Media Violence and Children

1
Media Violence and Children

• Media violence and broader Moral panics
• Debates about media impact
• Connections to real-life events
• A form of electronic child abuse
• Media as a convenient scapegoat?
• Proposal to regulate media vs. Other significant
  causes (family breakdown)
• Anxiety ? Censorship (stricter control)

2
Media Panics?

• Long history of media panics and collapse of
  social order Continuing concern about
  over-stimulation, sensuality, and sensationalism
• Contradictory notions
• The child as innocent and vulnerable
• The bearer of original sin (natural not in
  positive sense negative drives)
• Political purposes

3
Motion Picture Production Code (Hays Code)

• Formulated and adopted by The Association of
  Motion Picture Producers, Inc. and The Motion
  Picture Producers and Distributors of America,
  Inc. in 1930 (inside censorship instead of
  outside)
• General Principles
• 1. No picture shall be produced that will lower
  the moral standards of those who see it. Hence
  the sympathy of the audience should never be
  thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or
  sin.
• 2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the
  requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be
  presented.
• 3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed,
  nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

4
Media Panics?

• Inconclusive evidence on alleged media violence
  increase but it is clear that more graphic and
  spectacular on screen
• Realistic gunfire
• Scenes of consequence of injury
• Why do children choose to expose themselves to
  that?
• Audience generally prefer programs without
  violence (some critics suggest).
• Global marketing Violence as a dramatic
  ingredient requires no translation and instantly
  comprehensible
• Media violence as symptomatic of changes in the
  Zeitgeist (Anxiety produced by changing roles,
  insecurity)
• Return of repressed paganism (attempt to
  re-connect to nature)
• Implicit assumption Violence is a singular
  phenomenon

5
The Limits of Effects

• Research on childrens relationship with media
• Dominated by particularly reductive understanding
  of its effects
• Central preoccupation media able to produce
  aggressive behavior
• Children defined in terms of what they lack
• Inability to conform to adult norms
• Inability to distinguish between fiction and
  reality
• Simply too immature
• Violence abstracted from contexts in lab
  experiments and surveys
• Correlations seen as causality
• Theoretical and methodological shortcomings

6
The Limits of Effects

• Failed central hypothesis
• Media violence makes people more aggressive than
  they would otherwise have been
• It causes them to commit violent acts they would
  not otherwise have committed
• Sociological research
• multifactorial causes
• Asking simplistic questions about complicated
  social issues
• Media have no effects? We cant prove it ?
  better to err on the side of safety

7
Talking Violence

• What audience defined as violent
• Significant variation
• Gender, country, age context, drama types
• Children do not perceive cartoons as violent but
  regularly top on lists for researchers
• Violence in the media A more complex question
• Children and parents both define violence as bad
  influence on those other than themselves
• Social desirability bias

8
Talking Violence

• Parents see their own childrens imitation as
  play Other peoples children might committed
  copycat violence inadequate parenting ignored
• Parents central concern
• Not that they become aggressive
• But emotionally upset or disturbed

9
Reading Effects

• Precisely what kind of effects
• Behavior effects
• Emotional effects
• Ideological or attitudinal effects
• Connections complex and diverse harmful or
  beneficial
• Positive vs. Negative Effects
• Positive and negative responses at the same time
  far from straightforward
• Fear of crime vs. Citizen prerequisite

10
Reading Effects

• Fact and Fiction
• Development of coping strategy from fictional
  material carried over to real life
• Become generic knowledge (media literacy)-coping
  with media experience
• Harder to cope with in non-fictional material
• Not always clear-cut

11
Why do children (people) watch?

• Pathological conception of viewers
• Immaturity, lack of intelligence, personality
  defects
• Potential appeal
• Thrill, poetry or beauty, countercultural,
  testing ones own responses
• Few have been acknowledged
• Horror as example
• To understand and deal with life anxiety in
  comparatively safe arena
• Suspension of disbelief Imagination might be real

12
Why do children watch?

• Taking on victims position rather than monsters
• Sadism and Masochism
• Pleasure, enjoyment of repeated viewing (enable
  to see through)
• Pleasure inextricably tied up with pain
• Transgression and disruption
• Violation of social, sexual, physical taboos
• Politically progressive or psychically therapeutic

13
Changing Sites of Regulation

• Technological advances vs. Control of illegal
  materials (--still obtained by under age
  children)
• Responsibility inevitably shifted to parents
• Banning of forbidden fruits gives attractions !?
• Media violence issues ? ultimately many diverse
  but fundamental anxieties
• Decline of family and religion
• Changing nature of literacy and cultural
• Pace of technological change