Violence of mass Media Essay Example for Free

Violence of mass Media Essay The research involves the study of possible relationships between violence and mass media. In the study, a sample frame was obtained in order to be tested utilizing four different tests, which validates and determines possible relationships between violence and media, media preferences and age violent behavior occurrence, empathy and gender variations, and time commitment against violence. The research results obtained show increasingly violent behavior among males than females. The commitment time of males manifesting violent behavior is higher as compared to females. Moreover, the preferences of these respondents that manifest such behavioral pattern are noted to generally prefer violent media forms, most prominently, television and movie showing violent acts. Violence of Mass Media: Introductory (MINI ESSAY) Most of the public concern and scientific study of the perceived violent reality of media centers around the effects of viewing televised violence. The effect that many think of first is modeling, when people imitate violent behavior that they see on television. The research on the different effects has been driven by diverse theoretical frameworks for example, studies of behavioral effects have most often been driven by social learning/cognitive theory, and studies of attitudinal effects often draw on behavioral imitation (Wells and Ernest, 1997 p. 227). The following section examines several different effects of media violence in turn and the evidence supporting each of them. Technological advances have dramatically increased the availability of violent entertainment. The introduction of television was critical, particularly in making violent entertainment more available to children. More recently, cable systems, videocassette recorders, and video games have increased exposure (Singer and Singer, 2001 p. 372). (Preiss, 2007 p. 153). The research approaches the study of media violence in this study by looking at the various effects of the violent view of the world presented in media. This study of the perceived reality of media violence focuses on the psychological processes involved and the weight of the evidence supporting the existence of those effects (Wells and Ernest, 1997 p. 229). Later in the study, the research looks at individual differences among those who are attracted to or repelled by media violence and longitudinal studies probing for long-term effects. Next, the study will look at one of the newest areas of concern, violent video games. Finally, the study addresses the question of what may be done to provide balance to this violent perceived reality and thus mitigate the negative effects of media violence. Violence of Mass Media Introduction Although humans have used violence in cautionary tales to teach the lessons of morality in almost every culture and historical era, the teaching has usually been closely tied to the tale. Active discussion of the moral points seems to be necessary for the lesson to â€Å"take. † Thus, many adults and children who watch cautionary violence television programs by themselves may fail to make the desired moral connection. Instead, they learn the lesson of ‘Instrumentality,† the lesson that violence can be used as an effective instrument to get something of value or to compel others to do one’s bidding (Wells and Ernest, 1997 p. 231). Perhaps literature has always been bloody, hut even the fastest and most dedicated reader cannot make it through a printed description of more than a few murders a day by reading Shakespeare, Mickey Spillane, and Norman Mailer. A look at 4 hours of prime-time television, or a couple of rental videotape movies can easily provide several times as many deaths, maiming, rapes, and beatings as could be encountered in the same amount of time spent reading periodicals and books. The amount of violence is not the only factor of importance in the impact of television and movie experience. These moving image media, with their close depictions of what individuals can see and hear, are much more engaging of our sensory attention than is the reading of abstract symbols on paper, which must be translated and reconstructed into an approximation of sensory experience. What the study must now examine is whether the large volume and sensory increase of 20th-Century media violence, especially movies and television, has actually caused people to do more violence than they otherwise may have done. Methodology Sample Frame The sample frame utilized in the study involves 150 respondents from elementary schools as well as daycare centers within the locale of midstream city. Based on the inclusion criteria, the elementary schools recruited possess a private orientation, with religious inclination to Catholicism as the basic moral ground, while the daycare center should be networked with private school. As with the gender division of the sample size, 82 boys and 68 girls from grades 4 and 5, with an average age of 9. 99 (s. d. =0. 74). In terms of the racial criteria of the samples involved, European American comprises 58% while African American is 24%, providing the picture of the community. Data Gathering Procedure In the data gathering procedures, the study utilized a form of four different questionnaires with order counterbalanced. The following details inquired through the questionnaires are the demographic information, which includes gender, age, grade and mother’s education, preferences on forms of media utilization, survey forms of real-life violence through Attitudes Towards Violence Scale: Child Version (ATVC), appraisal of the respondents’ characters towards violence through KID-screen for adolescent violence exposure (KID-SAVE); and lastly, the extent of the sample’s empathy through Children’s empathy questionnaire (CEQ). After which, the researchers obtain the favorite form categorization for television as to sports, fighting, destruction, real people, or no favorites. On the form of internet, the respondents are categorized according to their preferences, such as chat room, instant messages, video games, no favorite internet activities and no access to internet. Review of Related Literature Moat American families bought their first television set during the early to mid-1950s. As more and more homes had television sets and more and more people began to watch on a regular basis, scholars began to study this new phenomenon, and the first studies about television content were published (Head, 1954; Smythe, 1954; cited in Well and Ernest, 1997 p. 262). Moreover, the first congressional hearings about television, focusing particularly on television violence, were convened in 1954. Research on television content and its effects was particularly stimulated by the forces that affected the United States during the late 1960s, notably national turmoil, civil rights and the women’s movement. Two national commissions were appointed to uncover the dynamics of these Forces on society. In essence, the agendas of these commissions set the stage for early and ongoing research on media images. The national turmoil that rocked the country after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy stimulated concern about violence in society and in the media. The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (NCCPV) was appointed to examine violence in society, including violence on television, and commissioned one study to ascertain the amount of violence on television (Gerbner, 1969; cited in Preiss, 2007 p. 162). Continued national unrest, as well as concerns about television’s impact on Americans, further encouraged researchers to pursue this line of study. Financial assistance was also provided by increased government funding for research about television violence inn 1969, even before the report of the NCCPV released. Congress appropriated 1$ million and set up the Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior and this committee funded 23 projects, dealing primarily with violence on television and its effects (Gerbner, 1972; Surgeon Generals Scientific Advising Committee, 1972; cited in Wells and Ernest, 1997 p. 232). Although interest in television violence faded somewhat during the 1960s, congressional concern about media violence again increased during the 1990, culminating in the development of ratings for television programs and the V-chip technology. Concern with civil rights, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, contributed to the proliferation of studies on minority images. The Kerner Commission, appointed by President Johnson to investigate racial disturbances in many US. cities, charged this these disturbances could be traced, in part, to the U. S (Preiss, 2007 p. 158). There have been few investigations into the effects of print media violence. The most extensive investigation, 1w the Canadian Royal Commission on Violence in the Communications Industry† in 1977, reported details of the amount of violence in print media but made no contributions to our understanding of what violence-causing effects may stem from reading violent material (Royal Commission, 1977; cited in Preiss, 2007 p. 156). Most likely for reason’ previously discussed—less intensity and less of it—violence in books, newspapers and magazines has been of less concern to citizens. An exception was violence in comic books, which became a political issue in the United States in 1954. At the time, comic books were read avidly by many young boys. Today, they read comic books less and spend more time with television. Despite their name, comic books were largely not funny at all; they were violent and tended to emphasize the violent heroism of characters with whom the children could identify. However, many comic books glorified criminals and their brutality. Congressional hearings were held which, in turn, resulted in the comic hook industry adopting self-censorship of violence in a successful effort to head off passage of laws, which would have imposed government restrictions. The evidence that comic books actually did bring young readers to using violence and committing crimes was drawn from the collective experience of law enforcement officers and psychiatric workers (Berkowitz, 1973; cited in (Wells and Ernest, 1997 p. 233). In one such instance, teen-age boys in Boston doused with gasoline and set on fire a down-and-out, liquor-dazed man they found. There was no apparent motive other than to try out what they had seen on a television program (Singer and Singer, 2001 p. 370). Another example is the batch of imitative suicides that have occurred following television and theater showings of the movie The Deer Hunter, in which a scene occurs showing a man with a pistol playing—and losing—a game of Russian Roulette (Wells and Ernest, 1997 p. 232). According to Huesmann and Taylor (2006), media violence poses an eventual threat to the public social equilibrium significantly through the influence of violence and aggression. According to their study, fictional television and film violence contribute to both a short-term and a long-term increase in aggression and violence in young viewers. According to the research conducted by Browne and Hamilton-Giachritsis (2005), there has been frequent evidence that suggest the linkage of child violent behavioral acts, and the incidence and frequency of violent media exposure. Such media forms induce arousal, thought influence, and emotional deviations, which consequently increases the likelihood of aggression and fearful behavioral patterns, most especially in males (Preiss, 2007 p. 162). The presence of prosocial effects is undeniable. Very few people who enjoy television and movies containing violence feel that they are endangered by it, and appear most willing to take any risks. However, it would be incorrect to conclude that violence needs to be present in entertainment in order to be of interest to people. The television and film industry has merely used violent action as a reliable and inexpensive means of attracting a certain level of viewer interest in otherwise very repetitive stories (Singer and Singer, 2001 p. 368). Thus, â€Å"action† and production values† (which is to say, violent action), is regularly added to scripts to make them more attractive. Nevertheless, research on college students indicates that violence, itself, is not what they are interested in so much as in the quality of action and story associated with the violence (Preiss, 2007 p. 161). Unfortunately, media executives find it difficult to accommodate such interests. The high quality of writing needed to create stories, which can stand on their own without the addition of violence is very costly. There are only a limited number of writers, whose skill is great enough to provide consistently attractive nonviolent stories. Station and network program decision makers generally take what they consider to be the safe path of â€Å"plenty of action and production values† in order to assure that their programs will attract the teen-age and young adult audience members greatly desired by advertisers of consumer products (Wells and Ernest, 1997 p. 233). Berkowitz and his co-researchers have also established that the violence present in abundance in films such as Straw Dogs and Walking Tail especially influences viewers to act violently, for the film violence is presented as the solution to outrages perpetrated by others. Revenge and justification are extremely potent factors in determining whether violence will occur. If an aroused person who has freedom of action then encounters violence on a television screen, the violence may act as a potent cue to draw forth her own violence, to the degree that what is shown on screen resembles and pulls into memory previous occasions on which she used violence (U. S. Senate Committee on Commerce, 1972; cited in Singer and Singer, 2001 p. 368). Tannenbaum and Zillmann (1975; cited in Singer and Singer, 2001 p. 367) demonstrated how arousal may be reshaped, in a very dramatic way. After arousing college males by showing them very sexy pictures, they found that whether the men subsequently tried to accomplish sexual or violent behavior depended on the cues that were presented to them. In other words, a person may be aroused by something sexual, watch a murder on television, and become violent instead of erotic (Singer and Singer, 2001 p. 367). Thus, there is a potential link between sex and subsequent violence that may be activated by television and film violence cues. Findings After calculating the means and standard deviations of the results from KID-SAVE, ATVC and CEQ obtained form the samples, a series of t-tests was applied to scrutinize the gender variations on the Frequency and Impact Total scales of the KID-SAVE, the ATVC Total, and the CEQ Total. Such analysis revealed gender differences on the KID-SAVE Frequency Total scale, t(148) = 2. 71, p0. 01. Boys were reported to be in a higher stakes of violent behaviors, although no significant gender variations were found on the KID-SAVE Impact Total scale. On the other hand, the analysis on boys and girls’ ATVC and CEQ Total scales, t (148) = 2. 62, p0. 05, and t(148) = -3. 72, p0. 01, revealed significant differences; gender differences from these two tests indicate that boys have higher tendencies for violent behaviors, while girls have higher behavioral tendencies for empathy. Indices of multicollinearity were examined and no problems were identified. After which, regression analyses were initiated to determine the probabilities of real-life violence from the data of Total Frequency and Total Impact scales of the KIDSAVE, exposure to the four indicators of media violence (video game, television, movies, and Internet) and the total CEQ score. From the results of obtained, it revealed that individual variations increase the probabilities of negative impact from violent video games. Considering the latter conclusion, 17 girls playing violent games are reported to demonstrate frequent negative behavior. From the said respondents, the manifestation of negative behavior maybe more prominent due to norm violation present (Funk Buchman, 1996a). Considering other media forms presented to the respondents, the results show that movie violence is the most prominent influence. On the other hand, the manifestations of negative behavior have been linked to the increased time commitment and content of movie being watched (Anderson, Huston, Schmitt, Linebarger, Wright, 2001). Time reported may have influenced the failure to find a relationship between television violence exposure and the study variables. Considering the presented categories and gender differences, boys have been reported to devote 5. 6 hours of viewing per week, while girls reported 2. 8 hours weekly. Conclusion In the conclusion of the study, violent behaviors and utilization of mass media showing violent scenes possess a link that induces violent behavioral patterns among viewers. In terms of gender variations, males have been noted to demonstrate violent acts as compared to females. Moreover, males have noted to demonstrate increase time commitment to preferred violent movies, which are also the most preferred media forms, than with females. On the other hand, females are noted to be more emphatic as compared to males. Generally, the research has provided significant relationship between violence and mass media. References Anderson, D. R. , Huston, A. C. , Schmitt, K. L. , Linebarger, D. L. , Wright, J. C. (2001). Early childhood television viewing and adolescentbehavior. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 66 (1, Serial No. 264). Browne , P. D. , Hamilton-Giachritsis , C. (2005, February 19). The influence of violent media on children and adolescents: a public-health approach. The Lancet, 365, 702-710. Funk, J. B. (2004, January). Violence exposure in real-life, video games, television, movies, and the internet: is there desensitization?. Journal of Adolescence, 27, 23–39.