Another model, which would agree with the view that the mass media creates violence amongst its audience, is the hypodermic syringe model. The sociologist Bandura created a situation where young children were shown a video of other children hitting a ‘bobo doll’ with a toy hammer. In one of the videos, the child was rewarded for hitting the doll, in another the child was punished and in the third video the child was neither rewarded nor punished. The bob doll was then placed in a room with one of the children, and a toy hammer was also left in the room. Bandura found that the child who had seen the video of the other child getting punished did not hit the doll. However, the two children who had seen the videos in which the child was rewarded or neither rewarded nor punished did hit the bobo doll with the toy hammer. Therefore, Bandura claimed that watching violence on TV (and realising you were not going to get punished) caused the children to copy the video and attack the bobo doll. However, this experiment has been deemed far too artificial and does not in any way reflect real life. Would the children have attacked the doll if there were other toys in the room, such as toy bricks or cars, and not just a hammer? This model is similar to the observational learning model, which is based on the assumption that people learn to be aggressive, and that they model their aggressive behaviour on screened violence. Therefore television increases the likelihood of aggression and violence by showing situations that the viewer can imitate. Both sociologists Bandura and Walters argue that audiences are far more likely to imitate violent screen behaviour if they perceive that the behaviour is rewarded by others.
The reinforcement model is another model that disagrees with the view that the mass media creates violence within its audience. As its name implies, this perspective argues that violence on television will reinforce any propensity for violence that already exists within the viewer. Media violence neither increases nor decreases the possibility of audience aggression. The sociologist Klapper (1960) argues that violence is not created by the media, rather it results from a complex interaction of norms and values, peer situations, family life and social roles. It is these factors, which determine how violence is understood and reacted to by the audience. Halloran (164) developed a more critical approach. He rejects the media centric position and argues that the media are only one of many factors that influence the audience. This model is more sociological than psychological, as it locates the media within the social situation of the individual. People do not watch television in a social vacuum as they are influenced by their experiences of family life, schooling, religion, policing and so on. As the sociologist Halloran argued, ‘we must get away from thinking in terms of what TV does to people and substitute for it the idea of what people do with TV’.
The last model that agrees with the view that the mass media creates violence amongst its audience is the cultivation analysis model. The sociologist Gerbner and his associates conducted social surveys on and content analysis of prime-time television for over twenty years in the USA. The main premise behind their work was that television portrays a distorted view of social reality. They found that violence is significantly over represented on screen, and social groups such as blacks, women and gays and lesbians are noticeably under represented. As a result of this distorted media representation, Gerbner and his associates argue that heavy viewers of television develop very distorted views of the outside world and as a result express more prejudiced attitudes towards some minority groups. Another sociological study, conducted by Belson, attempted to measure the effects on adolescent boys of long-term exposure to television. His research was based on interviews in London with 1565 boys ages 12-17. The boys were asked to recall 100 TV programmes broadcast between 1959 and 1971. These programmes had each been allocated an ‘objective’ violence score, and the boys were also invited to discuss any violent behaviour they had been involved in during the previous six months. Belson’s findings indicated that, on average, boys who watched more violence on screen tended to commit a greater number of violent acts, particularly those of a more serious nature. He concluded that extensive exposure to TV violence does influence real-life aggression.
The final model, which does not agree with the view that the mass media creates violence, is the reception analysis model. Earlier effects research was based on the assumption that the majority of people respond in similar ways to the same media and are vulnerable to psychological damage from the media. However it has recently been argued by European researchers that the concept that the media exert direct effects is too deterministic and ignores the extent to which people are a sophisticated and active audience. Most sociologists today would totally reject the notion that the media is all powerful, because it is extremely simplistic to argue that any given media text will have the same effect on everyone in its audience. Most media texts are read differently by different members of the audience according to their subjective experience, cultural knowledge and social characteristics.
In conclusion, we cannot assume that violence shown in the media will affect everybody, and in the same way. In assessing the effects of the media, the nature and structure of the media audience need careful consideration. It cannot be assumed that the audience is a homogeneous mass and that all members of that audience will respond in the same way. Rather, the audience must be considered as heterogeneous – a highly differentiated group of individuals who will respond in a variety of ways to media output. Also, to date, no definite conclusions can be drawn regarding the assessment of the influence of the media on its audiences. Whilst it is true that the media cannot be studied in isolation, studying it within its social context is no easy task.
