Assess the argument that violence in media ought to be restricted on grounds of its negative effects

Violence is defined as the act of purposefully hurting someone or oneself. It is a learned behaviour and Violence creates a cycle where we all end up affected in one way or the other. Violence represents acts in which a person gets hurt. It is an aggression to the dignity, integrity and well being of a person. A person could get hurt physically, psychologically, sexually or socially (The Editors, 1992, Increasing adolescent violence).

The media represents all the means of communication, as newspapers, radio, films and television that provides the public with news, entertainment usually along with advertising.

The question that is asked amongst many sociologists is whether or not this violence in the media does have negative effects on the behaviour of children. “ Media violence is one of the key ingredients in the complex mix of factors that produce anti-social conduct.” (Amitai Etzioni, “Lock up your TV sets”, 1993).

Concerns about negative effects and prolonged exposure to violent television programming emerged shortly after broadcasting began in 1946 (Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman). First, we must define the “negative effects” of children’s behaviour. “In 1991, children under the age of ten committed more than 1000 acts of aggravated assault and 81 cases of forcible rape. Juveniles 12 and under committed…..murder, robbery, larceny-theft, and forcible rape” (Bennett, 2001).

Generally, we can all assume that the aforementioned crimes are wrong, but the fact that they were committed by children, shows a fault in society. It is hard to believe that simply viewing a movie could be so detrimental to children. But there is indeed evidence of specific re-enactments of actions in movies. Evidence “…comes in configuration of corpses, mutilated by disturbed teenagers to resemble victims in slasher movies…..” (Bender & Leone, 1995).

If movies are so bad for children, wouldn’t it be easy to just not allow children to see “violent” movies? This seems to be a simple solution, but one that cannot work for many reasons. The main reason is mainstream movies that do well in the box office tend to air on public television. “We now view movies on television replete with graphic sickening violence. Some television now show these movies in the early evening, when children could be watching” (Tipper Gore).

Over the past thirty years or so, the most important development in the media is thought to ...

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Over the past thirty years or so, the most important development in the media is thought to be the increasing influence of television. Virtually every household now possesses a TV set.

In the UK the average set is switched on for between five and six hours a day. Much the same is true in the United States and the other West European countries (Goodhardt et al 1987).

The American psychological Association estimates that an average American child will see 8,000 murders on television before finishing elementary school (Clark, 1993).

Due to this, the incidence of violence in television programmes is well documented. There have been studies that support the relation between Violence in the media and violent behaviour from the viewers. Including that by Gerbner et al, who analysed samples of prime-time and weekend daytime television for all the major American networks each year after 1967. The number and frequency of violent acts and episodes were charted for a range of varying types of programme.

Television drama emerged as highly violent in character, an average of 80 per cent of such programmes contained violence, with a rate of 7.5 violent episodes per hour. Children’s programme, including cartoons, displayed an even higher level of violence, however killing was not portrayed as much. (Gerbner et al, 1979, Gunter, 1985).

Another study that was conducted reanalysed over 200 existing major studies on television violence (Paik and Comstock, 1994). It concluded that although the various studies showed different degrees of influence, there is “a positive and significant correlation between television violence and aggression behaviour”.

Robinson also came to similar conclusions. Third and fourth grade students at two elementary schools were asked to report the amount of time spent watching TV and videos and playing video games. Students were challenged to abstain from watching television and video games for ten days, then asked to restrict TV-watching and video game playing to seven hours a week.

Children were then asked to rate their classmates aggression at the beginning of the study (September 1996) and at the end of the study (April 1997). Robinson says there were about 2.5 per cent fewer reports of aggression in the test group than in the control group, (Robinson 1997).

When children are taught how to tie their shoes, it is because of how their parents showed them. When children are taught how to do math problems, it is because of how their teachers showed them. So with all of these role models, why is there so much violence? It is because children learn from what they see, even if its on the big screen or on the television.

Although there seems to be enough data, there is not enough to actually assure that the violence in the media could affect the behaviour of an individual. There are experts that suggest that there are other explanations. F.S. Anderson collected the findings of 67 studies conducted between 1956 to 1976, investigating the influence of TV violence on tendencies to aggression among children. About three-quarters of the studies claimed to find some such association. 20 per cent of the cases there were no clear-cut results, while in 3 per cent of the researches the investigators concluded that watching television violence actually decreases aggression (Anderson, 1977; Liebert et al, 1982). He revealed that in crime dramas featuring violence, there are underlying themes of justice and retribution. There is a far higher proportion of miscreants brought to justice in crime dramas than with police investigations in real life.

Another common argument is the desensitisation that occurs while watching violence on TV is a distortion of reality. After being exposed of acts of violence constantly an individual becomes used to seeing it and it does not create much arousal. It looses the true meaning and it can normalize behaviours that are completely deviant.

Looking at other media’s show that there is not a great influence of violence onto the public. Theoretically, the effects of exposure to media violence extend to Internet media as well. To date, however, no studies have been published regarding the effects of Web-based media violence on youth aggression and violence.

Furthermore, a relatively small amount of research has focused on the impact of music videos with violent or antisocial themes (Baxter et al., 1985; Caplan, 1985; Hansen & Hansen, 1990; Rich et al., 1998). Randomised experiments indicate that exposure to violent or antisocial rap videos can increase aggressive thinking, but no research has yet tested how such exposure directly affects physical

The impact of video games containing violence has recently become a focus of research because children are supposedly more susceptible to behavioural influences when they are active participants than when they are observers. To date, violent video games have not been studied as extensively as violent television or movies. The number of studies investigating the impact of such games on youth aggression is small, there have been none on serious violence.

Even when it seems that there is clear evidence that a link exists between violence and aggressive behaviour, it is not a definitive fact. However it is important to watch this matter closely without ignoring that although the media violence is not the only cause of violent behaviour it has a great influence on it. When an individual is exposed to all the other factors and in top of it watches TV absorbing all the negative messages is a terrible combination. The society that we live in is stressful enough and the media is not doing much to help reduce that stress. We all need to remain open minded in trying to find solutions that will help the younger generation cope with this matter.