Through exaggerated and sensationalized reporting of the conflict between the gangs, Cohen believed, that in addition to increasing public awareness, police awareness would also rise. This would therefore lead to an increased police presence at the sites of the anticipated clashes. From previous examples Cohen deducted that an abundance of police officers would most likely lead to the outbreak of violence - again contributing towards the idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Through highlighting the effects of a moral panic, Cohen demonstrates how the media can contribute to violence amongst young people. In this instance the media created a self fulfilling prophecy which resulted in groups of young males identifying themselves with one of the two groups. The events the occurred subsequently were without doubt as a result of the original media interest and misreporting of the events at Claton-on-sea and other towns. It can therefore be concluded that through the creation of moral panics and the identification of folk devils, the media can cause young people to behave violently.
Television violence and its effects have been studied by a great number of sociologists and it is a hugely debated topic. The murder of James Bulger in 1993 sparked huge controversy when it was the alleged that the two boys convicted of James’ murder were re-enacting a scene from the horror film ‘Childs Play’.
In 1967 L.D. Eron investigated the claim that TV violence caused aggression amongst children. To do this he interviewed the parents of 875 children aged between 8 and 9 years old to find out about their television viewing habits. The answers given were given scores according to the number violent programmes watched. Eron continued to interview the school classmates of the children involved to assess how aggressive they were in both the classroom and playground.
His results showed that there was a correlation of 0.21 between the preference for violent programmes and acts of aggression displayed at school. This result may be questioned for a number of reasons. Firstly, the identification of a correlation does not ultimately mean that television violence causes actual violence, particularly when the correlation Eron found applied only to the male participants. In addition Eron did not take into account the fact that these children may have experienced violence somewhere else, perhaps even before they first began watching television. Another problem that this study encounters is the definition of violence. In order to count the number to violent programmes watched, someone initially had to decide what was and wasn't violent.
Eron followed this study in 1977 when he interviewed 427 of the 875 children used in the original research. Adopting similar techniques, he asked participants to identify their favourite programmes. As before a correlation arose, this time of 0.31. To Eron, this indicated that early exposure to violent television programmes had the ability to increase an individual's tendency to be aggressive.
This experiment, similarly to the previous one was also open to argument. Like the first study the correlation Eron identified applied only to the male participants. It was also discovered that those who liked violent programmes tended not to be the same people who had expressed a preference for violence in the original study. In conclusion it is debateable as to whether this study and its conclusions may be generalised. For example, the concept of violence is clearly relative to time in this instance - what was called 'violent' in 1960 and 1970 is completely different to what people now call violent.
Barrie Gunter in his 'Plenty of evidence, very little proof' article identifies the four main types of research used to investigate the effects of TV violence. These methods include laboratory experiments, field experiments, correlation surveys and longitudinal panel studies. Lab studies included work by Bandura who in 1963 showed a group of children a piece of film in which a man acted violently towards a plastic doll. A similar reaction from the children was observed when they were given an almost identical doll to play with. Although this proves that the children may have learned this action from the television, the method in which this experiment was conducted may cast doubts over its applications. Many would argue that the viewing conditions are unnatural and do not mirror the conditions under which a child would normally watch television. Another problem is that only a small group of children were used which again restricts the ability to generalise the findings.
William Belson’s study of 1978 found that high exposure to television violence increases the degree to which boys engage in serious violence. In particular, he found that certain types of violence on T.V. appear to be more powerful in releasing violent behavior from adolescent boys. These ‘types of violence’ included plays of films in which violence occurred in the context of close personal relationships; programmes in which violence was not necessary to the plot but ‘thrown in for the sake of it’ and when violence was seen to be in a ‘good cause’. Belson also identified areas where violence had little effect: violence in sporting programmes, violent cartoons, science fiction and comedy violence including verbal abuse. Although Belson’s study has been heavily criticized for some major inconsistencies, it is still reasonably useful in attempting to identify the types of violence which do and the types of violence which do not lead young people to behave violently themselves.
There are studies which appear to disprove the notion that young people are affected by T.V. violence. Experiments such as Feshbach and Singer's 1971 investigation into the effects of violent programmes on young boys are used in an attempt to improve on the artificiality of the laboratory experiments. Feshbach and Singer used a group of boys aged 8 to 18 and gave them each a 'diet' of television to watch over a period of 6 weeks. They concluded that those who had watched violent or aggressive programmes actually showed a reduction in their aggressiveness. Unlike other studies which illustrated an increase in violence, this study would seem to suggest that people who are able to discharge their violent tendencies through watching television.
Overall it is extremely unclear as to whether violence on the TV causes young people to act violently themselves. The ways of measuring are highly flawed and no one method has escaped criticism. Correlation surveys unlike laboratory and field experiments are able to use large numbers of participants making their results more reliable. However no method is perfect making conclusions difficult to reach.
