Term paper on Media Violence

Free Media Violence papers

Media
I believe that through media, society’s viewpoints are swayed easily without critically thinking about the issues. In this paper I would like to focus on how the media has affected and will affect the people who are voting or are thinking about voting in the 2000 Presidential Election. The three m

median voter theorem
Median Voter Theorem: A Unavoidable Reality Leaving No One Truly Satisfied On the spectrum of politics (or any other ideologically-based matter), personal opinions will inevitably vary from one extreme on the left to the opposite on the right. In a governing system such as that of the United S

Committee on Communications

American children and adolescents are being exposed to increasing amounts of media violence, especially in television, movies, video games, and youth-oriented music. By age 18, the average young person will have viewed an estimated 200 000 acts of violence on television alone.[1] Video game violence, children's cartoons, and music lyrics have become increasingly graphic. In movies, action films depict anatomically precise murders, rapes, and assaults; with each sequel, the number of deaths increase dramatically.[2] Although media violence is not the only cause of violence in American society, it is the single most easily remediable contributing factor.[3]

According to recent Nielsen data, the average American child views 21 to 23 hours of television per week.[4] By the time today's children reach age 70, they will have spent 7 to 10 years of their lives watching television.[5] Although movies and video games are more graphic in depictions of violence, television is the single most important medium in the lives of young people (98% of all American households have at least one television set).[4] Despite public concern about television violence, the amount of television violence has not changed appreciably in the past two decades: the level of prime-time violence has remained at three to five violent acts per hour, and violence in Saturday morning children's programming ranges between 20 to 25 violent acts per hour.[6-8] American media are the most violent in the world, and American society is now paying a high price in terms of real-life violence.[9,10]

Some people in the entertainment industry maintain that: 1) violent programming is harmless because no studies exist that prove a connection between violence in the media and aggressive behavior in children and 2) young people know that television, movies, and video games are simply fantasy.[11] Unfortunately, they are wrong on both counts. Over 1000 studies--including a Surgeon General's special report in 1972[12] and a National Institute of Mental Health report 10 years later[13]--attest to a causal connection between media violence and aggressive behavior in some children.[3,6,9,14,15] Studies show that the more "real-life" the violence portrayed, the greater the likelihood that it will be "learned."[16,17] Likewise, the portrayal of violence as being justified (particularly by the "good guy") is the single most prevalent notion in American media and the most powerfully reinforcing one.[9,18] At young ages (before age 8), children cannot uniformly discriminate between "real life" and "fantasy/entertainment." [14,16,19] They quickly learn that violence is an acceptable solution to resolving even complex problems, particularly if the aggressor is the hero.[9]

The only country in the world with nearly as much entertainment violence as the United States is Japan. Yet Japanese society is far less violent than American society. If media violence contributes to real-life violence, why isn't Japanese society more affected? A 1981 study[20] found that the nature of the portrayal of violence is different in Japan: the violence is more realistic and there is a greater emphasis on physical suffering (ie, the consequences of violence are emphasized). Interestingly, in Japan the "bad guys" commit most of the violence, with the "good guys" suffering the consequences--the exact opposite of American programming. In this context, violence is seen as wrong, a villainous activity with real and painful consequences, rather than as justifiable.[10]

Media violence may: 1) facilitate aggressive and antisocial behavior; 2) desensitize viewers to future violence; and 3) increase viewers' perceptions that they are living in a mean and dangerous world.[9,21,22] Although less is known about video games and their effects, the media violence literature provides grounds for concern.[23] Media studies range from content analyses (monitoring the amount of violence contained in programming), to naturalistic...