Search Results

This chapter explores the nature of media violence and its particular influence on adolescents and their development. It shows the immense power the media potentially plays in adolescent development, including the power not only to shape aggressive and violent dispositions but also to address violence and foster non-violent relationships. To introduce the media's socializing force, the chapter also pays attention to factors that moderate and mediate media effects, although research only recently has turned to these considerations. That is, it considers the factors that shape how the media influences adolescents, since the media does not act alone. Together, findings reveal the need to reconsider how best to prepare adolescents to respond to violent media.

There appears to be little discernible change in television violence over time, and violent acts by children and adolescents are rarely shown on television. Perhaps as a result, adolescent portrayal in television violence has been under-studied. Nevertheless, children and adolescents exposed to heavy amounts of television violence behave more aggressively as they age. This chapter discusses viewer characteristics and portrayal characteristics in order to explain this link. Television violence teaches young people that violence is an effective problem-solving strategy at both the personal and societal level. An education strategy is recommended for dealing with television violence, in which the public learns about the harmful effects of media violence and rewards the creation of other types of programming. This model avoids the problems of censorship but requires individuals to accept this goal and work toward making it a reality.

This chapter discusses the importance of studying aggression and violence through a risk and protective factor approach; clarifies some common misunderstandings regarding media violence studies; describes a psychological perspective on how humans can learn through direct and indirect observations; and summarizes evidence on the effects of media violence, especially within field experiments. It concludes by presenting hypotheses on how prosocial media may be used to reduce antisocial cognition and behavior, and offers policy relevant suggestions.

This chapter lays out a host of conceptual viewpoints involving definitions, methodologies, and guiding principles. Aggression is defined as: (a) a behavior that is intended to harm another individual; (b) the behavior is expected by the perpetrator to have some chance of actually harming that individual; and (c) the perpetrator believes that the target individual is motivated to avoid the harm. Subtypes of aggression are discussed, such as the distinction between physical and verbal aggression. The strengths and weaknesses of various types of research designs are considered (e.g. experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal), as well as the importance of understanding how to integrate results from multiple studies. The chapter provides a brief review of prior media violence research, with a special emphasis on research involving the effects of violent video games.

Media violence and its effects on aggression is one of the most heavily investigated topics in the field of communication. Every time a child or teenager committed an act of violence in recent years, the debate about the effects of media violence on aggression flared up again. Can children and teens indeed become aggressive, or even criminal, from seeing violence on television, in movies, or in games? And if so, are some children and teens particularly vulnerable to media violence effects? This chapter reviews the latest findings on the effects of media violence on aggression and criminal behavior. It first discusses key studies that investigated the effects of media violence on aggression. It then discusses the most important theories of why and how media violence may stimulate aggression. Finally, it reflects on how and why some children may be more—and others less—susceptible to media violence effects.

This chapter evaluates state legislative efforts to translate the social science evidence about the effects of video game violence on children, such as evidence of a causal link between playing violent video games and subsequent aggressive or violent behavior on the part of children. Previous research demonstrates that the federal courts struggled with this evidence during litigation involving multiple states, but the state legislatures’ cursory investigations into the social science were thoroughly inadequate. Justice Stephen Breyer of the US Supreme Court asserts that state legislatures are in a better position than courts to analyze this kind of evidence. This chapter presents case studies from five different state legislative hearings, demonstrating that even legislative committees charged with careful perusal of the relevant social science literatures failed to achieve adequate translations.

This chapter considers freedom of speech in relation to media violence. Freedom of speech is typically not protected by the harm principle, and therefore recourse is made to arguments deriving the value of free speech from its contributions to truth finding, democracy, autonomy, and so forth. Susan Hurley has argued against the argument from autonomy on the basis of findings from neuroscience and psychology purportedly showing a correlation between exposure to media violence and non-autonomously copied criminal violence. I argue that Hurley’s claim cannot be substantiated. I review the evidence, make a number of observations about policymaking, and discuss a potential way out based on a recent epistemological reading of free speech by Joseph Blocher.

This chapter studies the connection between genocide and modernity. It stresses that the anthropologists who explain human variation must be careful about the way they characterize difference, since the resulting categories have been included into public projects of hate, such as the Nazi notions of racial hierarchy. It shows that the anthropological expertise in unpacking local categories might also help in better understanding mass violence. This chapter present the results of an ethnographic study conducted in Indonesia on how the media commonly portrays violence.

The majority of the existing research on media aggression has focused on media violence and its effects on physical aggression. However, more recently, scholars have focused their attention on other forms of aggression in the media, such as relational aggression, and its effects on viewer attitudes and behaviors. This chapter reviews the existing theory and research on the portrayal of relational aggression in the media; how exposure to such portrayals is related to subsequent aggressive behaviors across childhood, adolescence, and emerging adulthood; and potential moderators and mediators of effects. We conclude with specific recommendations for future research, particularly as it relates to theory building and public policy.