Furthermore, other researchers, Leonard Berkowitz for instance, was also convinced that violence included film clips did affect the following manner of people after seeing those, according to the laboratory experiments which were similar to what Bandura did contemporarily.
The observation and findings of those laboratory experiments have shown that viewing televised violence increases aggressive behaviour. It does indeed, watching violence on video disinhibits one’s tendency to commit violent action that has already been learn (modelling effect); Viewing much violence on TV makes people less sensitive to it, thus act violently without feeling guilty(desensitisation). Nevertheless, all of experiments were merely demonstrated in laboratory, and only short-term effects were measured. They would not tell us about how audience or viewer behave and act in the real world.
Recent research
Children who watch more than an hour of television a day during their early teens are more likely to be violent in later life, according to new research. The findings show the extent of the violence, including fights and robberies, increases further if daily TV watching exceeds three hours. Researchers studied more than 700 people from two upstate New York counties over the course of 17 years to discover if there is a link between television and aggression. The findings show that of children who watch less than an hour of television a day at the age of 14, only 5.7% turned to violence between the ages of 16 and 22. For those who watch between one and three hours, this jumped to 22.8%. The rate went up again to 28.8% for those who watched more than three hours a day.
Apparently, this long-term effect research is overwhelming; however, the study's leader attributed all the violent behaviour to televised violence and suggested parents should not let their children watch more than one hour of television a day. Should television really take all the responsibility for the violent action? I would respond no because it seems to be too unilateral without questioning if other aspects such as parental education and social contexts cause criminal behaviour too.
Moreover, a British expert said the study findings were "highly misleading". Guy Cumberbatch from the Birmingham-based Communications Research Group said the data had been "tortured to fit a theory". He said the relatively small number of children who watched less than one hour a day - 88 out of the 700 - represented an extreme which it was unfair to use as a basis of comparison. "How many families do you know where children watch this amount or less?" he said. "These are highly unusual families - the kind who are more likely to be taking their children to art galleries and museums.” And there are so few of them compared to the rest of the children studied."
Overall, short-term measured experiments and long-term investigated research do tell us that mediated violence has an impact on audience’s behaviour, but neither it is determinative nor is it the only factor causing violent behaviour in audience. Once we make an investigation on an actual case, there will be no evidence to support the point that violence in the media directly causes violent behaviour in the audience.
CASES IN REALITY
Ronnie Zamaro, a 15-year-old boy, who murdered his 82-year-old next-door neighbour in Miami, Florida, in 1975. The victim was killed after being found attempting to call the police.
The defense attorney claimed that Zamaro was “suffering from and acted under the influence intoxication” ( Liebert&Sprafkin, 1988, p.127). Meanwhile, the psychiatrist thought that Zamaro was “blunted his awareness and his capacity to understand his actions” by television. One of the witnesses, psychologist Margaret Hanratty Thomas also had a word, saying that the boy was “unbalanced” by television violence and television was an accessory to the crime. However, all efforts of argument were failed to convince the jury because Zamaro, the murderer had been considering a “good guy” named Kojak as his hero. How come such a good heroic image blunted someone’s awareness? How come television violence “unbalanced” someone who admired a good guy on screen? It sounds ridiculous when someone commits crime and attributes criminal delinquency to viewing a heroic image. The teenager murderer was finally found guilty and sentenced to life.
The decision made by the jury in this case was absolutely faultless because the defence could not provide any evidence of mediated violence directly made the boy violent and committed such a crime. The only argument from the defence was mere speculation.
The second case happened in England in February 1993, when 2-year-old James Bulger was killed by two boys, both aged 10. The tragedy was so shocking and grabbed all the attention of the media around worldwide at that time. Similarly, the key argument of this unparalleled barbarity was focused on whether the defences were influenced by mediated violence, violent video, film or video games, in particular. In fact, a violent film, named Child’s play 3 was found containing child murdering and thus made some people speculate the link between this case and media violence.
However, had the two murderers actually seen Child’s Play 3? According to the investigation made by the police, neither of the boys had ever watched the violent film, despite Neil Venables, the father of one of the murderers had rented the video just some weeks before, his son was not living with him at the time. Besides, the boy did not like horrific films and got upset when viewing violent content in videos and this was confirmed later by psychiatric reports. Consequently, speculating the “link” between the murder and the video Child’s Play 3 became farfetched. That is to say, concluding the causal relationship between violent behaviour in the audience and violence in the media becomes powerless.
Of course such claims are very common, perhaps often made in good faith and sound very plausible, but they have never stood up to scrutiny. In Britain, the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee (1994) asked James Ferman (Director of The British Board of Film Classification) what the evidence was in this area. He had advised the committee that, for more than twenty years, whenever some claim was made that a serious crime was linked to a video or a film, he had always investigated the case. He observed: I do not know of particular cases where somebody has imitated a video and gone out and actually committed a serious crime as a result of what they have seen. (Home Affairs Select Committee, Fourth Report, 1994, p 5)
Similar conclusions were reached by the BBC’s Chief Reporter, Kate Adie, and her team in 1988. They researched eight of the best evidenced cases where a crime had been clearly “linked” to the mass media for the flagship current affairs programme “Panorama”. To their surprise, none of these cases was supported by any evidence that would be acceptable to a serious investigative journalist. Every single one turned out to have been based on mere speculation – sometimes by proselytising judges but often by fanciful journalists.
In conclusion, in terms of psychology, mediated violence does affect behaviour in the audience due to numerous laboratory experiments and researches. In reality, however, sufficient evidence can hardly be found to suggest that violence in the media cause violent behaviour in the audience. It is irresponsible if simply attributing violent behaviour in audience to mediated violence and it is exaggerated to conclude violence in the media causes harm to viewers. (Words: 1537)
Bibliography
Briggs, P. Cobley, The Media: An Introduction, Pearson Education Limited, 2002.
Harris, Richard Jackson (1989) Ch.9 “Violence”, pp.175-193, in A cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
http://www.videostandards.org.uk/video_violence.htm
Wei Wang
Coursework Essay
Course Code: MC51002A
Student Number: 22190795
Student Name: Wei Wang
