Media Violence/Social Deviance Media Violence

Media Violence/Social Deviance

Media Violence and Social Deviance

For decades, there has been concern over media violence and its influence or potential influence on public behavior, and while there have been countless studies and volumes of research devoted to this topic, the issue appears still open for debate.

Ever since television began becoming popular in the 1950's, the pubic has been complaining that there is too much violence in television programming, and has continually put pressure on Congress and the television industry to reduce the amount of violence (Potter). During the past fifty years, social scientists have been conducting analyses of the violent content on television in an effort to document the amount of violence in order to inform the public however there is a growing evidence to suggest that the public perceives media violence in a different manner than do media researchers (Potter).

A study published by James W. Potter in the June 2006 issue of the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media found that there is a significant difference in how the public quantify the amount of violent acts within a program. For example, some people counted scenes, some counted violent acts, while others attempted to count every bullet fired and punch thrown, yet the most interesting findings revealed that the participants' quantitative estimates were not related to their summary judgments concerning the degree to which the program was violent, but rather were related to perceptions about graphicness and explicitness (Potter). Participants rated Tunnel more violent, 5.73, yet it contained four scenes and 18 acts compared to Nash Bridges which they rated 4.74 and had six scenes and 18 acts or Justice League, rated 5.51 that had 8 scenes and 23 acts (Potter). Tunnel displayed the lowest mean estimate at 21 acts compared to an estimated 27 acts for Nash Bridges and 34 acts for Justice League. Potter believes that the high rating of violence for Tunnel is probably explained by its "final shot in which the villain is shot between the eyes and the camera stays on his face in close-up for several seconds as the life leaves his body, his eyes roll back in his head, and he falls to the ground dead" (Potter). Potter's study found that the use of graphicness as the most influential element in an individual's judgment shows up whether researchers ask for ratings or rankings, and suggests that the judgment of violence in a particular program is keyed to interpretations of graphicness, regardless of genre, gender, or television-viewing level (Potter).

According to Potter, the differences in definitions lead to a problem of ecological validity, which can make the public distrustful of the results of scientific research studies. For example, from a scientific view point, cartoons such as the Road Runner and Bugs Bunny are very violent, in fact, cartoons are consistently rated as the most violent of all programs on television because the characters are continuously getting "stabbed, shot, hit with heavy objects, blown up, rocketed into the sky, and flattened into the ground," however the characters always recover and never die (Potter). Therefore, social scientists who make strong statements about the harmfulness to children of viewing Tom and Jerry, Road Runner and the Three Stooges put themselves in danger of being regarded as being "fuzzy-headed academics wasting their time with silly research," because the majority of viewers would not regard any of these programs of violent (Potter). Critics who look at this situation conclude that social scientist use poor definitions of violence, and if the results of these studies are viewed as silly by the public, then those findings will not help them make meaningful changes in their children's exposure behavior that could protect them from unwanted effects, and if these findings are not trusted by policymakers, then it is unlikely that they will expend political capital to force changes in programming (Potter). Thus, researchers need to understand more about how the public interprets violence in programming and media scholars must do a better job of highlighting the differences in interpretations and convincing the public about the faulty nature of how it makes its interpretations (Potter).

According to Marina Krcmar in the March 2005 issue of Communication Studies, the desire to consume media is influenced by a number of social and psychological factors, such as sensation seeking and neuroticism that have also been used to explain problem behaviors (Krcmar). Krcmar notes that "sensation seeking predicts both exposure to violent media and aggressive behavior...yet, many studies separately examine personality or media exposure in relation to behavioral outcomes," thus there is no agreement concerning the relations among "personality factors, media use, and negative behavioral outcomes" (Krcmar).

The majority of researchers agree that exposure to media violence results in aggressive behavior and desensitization, yet many social critics believe that the effects of media violence are more "subtle and insidious," such as breaking down a child's moral reasoning (Krcmar). Research on verbal aggressiveness demonstrates that it "damages the receiver's self-esteem, serves as a catalyst to interspousal violence, and results in less liking and lower credibility," and predicts behaviors from substance abuse to physical aggressiveness (Krcmar). While no studies have examined the link between verbal aggressiveness and exposure to and liking of violent television, Krcmar believes that people who are verbally aggressive are probably attracted to media violence because it may provide a type of validation for aggression (Krcmar). Krcmar's study found that sensation seeking did predict exposure to and liking of violent and horror movies, yet did not consistently predict television viewing and liking variables, however the findings do suggest that argumentativeness is related to violent movie exposure, real crime television and violent television exposure, while "neither verbal aggressiveness nor argumentativeness predicted media liking" (Krcmar)

According to George Comstock of Syracuse University, analyses of some 217 studies assessing the relationship between exposure to television violence and aggressive and antisocial behavior concludes irrefutably that children and adolescents who watch greater amounts of media violence are more likely to behave in an aggressive or antisocial manner, and that girls and boys alike are affected (Comstock).

Data indicates youth are especially vulnerable to the influence of media violence when they have certain attributes, such as low socioeconomic status, being African-American, and stressful circumstances as "represented by unsatisfactory social relationships or low psychological well-being" (Comstock). Two other attributes include "rigid or indifferent parenting and a predisposition for anti-social behavior" (Comstock). Comstock concludes:

Thus, violent entertainment is most likely to add to the burdens of those who face considerable challenges in coping with everyday life, and this becomes particularly clear when it is acknowledged that the kind of behavior likely to be increased by violent portrayals is also the kind likely to lead to conflicts with others and clashes with the law (Comstock).

Jock Young from Middlesex University notes that exposure tot media violence is just as likely to cause an individual to become a campaigner against media violence as it is to encourage someone who seeks justifications for their own violence (Young).

According to Young, news items that depict violence are generally ignored because they are considered legitimate violence and are justified by politicians and the media as pro-social because it is considered a major public source of knowledge, yet these images reflect the reality of youth violence, such as young men with AK-47's, driving tanks and firing artillery, thus a significant proportion of media violence experienced by youth are "portrayed as legitimate violence and the main actors are youths like themselves" (Young). While the vast majority of fictional depictions of violence generally involve the triumph of legitimate violence over illegitimate violence, in factual depictions, no punishment of illegitimate violence is seen, yet studies "ignore all of the factual depictions of violence and register each aggressive act in fiction as in essence anti-social" (Young). Carl Nightingale noted in his ethnography of a black Philadelphian ghetto that Whether the amount of violence in films and TV shows have contributed to the recent rise in homicides is uncertain, but some of the ethical codes of aggression in the neighborhood clearly have depended on the mainstream culture of violence for legitimacy...boys' efforts to compensate for humiliation and frustration owe some their aggressive qualities to their identification with the heroes and values on the mainstream American culture of violence...Indeed, TV and movie violence has nearly completely replaced the messages and ways of expressing and concealing pain that have been offered by African-American folklore" (Young).

In 1990, the average African-American household watched eleven hours of television per day, and although African-Americans make up only 12% of the U.S. population, they account for 25% of the movie-going public (Young). Thus, these youths watch the latest movies, then discuss each act of violence, all the while identifying with the heroes, for these films tend to focus on the main male characters who "derive their moral authority by a glorified ability to play it alone and to live outside the realms of humdrum emotional vulnerability" (Young). Moreover, there is typically some sort of celebration of these men's lack of commitment to intimate relationships, and they often treat women as "objects of sexual conquest," thus they are in essence sacrificing intimacy for a greater good, their willingness to fight for a particular cause (Young).

In 1999, the average person in England and Wales watched 26 hours of television and listened to 19 hours of radio per week - this amounts to 40% of their waking life, and the figures are higher for youth and in particular working class youth (Young). Not only has the quantity of media usage increased, but the level of violence depicted in the media has increased dramatically, due in part to the luring of a youth audience (Young). For example, in the 1950's television series, Dragnet, there were a total of fifteen bullets fired during an entire season, compared to the multiple killings in a typical television series today. The hero in the 1987 movie, Robocop, killed 32 people, while in the 1990 Robocop II, he killed 81, and the 1989 Rambo III killed roughly twice as many in the 1985 original Rambo, and then there is Bruce Willis' Die Hard movies in which he killed 18 in the original and increased the killings to 264 in the 1990 sequel (Young). Furthermore, according to Young, there is a tendency to underestimate the Video Games industry as a serious form of mass communication, however in 2000 in the United Kingdom, spending on computer games far surpassed the film industry even when video sales, rental and box office takings were combined (Young). With video games, there is a morphing of virtuality and reality. The technological developments in modern warfare has resulted in a "distancing" between the powers and their opponents, thus the enemy is basically a digital target on a screen, the impact of weaponry is merely a blip on the monitor, thus the true impact upon human beings in never witnessed (Young). And as Young notes, there are immediate parallels between the screen in the FI-11 fighter planes and those in the arcade or home games, therefore one of the most popular modes of entertainment today mimics modern technological warfare and are in fact training programs for many fighter pilots (Young).

Therefore, Young believes that it is important for researchers to take into account the massive changes in the complexity of the mass media and the structure of the audience (namely the high divorce rates and single-parenting) that have occurred in recent decades (Young).

Gary F. Jensen of Vanderbilt University notes that by focusing on concepts such as desensitization and imitation that it is easy to ignore the fact that human behavior is a learned behavior. As one researcher stated: "Human behavior is learned; precisely that behavior which is widely felt to characterize man as a rational being, or as a member of a particular nation or social class, is acquired rather than innate" (Jensen). The central principle of a social learning approach to any form of crime is basically, "law-breaking behavior is best understood if it is approached as learned, rather than biologically determined, behavior" (Jensen).

Timothy F. Kim reports in the September 2006 issue of Family Practice News, that while the media shares the blame for the increasing incidences of girl violence, this tide would not be rising if females did not naturally have tendencies to aggression that are in many ways as strong as those of males (Kim). In one recent study, children played a video game that involved dropping bombs. In one group the children were introduced to one another, while in the second group the subjects remained anonymous (Kim). In the first group, the boys dropped more bombs during the game than the girls, an average of 31 bombs versus 27 bombs, however in the anonymous group, both boys and girls increased the number of bombs they dropped, but the girls had a greater increase and even tended to drop more bombs than the boys, an average of 41 bombs versus 37 bombs (Kim). Therefore, the role that the media has played in creating a rise in girl violence in not by encouraging it, but rather by removing constraints that previously inhibited it (Kim).

Based on numerous studies, research indicated a strong correlation between viewing media violence and aggressive behavior. During the 1960's, studies indicated that females were immune to the effect of television violence, but by the 1980's that was no longer true (Kim). Kim believes that what has changed is the fact that media has become more violent, moreover, the heroes became as violent as the bad guys, and many of those heroes are female (Kim). These images, which send the message that one can be a good guy and be violent, validate that it is acceptable to be violent if one becomes too agitated (Kim). In the past, when girls were told "girls don't hit," the culture essentially backed that up, however today the media sends the message that strong females do hit (Kim). For example, in the third Harry Potter movie, after the female character, Hermione, punches the bully, Draco Malfoy, she turns around to cheers and says, "That felt good" (Kim). Thus the message is clear, good, strong, and powerful girls do it and they enjoy it (Kim).

Barry S. Sapolsky in the June 2003 issue of the Journal of Broadcasting

Electronic Media notes that the mass media also influences society's sexual attitudes and behaviors. Although parents and lawmakers criticize the media for their portrayals of sex, the outlets for and diversity of sexual fare continue to grow as does the toleration of sexual imagery (Sapolsky). Among the major concerns is the media's "lack of attention to risks and responsibilities in depictions of sexual behavior, the mixture of sex and violence in pornography, and the ready availability of porn on the Internet (Sapolsky). According to the Presidential Commission, research on the effect of exposure to nonviolent erotica found that mildly arousing, pleasing stimuli actually lowered male hostility and aggression toward other males, and male subjects who were motivated to behave aggressively were unable to maintain their anger due to the positive emotions triggered by pleasant erotic images (Sapolsky). However, by the 1980's, pornography began to change, and themes of female subordination, bondage, sado-masochism, and rape became increasingly prevalent (Sapolsky). Research has demonstrated that men who are exposed to pornography containing rape are more likely to "accept rape myths (such as women secretly desire to be raped), be sexually aroused to rape, self-report the possibility of committing rape, see the victim as responsible, and show less sensitivity to rape" (Sapolsky). Studies have also found that violent porn can increase male aggression toward females, and that linkage of sex and violence can lead to "calloused attitudes toward females and rape victims, teach men anti-woman acts, and create sexually-aggressive thoughts and fantasies" (Sapolsky).

There has been much debate as to whether it is the violence or the sex in violent porn that contributes to aggressive behavior in males and expressions of callous attitudes toward rape victims (Sapolsky). A 1984 study found that nonviolent porn that was degrading to women could produce callousness toward rape victims, while a 1989 study found that it is not the sex but the violence that is central in influencing male viewers' responses, thus research suggests that both violent and nonviolent porn can have parallel effects on males' reactions to victims in sexually violent porn (Sapolsky).

Sapolsky concludes that pornography with violent and degrading scenarios can foster acceptance of violence toward women and anti-female attitudes; television programming often conveys the message that sex outside of marriage is the norm and that sexual partners need not be concerned about unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases (Sapolsky). Moreover, the media plays an important role in the sexual socialization of adolescents, for their sexual identity is largely forged by the magazines, movies, music videos, and television programming that they regularly consume (Sapolsky). Michael W. Ross cautions in the November 2005 issue of the Journal of Sex Research that these new technologies, namely the Internet, have opened a whole new world for pornography, for now there is privacy and secrecy, thus parents, in particular, should be aware that their children can easily fall victim to not only exposure to pornography but may easily fall victim to sexual predators through innocent online chat rooms (Ross).

According to Azy Barak in the November 2001 issue of the Journal of Sex Research, spectacular growth in availability of sexually explicit material on the Internet has created an unprecedented opportunity for individuals to have anonymous, cost-free, and unfettered access to an essentially unlimited range of sexually explicit texts, still and moving images, and audio materials (Barak). In a way never before imagined, males and females, adults and children, can access sexually explicit content on the Internet, "effortlessly and privately, as a direct expression of their sexual and personal characteristics and inclinations," and such material may act to alter the sexual and personal dispositions that incline individuals to seek out Internet sexuality in the first place (Barak). One study suggests that antisocial personality characteristics will encourages some individuals to seek out antisocial sexually explicit materials from among those available on the Internet (Barak). Barak notes that "the 'goodness of fit' of antisocial personality characteristics with antisocial sexual content will promote a tremendous depth of involvement in antisocial sexual stimuli," thus individuals may lose awareness of the constraints of reality regarding enactment of antisocial sexual behavior, and uniquely strong negative effects of antisocial sexual content on the Internet may be seen among those predisposed to access such material (Barak).

Between 1980 and 1994, murders of children ages 12-17 years increased 95%, this equates to a rate of seven child death per day (Myers). According to the United States Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 1988 homicide was the second leading cause of death for persons 15 to 24 years of age and the leading cause of death for African-American and Hispanic youth in this age group (Myers). Moreover, for every violent death, there was at least 100 nonfatal injuries caused by violence (Myers).

Jane E. Myers reports in the September 2003 issue of the Journal of Humanistic Counseling, Education and Development the children in the United States are 15 times more likely than children in England to die from homicide, most often as a result of firearm use (Myers). And when suicide and accidental deaths are included, the number of gun-related fatalities in the United States rises to more than 40,000 per year (Myers). Aside from the accessibility to firearms, children are exposed to violent acts through the media. According to the American Medical Association, the average child is exposed, through television, to 200,000 violent acts by the time he or she reaches the age of 18 (Myers). Research demonstrates that children who are exposed to violence through television, music lyrics, and videos show "increased aggressiveness and increased fear of becoming a victim, become desensitized to violence, and believe that violence is an acceptable way to solve problems" (Myers). The glorification of violence by the media both mirrors and shapes society, and a child's exposure to media violence is often supported by the actions of those in his or her immediate environment to such an extent that the home remains the most dangerous place for a child (Myers). Violence is a multi-faceted and complex problem and the symptoms and outcomes of violent behavior are often difficult to treat, thus recent attention has shifted from treatment to prevention, however despite the proliferation of violence prevention programs, violence continues to escalate (Myers).

According to Nancy Signorielli, March 2003 issue of the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, violence remained stable in prime-time programs broadcast between the spring of 1993 and the fall of 2001. Violence appeared in six our out of ten programs, at a rate of 4.5 acts per program (Signorielli). The violence was context free, there was little gratuitous or graphic violence, few characters were punished for their violent acts, and few overall consequence, thus this "lack of context may teach that violence is 'sanitary,' not necessarily immoral, and that those who commit violence are not sorry for their actions, or punished for their transgressions" (Signorielli).