The media effects theory proposes that exposure to media can directly influence individuals' attitudes and behaviors. The hypodermic needle model suggests that mass media has significant power to uniformly inject audiences with messages and trigger desired responses, treating audiences as passive receivers. However, cultivation theory argues repeated exposure over time, rather than single exposures, shapes attitudes. While some evidence links media exposure to behaviors, theories cannot prove causation, and individual backgrounds likely better explain actions. Censorship aims to restrict potentially objectionable or offensive media to protect audiences like children who are highly susceptible to influence.

1. What is the media effects theory?
The media effect is the theory that a social or psychologicalresponsethat
occurs in individuals, groups, organizations or communities as a result of
exposureto the media. In the 1970’s and 80’s new theories starting coming
about the impact of the media and how the exposureof media can directly
affect people’s attitudes and behaviours.
There is different theory on how the media can affect people, the firstone
being the Hypodermic Needle model. The theory explains how the mass media
influences a large group of people by directly and uniformly injecting them
with appropriatemessages to tell them how to react to a certain image or text.
Itsuggests that the media has lots of power of their audience and they can
make them think and feel a certain way to work in their favour as they are
trying to trigger and desired response. Within this theory
they use a bullet and needle graph to show how the
information is receive from their audience. The bullet theory
is a way of explain how the information is received by the
audience. This model shows that the information is fired at
the audience and injected with messagefrom main stream
media. This shows us that the audience are passiveas they allow for the media
to inject them with their opinions and do not try to stop it. The public are seen
as a sitting suck and they end thinking that there is no information then the
one they have been told believing everything the media sourcesays.
Another theory called The Cultivation theory talks about how the effect on an
individual f they watch something once or played something wouldn’thave
much effect on them but rather if they watch something over and over again
for a long period of time and how they will behave before and after the
process of continuous viewing of a specific thing. For example, someonemay
be sensitive to blood but after months or year after watching something
related to blood they are likely to become less bothered. This theory talks
about how if someone is associated with violence for a long time they arelikely
to become violent in the game, movie or in real life. This theory is hard to
provethough as there is no evidence.
Does it prove that people are affected by the media?

2. These theories cannot provethat society is affected by the media but there are
stories and examples of people that the media could haveinfluenced them to
do bad thing such as violence. An example of a stories that related videos
game to one murder is Devin Moore an 18-year-old who in a town of Fayette,
Ala, gunned down three men. In the lawsuit Attorney Jack Thompson talks
about how the effect of the video games grand theft auto had an impact on
the 18-year-old and if he did not have the video game he would not of done it.
Froman article fromCBS news https://www.cbsnews.com/news/can-a-
video-game-lead-to-murder-17-06-2005/ "Heboughtit as a minor. He played
it hundreds of hours, which is primarily a cop-killing game. It's our theory,
which we think we can proveto a jury in Alabama, that, but for the video-game
training, he would not have done what he did."
In the game the aim is to kill people, rob stores and steal cars. The game is for
18 years plus and he did buy it when he was younger. He had no criminal
history and said to have played the game night and day for month before the
incident. The murder stated "Life is like a video game. Everybody's gotto die
sometime." All the evidence links to the game, the fact that he killed police
men justlike in the game and the responsehe had himself actually talking
about video game shows this defiantly had an impact.
I believe this story does show that the media can affect certain individuals
because these games are meant for people who are 18 and over for reason
because they include lots of violence in the games such as murder therefore
not suitable for children this is because they are not fully grown up yet and
developed, they are easily influenced by the media as they know no better.
This links to the Hypodermic Needle model theory as the audience believes the
firstthing in the media, this is the samefor kids as they haven’t learned about
everything yet and have not had time to create their own opinion so therefore
justcopy whatever people are doing. I believe this is the samein games as if
kids are broughtup playing these games from young ages and no one is telling
them that they are bad then they are going to believe that this is okay. I don’t
believe that video games make you an evil violent person but I think that is has
an impact on you and influences you to do bad things rather then it making
you. Itgives the person ideas of how to become evil like a guide, it does not
make you do things as it cannot forceyou but it can give these young adults
and kids ways to kill or hurtsomeone. This is proved with this example as he
says “life is a like a video game” showing that he played this video game so
much that he believes the world Is a video game. Showing how addictive video
games can be for him to do this.

3. Another example of how videos games and the media can affect people is by
not copying the people in the video games to do evil things but the games
making you angry that Itcause you to. Being addicted to video games can
causeyou to act in different way then you normally would. 3 examples of this
forman article fromPsychology today
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/media-spotlight/201308/are-
video-games-addictive arein 2005 Shanghaigamer Qiu Chengwei stabbed a
friend to death when he found out that he had sold a virtualsword belonging
to Chengwei on eBay for 7,200 yuan. Hewas not influenced by the game to
commit this murder but the rage he got from the game because of how
addicted he was made him kill his friend. This showed if he had not played the
game then this specific game would not of happened. Another example is in
2009, an Ohio court sentenced 17-year-old DanielPetric to 23 years in prison
for the fatal shooting of his mother. Petric had shot both his parents after they
took away his copy of Halo 3. An finally the third example in In 2011, Rebecca
Colleen Christie was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a New Mexico court for
allowing her 3 ½ year-old daughter to die of malnutrition while she spent
hours playing World of Warcraft. These are a couple of example of how the
media makes people angry or behavior badly but no influence by the violence
in the game.
This is a still a problemas the addiction are causing these affects but on the
other hand it is not the video game itself it is the addictive such as any
addiction you can have such as smoking or drinking. Somepeople may havea
drinking problem but you can’t say alcohol makes everyoneaddictive so you
cannot say all video game makepeople violent. On the opposite side of this
argument there are stories that prove that it’s not the media that effect people
are more their background and how they have been broughtup.
An example of this is the James Bulger case. James bulger was a toddler from
Merseysidewhosebody was found on a railway line at Walton, Liverpool, in
February, was violently attacked with bricks, stones, and a piece of metal by
two 10-year-old boys who abducted him from a shopping center at Bootle. The
tabloid verdict was that the 10-year-old boys gotthe idea from a game/movie
called planet evil and weretrying to be the aliens. However even though they
watched moveviolent films and video games that they were too young for
there was no evidence that this was a causeinstead it was the boy’s
background thatmade them the way they were. In an article from the
guardian

4. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/nov/01/bulger.familyandrelationshi
ps Ittalks about how their parent had an effect on the children. The boy had a
bad child hood with both parentbeing separated. Oneof the killer’s family, the
Thompsons his mum Ann husband had left her and on the same week their
housewas burned down leaving his mum in a bad situation where sheturned
to drink and looked after her children in her chaotic home. The point is that
they were both broughtup in bad situation werethey both did not get a lot of
attention and I believe if they parent had changed the way they had brought
up their kids and gave them more love they would havenot committed these
crimes where as if you would had only taken away the video games I believe
they still would of turned to violence.
Overall my opinion to if the media affect people is I believe it does not change
the way people think or their attitudes, it does not make people do bad things
such as crime but I do believe in does influence people. People who commit
these crimes are born with mental health issues or born evil I do think a video
game of movie can make someonea violent person if they were not one I just
think it influence people who are already bad even more and there should be
more restriction on these games and movies.
Are we influenced by advertising?
Advertising is a means of communication with the user of a product of service.
They are a messagepaid for by those who send them, their purposeis to
informand influence people who read, watch and view them to buy their
productof service. Way in which advertising is presented are via television,
print, journals, radio, press, internet, mailer, sponsorships, posters,clothes and
events. Adverting main purposeis to have an impact on their audience and to
influence them and with these aims are rules to what can be shown and what
can’t be shown on an advert.
The main purposeof advertising is to make consumers awareof what your
company is offering or what it is about. Advertising try to persuadepeople to
make them their choice by getting celebrity to endorsea productor service.
Whether we admit it or not, there is an effect since the stored memory is
triggered or it depends on how the advertisement was perceived by the
audience. The way in which the advertinfluence us can be small and big and
bad and good. For example, a good way in which advertisecan influence us is

5. charity advert. An advert that encourages the audience to donate money to
causethat helps people. This is a good way of influence people are it helps
people all the over the world. An example of a bad advertis a junk food advert,
as this will influence an audience to go out and eat their food even though it’s
really bad for you and this is why we haveregulation in the advertising system
as advert such as Ofcomintroduced a ban on junk food advertising on
programmes aimed at children under 16 in 2007. Therefore, junk food adverts
cannot be played in-between kids shows as this would influence kids to eat bad
food and because they are so young they are likely to listen to the advert and
think it is ok to eat bad food all time which will make the unhealthy compared
to an adult who knows it bad to eat this type of food and has the will power to
overcomethe temptation. Other rules that are in place to ensurekids areno
exposed to many adverts are
1. it shall not directly encourage minors to persuadetheir parents or others to
purchasethe goods or services being advertised;
2. it shall not unreasonably show minors in dangerous situations
3. Children’s programmes may only be interrupted if the scheduled duration is
longer than 30 minutes
This is to help not let the media influence children to much as they are easily
influenced. Young people view advertmore than 40’000 times a year on
television and these rules are to get these figures down as the media will have
too much power on how we think.
Should we have censorship?
"Supervision and controlof the information and ideas that are circulated
among the people within a society. In modern times, censorship refers to the
examination of books, periodicals, plays, films, television and radio programs,
news reports, and other communication media for the purposeof altering or
suppressing parts thoughtto be objectionable or offensive."- Funk & Wagnalls
New World Encyclopedia.
Censorship restricts whata person can and cannot see for example editing
parts out of movies and text before it is released and banning certain media
such as movies and books to the public.
I say we should have censorship becausethe media has too much impact on
society in this presentday. I believe this because with socialmedia becoming
very popular and lots of young adults and kid spending most of their time on
the media, watching films or on social media, it can become a dangerous place.
If there were no restrictions on what people could see on the media, then kids

6. would be able to see the same thing adults would be able to see such as sex
and violence and at that age these are thing that they don’t understand and
can influence them more than it would an adult. We need censorship to
protect young kids fromthing they do not understand yetso they are not
influence by people who can manipulate them.
In which circumstances, should we have censorship?
We should have more censorship on
social media, a guide to who can access
it and who can’t. The minimum age for
people to sign up to Twitter, Facebook, Snapchatand Instagram thefour main
social media platform is 13 years old. This shows thatthe platforms are age
restricted but I believe that the age whereyou are allowed to use them should
be higher and this is becausethese platforms are very big filled with lots of
images, stories, status and memes from all sortof different age. The young kids
from 13 are going to be seeing whatthe older people over 20 are posting and
writing. The differencebetween these ages are hugeand therefore going to
act very different on social media. Most people over the age of 16 swear and
with lots of people this age on social media shows there is going to bad
language used, inappropriateimages shared not for the people are sharing
them but for the young kids that are allowed on these platforms and by these
kids seeing these images and bad language they are likely to copy what these
people are doing and they will be influenced to swear more becauseeveryone
else it. By allowing these kids to witness what other ages are doing you
influence them to act older than whatthey are and their attitudes. Social
media needs more censorship to limit the things kids can see. They could do
this by making the age higher to sign up or creating differenttypes of social
media for different age groups to makesure they do not merge together. By
doing this, it will also help older men and women talking to young kids as this is
a big problem on the online world. As old people and young people can talk
together on the sameplatform there is no barrier to stop this so by having
censorship and not allowing people below 16 on the same platform as people
over 16 it can help stop children being influenced and manipulated by older
people intentionally and not intentionally.

7. Another place wherecensorship should be included is YouTube. YouTube is a
media platform that allows people to sharevideos and stream videos. With
almost 5 billion videos arewatched on YouTube every single day and with 6
out of 8 people prefer online video platform to TV
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/video-trends-where-
audience-watching/ this shows thatthe site is very popular. YouTube is
becoming very popular compared to TV but becauseof the site not being on TV
there are as many rules to what you can post. YouTube has guideline to what
you can post but they’renot strict as TV. For example, in January 2018 Logan
Paul posted a vlog of him in the suicide forest
in Japan and filmed a person who had hung
himself. The video was sat on his YouTube
channel for hours receiving six million views
and hundreds of thousands of likes. Even though YouTube has rules this video
did not get flagged or taken down straight away but rather left up for hours for
his fans to see. Logan Paul has over 16 million subscribers on YouTubeand
most of his audience are ages between 11-20. His content is aimed are young
kids and becauseof YouTube not taken this seriously it allowed lots of his
young fans to see actual footage of a dead person who had killed himself. In
the video Logan Paul makes some jokes laugh and becauseof this he is
showing his audience it is okay to take the ick of suicide but it also affected the
fan mentally to as kids should never haveto see a dead person and becauseof
their age they are very sensitiveto this. If this was on TV this would have never
ever been posted but becausethis channel are in the hands of individual it’s
their choice if to post it or not. YouTube need to havemore censorship in what
people can post and not post. There need to be more action taken to ensure
content like this cannot be posted, video needs to be reviewed before posting
and there needs to be sticker rules justlike TV becauseif this is becoming more
popular than TV then the same rules need to apply to YouTube to ensure
young kids to not watch the content that’s not suitable for them.
Another reason why censorship needs to be applied on YouTube is because of
the way the creators can manipulate their audiences. One rules in advertising
that you cannot do when creating an advertis 1. Itshall not directly encourage
minors to persuadetheir parents or others to purchasethe goods or services
being advertised. This rules is here to ensurethat companies cannotencourage
kids to beg their parents to buy thosetoys as they would do that if an advert
told them to. On YouTube, these rules do not
apply so people who havebusiness on the
side of their YouTube channel such as

8. their merchandisebusiness can promotethe productin whatever way they
want to make suretheir audience buys it and becauseof this Jake Paul and
Youtuber who has over 13 million subscribers can manipulatekids to buy his
clothes. An example of how he did this was in one of his Christmas songs he
talks abouthow the presents that the audience parents got them, that they
should throw them away and tell them to buy his merchandise for them
instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvYbhJ6pryA at1:34 JakePaul
sings “go tell ya mamma she gotta buy them all,” Encouraging the kids to tell
their parents to buy his merchandisethis is taking advantage of the kids as
they are likely to listen to him becauseof how young they are. This links to
Cultivation theory as Jake says the same line over and over again telling them
to tell their parents to buy his merchandise. After the kids listen to the lyrics
over and over they are more likely to do whathe says. If TV havethese rules
then YouTube should to as it getting justas big.
In which circumstances, should we not have censorship?
There are types of censorships thatshould not be a
thing for example in many countries their people
are not aloud of social media such as Facebook and
they have their own type of internet for them to use
to make surethat they only see the thing they want them to. I do not agree
with this as they are taking away their freedom. Everyoneshould be able to
use socialmedia I justthink age restrictions should be higher but I don’t think
no one should go on it becauseyou are taking away opportunities away from
them that other people have. For example by not allowing them to use social
media you are taking away the chance for them to explore and meet new
people. When these people leave the country and explore there going to be a
lot moreunawareof the world such as the news, celebrity’s and trends then
the people they meet giving them a disadvantageand it could make it harder
for them to communicate and social is such a big part of society.
I also don’tthink there should be censorship on the news. I believe the news
should be a channel werepeople can watch and learn about everything that’s
going on the world instead of people taking parts out that are sensitiveto the
audience as it’s good to learn about what’s happening rightnow if that’s in
politics, wars and in general. I don’t think young teens and children should be
restricted fromwatching the news or knowing about what’s going on right now
in the world as its go for them to understand how the world works. Lots of
children in schooldon’t know anything about politics because they are too

9. young to learn about them but I believe they should be taught about them as
its good for them to develop and opinion so when it comes to being 18 they
have a good understanding about who to vote for. There is no point shielding
kids fromthe horror of the world becauseonce they grow up they are going to
find out sooner or later.
Should certain ideas be banned from the classroom?
I think there are certain situation that children should learn from a
young age but one of the teaching that I believe for the best of the
children that sex education and puberty should not be taught till year
6/7. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-39116783 in an article
fromthe BBC the author talks about the new guideline in 2019 that all
schools haveto include sex education not justcouncil run schools.
“Age-appropriatelessons willhave particular emphasis on what
constitutes healthy relationships, as well as the dangers of sexting, online
pornography and sexualharassment” is what will happen in these schools. I
believe that young children should be taught about sex but that’s it and only
people at the end of the schoolyear going onto secondary and the firstyear of
secondary. I stand by these reasons becauseyoung kids should not have any
more pressureon them at such a young age, I believe they should justbe left
alone to learn play and have fun rather than having lessons telling them what
wrong in relationships that they aren’t going to be in till 5 years’ time. By
teaching them so young kids normally havea bad memory so thereforeby
teaching them at an older age of 11+ they are morelikely to understand and
remember them better. I don’tthink sex education should be banned from the
classroombutrather changed to an older age.
There are some ideas that are currently wanting to be banned that I think
should not. An example of this is Darwin being banned in American schools. In
an article by the Daily Mail it talks about how schools aretrying to not teach
their pupils about Darwin and theory of how weadapted from evaluation but
rather how God created us instead. I don’tagree with this and think both
theories should be taught to the children or at least a choice given to because
if the teaches are only teaching them one theory about how we are created
and the students do not know any others then they are
going to believe the theory is correct. This is not fair on
the children as they are being lied to as there in proof
that the earth has been here a lot longer than the bible
says and therefore you are hiding evidence that would

10. maybe changethe mind of the student and basically forcing them to believe
your opinion. By teaching both subjects RE and Science to them you allow the
students to make their own minds up on both sets of evidence and stories
rather than trapping them to believe one or the other.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-207079/Evolution-banned-US-
schools.html
Another example of an idea that should not be banned in the school is
Religious studies in primary. This should not be banned because RE is a really
good thing for young people to learn about this is because it so big in the UK,
lots of people are Christians therefore children should be able to learn about
the type of religion this country is and have the choice to believe it. I also don’t
think it should be banned becauseit’s not harmfulto them, the morals of the
bible all have good meaning to them such as the ten commandments leaving a
good example for the kids to follow. By banning Religion in school, the children
would not be able to do the Christmas plays and would be taught that there is
no meaning to Christmas even thought this day if for God. I believe it is unfair
to not teach kids about a big part of this society and history becauseit’s not
the teacher beliefs.
One idea that I do disagreewith when teaching the kids religion is making
them pray in the morning., I don’tthink this should be allowed as you are
forcing the kids to pray for something that they might not necessarily believe
or even understand. They should even have a choice or not do it all as it could
makes the kids feel uncomfortableor feel forced into doing it.
Why do we have age restrictions on video games and films but not
on books?
Video games and films have age restrictions to ensurethe right age groups can
only purchasetheseproducts or services therefore not allowing a younger
audience to witness them or play as they could include violence and sexual
scenes that are inappropriatefor their age. By age restricting it doesn’tallow a
person under the limit to buy a cinema ticket, movie and game. There are films
such as 12A that allow kids under twelve to see it but only with a person over
the age of 18 with consent. These are rules are here to protect people from
seeing stuff that could hurt, offend or confusethem but these rules to not
apply for books. Books arewritten for certain ages groups butany age person
is allowed to buy them. I say books do not have an age limit to encourage
more people to buy them as by age restricting them they are stopping a big
proportion of people fromreading and with reading not being as popular

11. anymoreit need to be encouraged more rather than being stopped therefore
allowing any person to read any book gives them morechoice and preference
to what they like and can chose.
“41% of 11-15 year-olds in England do not participate in reading and writing
activities that are not required for schoolin their sparetime.”
https://readingagency.org.uk/about/impact/002-reading-facts-1/
A fact fromthe reading agency shows thatlots of young teens from 11-15 do
not read for fun. This shows that reading needs to be encouraged more and if
we limited the age on what they could read this percentage could get higher.
Another reason why book might not have age limits is because kids are aware
of whatthey can read and can’t becausebooks usually scale the maturity of
their content with the required reading level. Books that are targeted to older
audiences are going to include more advancewriting something young children
will not be able to understand and therefore wouldn’tbuy it.
The difference between videos games, films and book is films and movies show
a visualside of the story making to more realistic for the child and is more
likely to affect them more for example, if a 15 year old saw a horror film aimed
for 18 year old the content is going to be unsuitable and is highly likely to scare
them becausethey are not mature enough to handle the situation but in a
book it’s much harder for this fear to be created as they cannot see the horror
they are reading about and also when picturing it in their head they can alter
the horror to not be as scary and interpret it differently to suit them.
On the other hand, there are certain books that I think should be
aged restricted for example, fifty shades of grey. This is a very
sexual book as is defiantly aimed at an audience over 18 this is
because it contains a lot of sexual scenes that include mild
violence, this is definably not suitable for anyoneunder the age of
16 as they legally not allowed to havesex. By not having a age limit
on this book it allows young teens to buy and read it and becauseof this the
book could influence them to have sex and break the law or confusethem
about their sexuality and even scarethem as this is a very intense book. Sexual
scenes in films are age restricted therefore sexual books should to as it
encourages people to havesex and young teens should be encouraged or
pressured to. By having a age restriction on the book it would make it hard for
teens to buy this book and they would have to wait till the right time which
would suit them better.