Media Violence Primary Source is George Gerbner: Television Violence: The Power and the Peril 1995

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Media Violence Primary Source is George
Gerbner Television Violence The Power and the
Peril (1995)
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Socialization

• In traditional societies, stories about life and
  values are told to children by parents, churches,
  schools and others in the community.
• These agents of socialization have no hidden
  agenda.
• They are driven by the desire for children to
  learn the proper way of life and to develop into
  mature, sociable adults.
• It is important that children learn the cultural
  stories and myths which instill a sense of
  cultural pride and develop their moral stance.

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Socialization

• In the past, cultural stories about life were
  told by people who had something to tell.
• Today they are told by people who have something
  to sell.
• They are told by distant conglomerates whose
  agenda is to maximize their stockholders
  profits.
• Their stories may not serve the childs best
  interests.
• A key issue, therefore, involves the centralized
  mass production of cultural stories and myths.

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Socialization

• The TV has brought about a radical change in the
  way American children grow up and learn about the
  way to live in our society.
• Children are a captive audience for television.
• They are highly susceptible to TV messages.
• TV watching represents a mainstream way of life
  it is the single most common leisure activity of
  Americans.
• Those who program our TV shows are the principle
  storytellers of our lives today.
• Yet their agenda is not the parents agenda.

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Socialization

• Unlike other forms of media, TV
• 1. Requires no literacy skills.
• 2. Requires little selectivity or previously
  acquired tastes.
• 3. Requires little or no attention.
• Anyone can watch TV.
• Commercial TV uses repetitive patterns and
  messages which are insidious they are absorbed
  into the pattern of everyday life in a
  taken-for-granted way.
• This makes commercial TV a powerful instrument of
  socialization.

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Socialization

• In the past, the roles children grew into were
  handcrafted and community inspired.
• Today, children learn much about roles and life
  from watching TV.
• Most television content is the product of a
  complex, integrated, globalized manufacturing and
  marketing system.
• TV corporations earn money by delivering a
  receptive audience to their corporate sponsors.
• This is their Number One priority.
• Serving the public interest is their Number Two
  priority, if prioritized at all.

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TV Violence why so much?

• The usual argument promoted by broadcasters
  regarding TV violence is that they are giving
  the audience what it wants.
• This view is not supported by the research.
• TV watchers tend to prefer nonviolent over
  violent content. Generally the more violent the
  TV content, the more most viewers will get turned
  off.
• But it gets more complex than this simple point.

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TV Violence why so much?

• While TV violence is generally not highly
  regarded, it makes up for this by grabbing a
  greater diversity of viewers.
• TV violence, like TV sex, especially grabs
  younger viewers.
• Younger viewers are a key demographic to
  corporations because they tend to be spenders,
  not savers. They generally make ideal consumers.
• The potential diversity of viewers is relevant to
  the ultimate goal of consumer capitalism to
  create a mass consumer base.

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TV Violence why so much?

• To create a mass consumer base, corporate
  television has developed a least-cost marketing
  formula for reaching and massifying a diverse
  public.

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The Mass Marketing Formula

• Mass marketing television programs requires
  looking for the lowest common denominator themes.
• These are themes that everyone regardless of
  age or ethnicity can understand.
• Two themes are universally understood by all
  people sex and violence.

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The Mass Marketing Formula

• Commercial TV portrays lots of violence because
  formula violence is readily understood by nearly
  everyone even those who dont speak the
  language.
• According to the producer of Die Hard 2 Everyone
  understands an action movie. If I tell a joke,
  you may or may not get it. But if a bullet goes
  through the window we all know how to hit the
  floor, no matter the language.

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The Mass Marketing Formula

• The basic motive of media conglomerates is to
  forge a global assembly line of mass culture.
• They emphasize themes that people can understand
  or relate to across cultures, even though most
  specific groups tend to prefer culture-specific
  content.
• To industry, subcultural specificity is costly.
  It is cheaper to look for lowest common
  denominator themes that sell across cultures.
• This is the nature of the mass media. Their
  mass-profits agenda is to break down most
  subcultural differences, replacing them with mass
  habits.

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The Mass Marketing Formula

• Therefore, it is inaccurate to say that the
  public wants violence.
• It is more accurate to say that violence is more
  universally understood by the widest array of
  potential viewers.
• Note research suggests that those who watch lots
  of TV tend to be less selective over program
  content.
• These viewers are at risk of addiction to
  television as escapist behavior. They risk
  becoming teleholics.

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The Mass Marketing Formula

• Supporting diversity of cultures is more
  expensive to industry than imposing monolithic
  lowest common denominator themes.
• This is one of the reasons why local cultures
  erode in the face of global media empires.
• Action-movies exploit sex and violence, violence
  especially.
• Action-movies are universally understood.
• Even young children understand action-movie
  violence.

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Action-movies are the 1 U.S. movie export.

• Action-Movie Killings by Movie

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How much violence is on TV?

• George Gerbner directed the Cultural Indicators
  Project at the University of Pennsylvania. They
  did extensive research from the 1960s thru the
  1990s.
• By 1994, they had studied 2,816 TV programs and
  34,882 TV characters.
• They found that the TV is on about 7 hours per
  day on average and the average viewer watches at
  least 2 hours per day (children too).
• The average TV viewer witnessed 21 criminals per
  week committing an average of 150 acts of
  violence, including 15 murders (not counting
  cartoons or news).

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How much violence is on TV?

• They found that there had been a stable pattern
  over the last 30 years (thru 1994) in primetime
  shows that depicted white, middle class males as
  the dominant characters who have power.
• They were less likely to be the victim of
  violence and more likely to use violence for
  good rather than evil purposes.

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How much violence is on TV?

• While the TV heroes tended to be white middle
  class males, TV victims tended to be women,
  children, the poor, seniors, and minorities.
• TV villains tended to be young adult males,
  ethnic minorities, or the mentally ill.
• Of all the main TV characters, 52 were involved
  in violence in any given week.

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What is the overall message?

• 1. The world is a mean and dangerous place (the
  mean world syndrome). Viewers feel vulnerable.
  More on this later.
• 2. White middle class males are the good guys.
• 3. Young minority males are often the bad guys.
• 4. Women, children, seniors, the poor, and
  minorities are often the victims.
• Conclusion TV depictions of violence reinforce
  the status-quo pecking orders of society,
  favoring the dominant groups.

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Its not just quantity, its the quality of the
violence.

• TV violence is qualitatively different from the
  violence found in the historical literature.
• Not all violence is alike. In some contexts
  violence can be a legitimate cultural expression
  used to symbolize important moral themes.
• Example Shakespeare relied on the theme of
  murder and violence to reveal the tragic costs of
  deadly compulsions.
• Tragic violence is common in historical
  mythologies.

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Commercial TV Violence

• Commercial violence, however, tends to be happy
  violence.
• Happy violence is presented as hip or cool and is
  usually sanitized to lead to a happy ending.
• Tragic violence is largely censored by commercial
  television outside of the news.
• This is because the goal of commercial TV is to
  deliver the audience to the next commercial. The
  audience must be in a receptive mood.
• Happy violence is used to entertain - not to
  upset - the consumer.
• People are more likely to consume when they are
  not upset or provoked into introspective thinking.

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What are the effects of violence on TV or in the
commercial media?

• Those who watch TV 3 hours or more per day see
  much more violence - and they are susceptible to
  forming long term assumptions about the real
  world that mirror what they have seen on TV.
• To Gerbner, TV violence cultivates long term
  assumptions about how the real world operates for
  heavy TV watchers.
• His model is known as cultivation theory. The
  cultivation theory asserts that heavy viewers'
  attitudes are cultivated primarily by what they
  watch on television.

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The Mean World Syndrome

• Gerbner argued that long term regular exposure to
  violent TV tends to cause people to feel that
  they are living in a mean and dangerous world
  the mean world syndrome.

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The Mean World Syndrome Heavy TV viewers tend to

• 1. Be more fearful about society and crime.
• 2. Buy more guns and protective devices.
• 3. Be more aggressive themselves.
• 4. Be more desensitized to violence.
• 5. Support right-wing political platforms
  favoring more jails and harsher punishments.

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The Effects of Media Violence

• There have been more than 3000 studies of media
  violence, with about 300 of these studies being
  quite extensive. The research points to three
  basic effects
• 1. Aggressor effect.
• 2. Victim effect.
• 3. Desensitization.

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The Aggressor Effect

• Watching violence teaches viewers via
  observational learning how to perform violence.
• This is especially true for children, who model
  what they have seen.
• The Columbine high school massacre (1999) was
  largely modeled from watching violent content in
  various commercial media.
• It may also be that heavy viewers of violence
  tend to become aggressive themselves because they
  learn to distrust and suspect strangers they
  distrust young minority males especially.

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The Aggressor Effect

• Finally, observing violence that has been
  rewarded (the violent good guy usually gets a
  reward) promotes the belief that aggression is an
  appropriate way to solve problems.
• Media heroes are role models.
• We learn to see their violent style of problem
  solving as appropriate.
• We learn to see their weapons as good.

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The Victim Effect

• Media violence promotes the fear that one will
  become a victim of violence.
• A prevailing fear culture of violence permeates
  American culture.
• This fear culture is nurtured by the commercial
  media, and it is exploited by politicians
  catering to right-wing solutions that compromise
  citizen rights in the name of law and order and
  security.
• Women especially are conditioned to fear
  victimization by the commercial media.
• Parents are conditioned to be afraid to let their
  children play outside.
• Recall the Mean World Syndrome.

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The Desensitization Effect

• Constant exposure to media violence is associated
  with becoming somewhat numb or desensitized to
  violence.
• It now takes extremely graphic violence to
  produce the pop effect so often desired by male
  adolescent audiences who have been regularly
  exposed to violence.
• This helps explain why video games are
  progressively more graphically violent.

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Long and Short term Effects of Media Violence

• The effects of TV violence are both long term and
  short term.
• Long term effects include the mean world
  syndrome, the aggressor effect, the victim
  effect, and the desensitization effect.
• Short term effects include
• 1. Observational learning, especially for
  children, about about violent techniques and
  social appropriateness.
• Children imitate what they have seen.
• 2. Heightened emotionality and increased
  adrenaline puts people into an excited state.
• This is an immediate positive reinforcement.

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The Quantity of Violence Matters

• Those who are frequent and regular viewers of TV
  are significantly more likely to suffer from
  exposure to violence in the media.
• George Gerbner found that those who average 3 or
  more hours of TV viewing per day are at risk.
• Redundancy of violence produces subconscious
  effects, one of which is desensitization.
• Repeated exposure to guns in the media has
  normalized Americans to their presence. We are no
  longer shocked to see them used.

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The Quality of Violence Matters

• 1. Level of realism. Cartoons are less realistic
  than an action movie.
• 2. If the violence is associated with positive
  reinforcement.
• If a positive role model uses violence, or is
  rewarded for using violence.
• 3. Whether the viewer identifies with the hero or
  the villain (anti-heroes), both of whom are
  typically males.
• 4. The extent to which the story or character is
  relevant to the viewer.
• The commercial media rely upon stereotypes in
  order to assure relevance.

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Who is most likely to be affected by TV violence?

• Heavy TV viewers.
• The poor and working class, partly because they
  spend more time watching TV.
• They also tend to be less educated, and are
  therefore likely to be more impressionable.
• Those who are young and/or immature.
• Boys.
• Most media violence role models are men.
• In American culture, masculinity and aggression
  are tied together. It is a simple step to tie
  violence to masculinity.
• Those who have never become media-aware, or
  developed a critical awareness of the media.

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Whose fault is it?

• Producers of TV violence like to argue that they
  are simply giving the audience what it wants.
• Most audiences DONT want much violence.
• Also, television is not a free market where
  audiences/consumers pull the strings.
• Television is big business. It is run by
  oligopolies with tremendous ability to dictate TV
  content.
• Studies of TV ratings reveal that ratings are
  inaccurate indicators of popularity. Ratings are
  best determined by
• The time of the program
• The lead-in program
• What else is or is not on another channel

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Whose fault is it?

• TV violence cannot be properly understood as
  being driven by the force of audience demand.
• Rather it is driven by the force of centralized
  mass production of lowest common denominator
  themes in the interest of massification and mass
  profits.
• In commercial TV, commercial concerns outweigh
  the public interest.

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Whose fault is it?

• Large media conglomerates have imposed their
  formulas of happy violence and happy sex on
  the channels they own because this is what
  pleases sponsors more than audiences.
• This is why talk radio became so right-wing, too.
  It is driven by private interests, not the public
  concern.
• We are getting less diversity of viewpoints as we
  get bigger oligopolies. The same corporation
  dictates the content of many channels, and it has
  chosen to emphasize happy violence and happy sex
  out of its own self interest.

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Who makes media policy in the U.S.?

• The usual question, does TV violence incite
  real-life violence? obscures a deeper issue.
• Behind the problem of TV violence is the critical
  issue of who makes cultural policy and on whose
  behalf?
• This question is rarely asked in the U.S.
• Media images and messages in the U.S. are almost
  entirely determined by powerful private media
  corporations, with little public input.

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We need to ask fundamental questions about the
media

• Who are the storytellers in American culture?
• What is their underlying purpose?
• What do they gain from the stories they tell?
• How can we assure that diverse and alternative
  stories will be told, even if they lack selling
  power?
• To what extent does the public have the right to
  participate in making decisions about which
  stories are told?

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Possible legal reforms

• Allow more public input.
• Reform legislation to protect citizens from
  excessive violence and commercialism, and to
  assure educational content.
• The 1990 Children's Television Act required more
  educational content for kids on Saturday
  mornings.
• The conglomerates responded by labeling The
  Jetsons and G.I. Joe as educational content.
• Enforce the anti-trust laws.
• Very unlikely, given the lobbying power of the
  conglomerates on both sides of the political
  aisle.

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Where do we go from here?

• Currently, there are 4 basic social policy
  approaches to responding to television violence
  being discussed.
• 1. Laissez faire. Do nothing.
• 2. Total ban on TV violence.
• This violates the First Amendment.
• 3. Limit TV violence to certain times.
• The FCC encourages this and has established the
  post 10pm slot for all broadcast stations for
  risqué content.
• 4. The V-Chip.
• Great potential, but currently the V-Chip is
  programmed by private industry, not public
  citizens. Even so, it basically works if parents
  use it.
• Parents need more information and education.

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End