperament and existing behavioural problems. However, some theories do prove that children can directly imitate actions they have observed previously regardless of these factors, such as the Bobo Doll Study. This shows that behaviour can be linked to a visual means and that children can re-inact scenes they observe, even when they may ...

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Behavioural effects

The Bobo Doll Study

The most famous psychological studies of children and aggressive behaviour are Albert Bandura's Bobo doll studies, performed at Stamford University, which are now widely regarded as early research classics in the field. These were experimental studies in which children of nursery school age observed a video in which an adult was hitting, punching, kicking and throwing a large inflatable doll. Particular actions were used which children would be unlikely to perform spontaneously. The children were then observed, as they played alone in a playroom with the same doll for 10 to 20 minutes. A controlled group of children were allowed to play with the doll without observing the video of the aggressive adult behaviour. As you might expect, the children who witnessed the adult aggression performed similar acts and the others did not. In this study, Bandura has shown that children display acts of aggressive behaviour, acquired simply through observing someone else performing in these acts.

There are many flaws in this study however, which can influence or exaggerate the reactions of the children such as the environment in which the study is held. The laboratory is an uncomfortable area in which children may act in a way which is alien to their usual reactions, and they may behave as they feel they are expected to, one child was recorded asking “ Mummy is that the doll we have to hit?” Children are noted to understand and differentiate between fantasy and real life, (it is ok to hit a doll but not a person.) It is also thought that the theorists conducting the study may have intentionally encouraged the aggression, something that most parents would not.

So although Bandura did prove that the children’s behaviour was undoubtedly linked to the images they had seen, it was an artificially made environment (both literally and by means of behaviour expressed by all parties) and therefore I would argue that it couldn’t possibly reflect a true scenario.

Other studies relating to this concept reached the same conclusions until a study by Feshbach and Singer (1971). Understanding that the environment of a laboratory may be a establishing factor in the behaviour of children, Feshbach and Singer decided to conduct their experiment in schools, an environment in which the children would feel comfortable and therefore more inclined to react in a way which is more accurate. Going into a boy’s home the theorists spilt a class into two groups, and conducted a manipulated situation over a duration of six weeks. The boys were exposed to different types of television, one group were shown typically ‘violent’ shows, and the other observed generally neutral television. The results proved an opposite reaction to Bandura’s study; the boys exposed to the violent television remained the same, while the other group had gotten considerably more aggressive during the experiment. This reaction is in line with the CATHARIS theory, which claims that watching violent programmes decreases levels of arousal, leaving viewers less prone to aggressive behaviour.

These studies are extremely contradictory and the differences are an example of how it is extremely difficult to define the exact link between television and behavioural effects.

Emotional effects

There is an ongoing debate regarding the effects that violence on television and film has on young people. It is no secret that children have access to such material and watch violence that is clearly not suitable, as the Glasgow media group stated in their study in 1994. They discovered that the extremely adult-based film Pulp Fiction had an enormous impact on the ‘12-13’ age group, and that when presented with stills children could often explain the action and dialogue, with stress on the adult language and violent acts. This study, although proving that young people were being exposed to such material, did not explore the effects that it may have on the children, emotionally or in their everyday behaviour. A previous study conducted by Barlow and Hill (1985) does contradict this study, as when asked what violent films they had seen on a list, 68% of children involved claimed to have seen non existent films. These studies in my opinion simply show an obvious desire by the children to seem ‘grown-up’ and ‘cool’ and do not reflect on any major effect violence may have on the children emotionally.

Despite the evidence of emotional effects being rare, television and film are still constantly blamed for the actions and emotions of young people who have committed crimes. The most famous case of this would be the aftermath of the murder of Jamie Bulger and the material that was thought to influence the boys who had committed his murder. The Press at the time had named one film as it’s target, Child’s Play 111 which after extreme scrutiny was ruled out as a direct influence as there was no evidence of the boys even watching this film. Instead of then exploring other ways to explain the emotional disturbance of the boys, other contacts with film and television were being sought. As Martin Baker reported in Audience Studies Reader (2003) ‘ So urgent is the wish to find such a link, it seems, that when an exemplar like this falls apart the response is simply to carry on’

In this case and in reference to many others which place a high degree of blame on media violence I would argue that its is mainly a desire to tackle the problems society encounter from the outside, blaming the violence seen in films can divert attention from other more serious aspects regarding internal problems. Theorists almost completely ignore the effects of real violence within the media, images seen on News programmes, which I would suggest could have a much higher emotional effect on a person, as the majority of people can differentiate between fantasy violence and the reality of violence within everyday life.

However, in regard to emotional effects, there have been a number of studies relating to a slight change in attitude and emotional feelings expressed.

A 1999 experiment for example looked at the emotional consequences of repeated exposure to extensive violence on film. Researchers assigned both male and female college students to view either extremely violent or non-violent feature films for four days in a row. On the fifth day, in an unrelated study, the participants were put in a position to help or hinder another person's chances of future employment. The results did indicate that both the men and the women who had been exposed to the film violence were more harmful to that person's job prospects, whether she had treated them well or had behaved in an insulting fashion. The study concluded that the repeated violence viewing provided an ‘enduring hostile mental framework’ that damaged interactions that were affectively neutral.

This experiment records a specific change in attitude and emotional behaviour but does not provide any evidence of direct violent changes in that person, and therefore simply states that a short term change of state may be apparent through increasing larges amounts of exposure to violence on television.

Again, studies are extremely contradictory and ambiguous when referring to the emotional effects of violent television and it is increasingly difficult to result in a clear conclusion when discussing the degree of effects that is has on the audience as a whole.

Bibliography –

Zillmann, D, and Weaver, J. B. III 1999: Effects of prolonged exposure to gratuitous media violence on provoked and unprovoked hostile behaviour, Journal of Applied Social Psychology: Place of Publication Unknown, 29, 145-165.

Chandler, D 1992: Television Violence and Children’s Behaviour (online) Place of Publication Unknown: HMSO. Available at http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/TF33121/tv-violence_and_kids.html (29/12/2004)

Brooker, W and Jermyn, D(eds) 2003: The Newson Report, a case study in ‘common sense’ Barker, M, The Audience Studies Reader, London and New York: Routledge, 8, 74-90.