Media Violence Essay

Media Violence
"It has been calculated that American kids see about 200,000 acts of violence and 25,000 murders
on television by the time they reach age eighteen." (Schleifer 18) Arrests of people under the age of
eighteen for violent crimes rose forty–seven percent from 1988 to 1992. (Miller 174) The American
Medical Association conducted a study that found a direct relationship between viewing and
homicide. (Miller 176) Does this kind of overexposure to violence have a significant effect on
children and teenagers? The answer is yes! Many reliable sources have proven that violence in the
media has a negative influence in children under the age of eighteen. Statistics show that deaths and
arrests involving children due to violence committed by other...show more content...
This is especially true when it come to cartoon violence because the consequences to the victims are
rarely shown. (acc.jc.edu/north/masscomm/cartoon/html) Very young children, especially, and some
teenagers have trouble distinguishing fact from fantasy. One teenager gang member wounded in a
shoot out was amazed at how much the gun shoot hurt. "After all, on television, people who get
shot never show pain!" (Schleifer 18) " I didn't know it would hurt him, said an eight year old boy
after he was arrested for beating his next door–neighbor." (Kreiner 27) Statistics even show that the
media also affects the number of crimes committed by children and murders of children by other
children. In 1993, 28 New York youth faced murder charges. On a national scale, arrests for
homicide among juveniles went up 93 percent from 1988 to 1992. A 1994 study by Parade
magazine showed that 12
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Media Violence Essay
Media Violence
Within the last few years, media violence is rapidly becoming a "hot" topic among many researchers
and parents. The recent upsurge of violence and shootings in our schools causes us to ask the
question, " Who should we blame for the hostility of our youth?" There are obviously no easy
answers to this question, fingers may point to many different reasons. With the many different
perspectives in this issue, I will discuss the three most important, blaming the entertainment business,
blaming the parents, and within the children themselves.
Many can debate that children are definitely affected by the movies, television shows, book and
video games that the entertainment business throws at them. For too many...show more content...
People can argue that watching violent movies and listening to music deemed "aggressive," can
actually relieve some of the stresses of everyday teenage life. If someone were to censor these things,
then where would children turn to as an outlet? Parents must take responsibility and perform their
jobs as parents. It seems as though today that more parents are spending more of their time away
from their homes and children, and doing other things. Without obvious parental controls,
entertainment is obviously going to cause children to stray in the wrong direction. It is up to parents,
to sit down with their children and to talk to them and teach them between reality and fiction.
Children should know that just because certain situations on television are dealt with in a certain
possibly violent way, that that is not the correct way to deal with them in reality. Parents undoubtly
hold the upper hand, so why can they not monitor what their children are allowed to come in contact
with?
One last perspective should look at the children themselves. According to The National School
Safety Center, twenty– eight percent of school deaths between the years of 1992 and 1999 was due
to interpersonal disputes. In school shootings such as the one at Columbine High School in Littleton,
CO, the perpetrators were both eighteen–year–old high school seniors. Most people would agree that
at the age of eighteen, most people are considered adults and in control of their own lives.

Media & Violence Essay
Violence in the Media and how it Affects Society
The effect of media is profound and far–reaching. All over the world, the media influences our
values and intrudes upon our deep–seated ideologies and beliefs. Indeed the media has been a
powerful force in influencing people's perceptions, and more importantly, their behavior as well.
Business, politicians, and showbiz personalities pay huge sums of money to media firms in order
create an image or change an existing one. Politics in particular, has been making use of the media
to generate public support for their campaigns and support for certain policies and legislations.
Indeed, the power of the media to affect our behavior has long been proven. Among the most pressing
...show more content...
from the National Institute on Media and the Family).
в–Є Children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend more time exposed to various forms of media (TV,
computer, game consoles, music, etc) than any other activity in their lifetime. (Kaiser Family
Foundation qtd. from the National Institute on Media and the Family).
в–Є Of over a thousand studies that have been done on the effects of violence in television and
movies, majority of them conclude that individuals, especially children who spend significant time
watching violence on TV and movies are more likely to display aggressive or violent behavior,
attitudes and values. (Senate Committee; Congressional Public Health Summit qtd. from the
National Institute on Media and the Family)
According to these figures, the younger the age of the individual, the more susceptible they become
to the adverse effects of exposure to media violence. (Trend 93) The aggressiveness are often latent
and presents later in life which is adds to the difficulty of measuring the actual effects of media
violence. (Freedman 137)
Women who spend long hours watching TV violence are more likely to respond violently towards
their spouses. There is an increase in physicality among women with higher media violence
exposure. (Partenheimer) In the same vein, men who

Essay about Violence in the Media
Some believe that violence in the media is to blame for violence in people, but that argument is
undermined by the realization that violence existed long before video games and television. In
fact, violence has actually been steadily decreasing since these things have been growing in
popularity. Critics of violent media seem to long for the "good old days"; a time before there was
violence in the media. These critics fail to acknowledge that those "good old days" were actually
far more violent than today. While violence is still present in modern society, it pales in comparison
to the violence that was once a part of daily life. For most of human history, people have lived lives
dominated by violence. From primitive hunters...show more content...
"Homicide rates in France, Germany, Italy and Japan either failed to change with increasing
television ownership in the same period or actually declined, and American homicide rates have
more recently been sharply declining"(30). Despite the growth of violent movies, video games,
and television shows, or perhaps because of it, society as a whole has become a far less violent
place than it has ever been before. Proponents of censorship assert that violence in the media causes
violent behavior in children and young adults. As evidence, they point to things like the Littleton
shooters' history of playing violent video games and movies and the similarity of the shootings to
certain games. A study conducted by two psychologists at the University of Michigan is often cited
as having "shown that children exposed to violent programming at a young age have a higher
tendency for violent and aggressive behavior later in life than children not so exposed" (31). More in
depth studies have contradicted these findings. Another group did a study which followed 875
children from age eight through eighteen in upstate New York. The group concluded that "the
correlation–0.31–would mean television accounted for 10 percent of the influence that lead to this
behavior" (31). It should also be known that this "only turned up in one of three measures of
aggression; the

There has been far–reaching research on the link between televised violence and violent behavior
amongst adolescents. Current studies have shown a direct correlation between aggressive conduct
and watching violence depicted in many media services and suggest that media is a variable that put
children at risk of aggressive behavior (Huesmann, Moise–Titus, Podolski, & Eron, 1992). According
to the American Psychological Association, watching playing violent scenes them on games and
television, can desensitize children to the suffering and pain of others and may be a greater risk of
acting aggressively toward others and they're less bothered by violence in general and less likely to
see anything wrong with it. Studies disclose that children...show more content...
Many argue that media violence is at least partly to blame for the school shootings in Littleton,
Colorado, Taber, Alberta and Erfurt, Germany.
Proponents of the idea that violence depicted on both television and video games affects the
behavior of children state that, contrary to other beliefs, these scenes teach a higher sense of the
justification of the use of violence in different situations (Tompkins, 2003). It teaches that violence
is a correct avenue to solve differences, which is not an acceptable action within real life situations.
The classic setting of using violence for a virtuous cause may interpret in daily life into a validation
for using violence to even the score against supposed victimizers. Consequently, defenseless youth
who have been maltreated may be tempted to use aggressive means to resolve problems.
The hero in most of these scenes also teaches them that violence has no consequences because he/she
never gets in trouble for their actions. Most psychologists agree that experiences teach children
during their early years and have a longstanding effect on their lives. Toddlers between the ages of
eighteen to sixteen months are intelligent enough to comprehend the significance of the programs
(Tompkins, 2003) that they watch and respond in the same manner to both actual and acted violence
since their link between dream and actuality is still not strong. Furthermore, toddlers between the
ages of three and five years are

Media Violence
There has been a rapid growth in the amount of studies performed designed to at looking at the
potentially harmful effects of the consumption of violent media and the impact it has on
psychological factors. Two psychological factors that have been researched are empathy and
aggression and how violent media influences these two emotions. Theories that have tried explaining
the pathway from the viewing of violence in media and the impact on aggression have generally
focused on the role of violent media being used by consumers as observational learning and
promoting the development of aggressive tendencies. It is thought that the exposure to violence and
violent acts contribute to the development of aggressive behaviour (Anderson, et al.,...show more
content...
One literature review that has already looked at this is Wiedeman et al (2015) which investigated
factors that could potentially influence the impact that aggressive and violent media have on
children. The purpose of their study was to discuss the relevant research that had been previously
carried out on the topic and examine if various factors could potentially impact the risk of being
influenced by violent media. A few of the factors looked at in their study and is relevant to this
research report includes time that was spent watching media and the content of the media and how
they influence violent behaviour. They found that exposure to aggressive or violent behaviour
whether it was for a brief period or a prolonged time, can not only increase the level of aggressive
behaviour shown, but also have an impact on the desensitization to violence and the suffering of
other which relates back to empathy levels. Another is Bartholow et al (2005) that looked at the
consequences of the exposure to violent media to Empathy, aggressive behaviour and the likelihood
of having a hostile personality. The study primarily looked at the effects of violent video game
consumption in children up to seventeen years of age as they reportedly spend up to seven hours a
week playing them. The researchers conducted two studies to examine the link between violent

Media Violence
Media violence is one of the most debated public issues society faces today. Television screens are
loaded with the glamorization of weapon carrying. Violence constitute as amusing and trivialized.
Needless portrayals of interpersonal violence spread across the television screens like wild fire.
Televisions spew the disturbing events such as children being assaulted, husbands inflicting domestic
abuse on their wives and children succumbing to abuse by their parents. Scenes of betrayal, anguish,
infiltrate the television screen. Unfortunately, a child becomes subjected to media violence.
Everything a child sees or hears in the media affects them in some way or another. The precise
effects of media violence on children are...show more content...
We as a society cannot succumb to believing such an opinion because we are very familiar with
violence and criminal activity resembling something from a movie scene or television show. Most
violent acts shown on television go unpunished and are often accompanied by humor. Rarely does
the media display the consequences of human suffering leading a child accept its reality. Of course,
crime can become the result of a number of influences working together; even researchers point out
the independent influence alone cannot directly contribute to the effect.
Evidence show children imitate aggressive behavior. Researchers conducted a study on students
happening in the mid 1990's in Israel. The focus of the study captured the effects of influence from
children watching World Wrestling Federation (WWF) matches. The study revealed startling
evidence demonstrating the students in the selected schools developed imitative behavior depicting
what they say in the wrestling matches. The children practiced banging heads, throwing opponents
to the floor, jumping onto them from furniture, pulling hair and poking their eyes with fingers. No
surprise when about half of the responding principals reported that these new behaviors resulted in
the use of first aid. In addition, the study found one fourth of the reported injuries required
emergency room visits or other professional medical care (Dube, 2000). In yet another

Essay about Media Violence
Violence has been a contributing negative factor to society throughout history. Many researchers
believe that the use of violent media, particularly video games, play a huge role in the downward
trend of behavior and attitude of youth, and that this behavior continues to spiral out of control.
However, other researchers believe that since violence has been occurring since the beginning of
time, that adolescence are as capable today of violence, as they were a thousand years ago. Research
has been found to link violent maladaptive behavior to the use of video games, but other researchers
believe that the outcome is inconsistent to the findings, since the results are often skewed.
Meta–analysis have statistically proven that...show more content...
Two studies were conducted to compare and contrast video gamers' moral attitudes towards violence
in video games, and to reveal whether this moral attitude correlates to real life situations. Media
Psychology purports that "In both studies, justification of virtual violence and user's trait empathy
determined guilt in a structurally similar way to real world scenarios" (g.
1644). Players, especially those who were empathetic, felt just as guilty engaging in virtual violence
as they would have had if engaging in unjustified violence in the real world. Research has concluded
that violent media content is responsible for desensitization to violence, although those whom are
desensitized have no greater tendency towards violence.
According to Becker–Olsen (2010) desensitization to violence is "a reduction in emotion–related
physiological reactivity to real violence" (pg. 85). Those whom are desensitized show a greater
tendency to viewing violence as normal, but out in the real world show no inclination to acting
violent because of the desensitization. The American Academy of Pediatrics (2001) reports that
today's younger audiences are more desensitized to violence, not solely because of violent content of
media games, but because of a diet of violent television, movies and

MEDIA VIOLENCE Essay
There's no escaping it! We can't run or hide from it because no matter where we go it'll find us.
We're trapped! And the worst part of this scenario is that we're addicted to it. Violence is
everywhere and we all have an addiction for it. We're exposed to it in everyday and we love to watch
violence on television. There are many different representations of violence evident in movies and
Television. Media violence can best be described in the words of Gerbner and Signorelli: "Most
research studies have defined media violence as the depiction of overt physical action that hurts or
kills or threatens to do so... It depicts social relationships that force to control, dominate, provoke, or
annihilate. By demonstrating who can get away with...show more content...
It is evident that there is an effect that seeing violence, even if it is fake violence, that leads
people to express themselves differently whether it is excitement, resent, or to be afraid of the
scene (Berger 147). Here, I was inspired to create this part through a quote from Diane Brook's
article, Rape on Soaps: The Legal Angle. She stated that: "Perhaps it is not good to "scare" a
woman into submission by visualizing the horrors of sexual violence, but it suggests reason to open
discussion and face–to–face encounters with victims" (Fineman and McCluskey 117). Essentially
this quote is commenting that the viewer is forced to see in the perspective of the victim or female
regardless of their gender. Like TV programs I wanted the viewer to see this piece as through a
different perspective in order to recognize the violence inflicted on women.
The scenes in the bottom right corner are representations of rape. Rape is a common theme that
is easily depicted on shows such as CSI and Criminal Minds. I had to represent this aspect in my
drawing because not only am I against rape but the vast majority of scenes in television are often
representing women being victimized. According to Brooks, rape that appears in soap operas or
crime shows usually do not appear as an issue but rather it adds to melodramatise the situation
(Fineman and McCluskey 109). She continues to state that: "It provides a required base of "realism"
that is demanded by contemporary TV

Media Violence Essay

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