Case Study: Effect of Violence in the Mass Media

1. As a group, discuss what you know about this concept before turning the page. Note some points made in the discussion. What questions do you still have?

2. Examine the citations and excerpts or abstracts attached. Do you have any new information to add to what you already knew? Are there some surprises?

3. As you examined each citation, what "markers" helped you decide whether a source would be useful for understanding this issue or not? Make a list of markers you used to evaluate each source. Which are the most difficult of these markers for non-specialists to understand and apply?

4. Who are some of the apparent claims-makers in the formation of this social issue; that is, what groups might benefit from it being defined as an important issue and how? Who might have an interest in discrediting the concept?

5. A loaded question: Some of the excerpts attached are from scholarly sources and others are from the popular press or the Web. If students were told to use only scholarly sources, would that mean they would be limiting their search to sources that were reliable and based entirely on objective research? Why or why not?

Citations and Excerpts

Leonard Berkowitz, Ronald Corwin, and Mark Heironimus. "Film Violence and Subsequent Aggressive Tendencies." Public Opinion Quarterly 27 (1963): 217-229.
. . . Rather than providing an easy and safe outlet for the pent-up hostility within the angered members of the media audience, film violence may well increase the probability that someone in the audience will behave aggressively in a later situation (soon afterward) . . .

F. Scott Andison. "TV Violence and Viewer Aggression: A Cumulation of Study Results 1956-1976." Public Opinion Quarterly 41 (1977): 314-331.
The problem posed by television's violent content and its possible effects on regular television viewers is a critical and pressing one. The need to establish whether a causal link exists between television violence and an increased level of aggression in viewers is urgent because, if such a link exists, then action may be needed . . . We can conclude on the basis of the present data cumulation that television, as it is shown today, probably does stimulate a higher amount of aggression in individuals within society.

Richard Cohen. "Violence." Washington Post 6 Dec. 1981: B1.
In Milpitas, Calif., a 16-year-old boy allegedly killed his 14-year-old former girlfriend and then for a day or two took friends by to see the body in a nearby ravine. In Maryland, an 18-year-old woman asked her boyfriend and his friends to kill her husband of two months and so they did. Then, like the kids in California, they all went home.

These incidents of teen-age murder are just two examples of a startling and frightening trend -- the increasing willingness of youngsters to kill. What is striking about both incidents is not only that they happened, but that the kids thought nothing of them. They thought that murder was somehow routine or that if it was not routine for them, then it was for others.

Probably no other generation has grown up with as much violence as this one. The violence, though, is not real. It is televised, which means that it is a special kind of violence. It has no consequence. . . .

D.P. Phillips DP. "The impact of Mass Media Violence on U.S. Homicides." American Sociological Review 48 (1983):560 68.
Since 1950 more than 2500 studies have attempted to discover whether mass media violence triggers additional aggressive behavior . . . This paper presents what may be the first systematic evidence suggesting that some homicides are indeed triggered by a type of mass media violence. . . . This paper has presented evidence which suggests that heavyweight prize fights provoke a brief, sharp increase in homicides.

S.F. Messner. "Television Violence and Violent Crime: An Aggregate Analysis." Social Problems 33 (1986): 218 35.
Abstract: Examined the relationship between levels of exposure to TV violence and rates of violent crime for samples of population aggregates. It was hypothesized that population aggregates with high levels of exposure to violent TV content would exhibit high rates of criminal violence. Results fail to support this hypothesis. Contrary to expectations, aggregate levels of exposure to TV were inversely related to rates of violent crime.

David Walsh et al. Physician Guide to Media Violence. American Medical Association. 1996. (retrieved 27 Dec. 2004).
The United States is correctly viewed as being among the most violent countries. For example, US homicide rates far exceed those in any other industrialized country and are in fact two to three times as high as those of the second-highest ranking nation. . . . The multiple causes of violence notwithstanding, depictions of violence in the media have unequivocal effects. There are significant correlations between frequent exposure to television violence and aggressive behavior, and the evidence strongly supports the idea that the latter is a consequence of the former. . . .

Lawrie Mifflin. "Many Researchers Say Link Is Already Clear on Media and Youth Violence." New York Times 9 May 1999: A27.
In response to the Colorado school shooting, President Clinton is to meet with entertainment industry executives and others at the White House tomorrow to discuss youth violence. And both the White House and Congress are considering asking the Surgeon General to conduct a comprehensive study of the effects of media violence on American youths.

But most academic researchers say they believe that the evidence is already at the President's and the Surgeon General's fingertips. Hundreds of studies done at the nation's top universities in the last three decades have come to the same conclusion: that there is at least some demonstrable link between watching violent acts in movies or television shows and acting aggressively in life. . . .

Gloria Tristani. Wrestling for Our Children's Future: Remarks of FCC Commissioner Gloria Tristani Before the Conference on Television Violence of Puerto Rico. 12 Oct. 1999. (retrieved 24 Dec. 2004).
. . . The statistics are chilling. According to the Department of Justice, 19% of all arrests in 1997 were juveniles, including 14% of all murder arrests and 17% of all violent crime arrests. Just as alarming, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 5.9% of high school students carried a gun in the 30 days prior to the survey, and 8.5% of them carry some sort of weapon to school. . . .

I'd like to talk with you today about one contributing factor to the youth violence that's afflicting our nation - violence on television. Again, I'm not saying that violence on TV is the main problem, or that we should ignore other root causes. But while TV violence is not the whole problem, I do believe it is part of the problem. The more risk factors we can reduce for our children, the fewer situations that will boil over into violence.

Violence on TV has become so prevalent, we've all become a bit numb. Children are exposed to 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence on TV by the time they complete elementary school. . . .

Richard Rhodes. "The Media-Violence Myth." Rolling Stone 23 Nov. 2000: 55+.
SO ALL THE ELDERS ONCE AGAIN AGREE: WATCHING mock violence in the media leads to violent behavior. In Senate hearings in September, assorted senators and candidates condemned Hollywood for marketing violent movies to children. The politicians relied on such illustrious authorities as the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and even the FBI. "Thousands of studies" prove it. There's a "national consensus." If "violent" media don't turn little Johnny into a killer, the elders say, he's still likely to become "desensitized" to violence, or he'll acquire a fearful conviction that it's a "mean world." Are any of these claims true?

In a word, they're baloney. . . .

Sara Bragg. "Just What the Doctors Ordered? Media Regulation, Education, and the 'Problem' of Media Violence." In Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2001: 87-110.
[Critiquing two media education projects] We should certainly question how far these projects are a response to a genuine problem and meet with children's needs, or whether, as with other moral panics, they serve as vehicles for general social anxieties about trends in contemporary life or are tactical for special interest groups. . . . Technological change enabling marketing to "niche" audiences, and a more liberal moral climate, make it difficult for groups with a conservative social agenda to denounce graphic violence as long as it is seen as a private issue for adults. Basing claims on its effects on children circumvents this problem, as they can be more easily presented as victims.

Jeffrey G. Johnson et al. "Television Viewing and Aggressive Behavior During Adolescence and Adulthood." Science 295 (2002): 2468+.
Three to five violent acts are depicted in an average hour of prime-time television and 20 to 25 violent acts are depicted in an average hour of children's television . . . Research has indicated that viewing television violence is associated with aggressive behavior . . . We report findings of the Children in the Community Study, a community-based longitudinal investigation that meets these methodological criteria. . . .

The present findings indicate that extensive television viewing by adolescents and young adults is associated with an increased likelihood of committing aggressive acts against others.

Joanne Savage. "Does Viewing Violent Media Really Cause Criminal Violence? A Methodological Review." Aggression and Violent Behavior 10 (2004): 99-128.
Abstract: The topic of media violence has been the subject of heated debate in recent decades. There is a vast empirical literature on the effects of television on aggression but no published comprehensive review has ever focused on those studies that use criminal aggression as their outcome. . . . Although the possibility that television and film violence has an impact on violent criminality remains, it is concluded here that, despite persistent published reviews that state the contrary, the body of published, empirical evidence on this topic does not establish that viewing violent portrayals causes crime.

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