3. people build their own professional
networks earned an additional 25 million subscribers, to know
that leadership makes a huge
difference to an organization (Lipscombe-Southwell, n.d.).
LinkedIn has shown a massive
growth in its user base and popularity under the leadership of
its CEO, Jeff Weiner, in the recent
past, especially since 2013. It is obvious that great leaders
ignite and inspire to bring out the best
in their employees to not only boost their individual potential
but also boost the potential of the
company as a whole. Generally, when people try to gauge the
reason behind the success of
leaders, they speak of strategy, vision, or powerful ideas and
tend to ignore another powerful
element that is — emotional intelligence.
“Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage
not just your own
emotions but also those of the people around you. People with a
high degree of emotional
intelligence know exactly what they’re feeling, what it means
and how it can affect other people”
(Finkle, 2012, p. 2).
5. was to produce a faculty and research working paper on the
mediating influence of collaborative
behaviors and to explain the linkage between emotional
intelligence and leadership effectiveness.
According to them, even though previous researchers have
analyzed the relation between
leadership performance and emotional intelligence, no research
assessed how precisely
emotional intelligence translates into the two broad categories
of leadership effectiveness
(getting along and getting ahead behaviors).
In this study conducted by Guillen and Florent-Treacy, job
performance is cast as
effectiveness of leadership. Most people would agree that
leaders who are able to manage their
emotions usually tend to provide a controlled and regulated
work environment where employees
feel at ease. Emotional intelligence assists to build a suitable,
trusting atmosphere for work
relations, which positively influences job performance. Because
of this reason, emotional
intelligence was analyzed in this study as a vital influence on
leadership behavior and the
7. leadership behaviors” (Guillen & Florent-Treacy, 2011, p. 8).
Research on teamwork and
collaboration showed a strong and stable relation between the
effectiveness of interpersonal
practices and consequent job performance. Additionally,
previous studies documented the
positive influence of getting along behaviors on getting ahead
behaviors. Hence, the above
hypothesis was proposed.
Hypothesis 3: “Getting along behaviors at work mediate the
relationship between
emotional intelligence and getting ahead leadership behaviors”
(Guillen & Florent-Treacy, 2011,
p. 9). A wide range of observers per participant (such as
superiors, peers, and direct reports) were
used to examine the importance of exhibiting getting along
behaviors in translating emotional
intelligence into getting ahead leadership behaviors. As group
interactions form an integral part
of managerial responsibilities, professionals were rated based
on their capacity to establish bonds
with team members and display enthusiasm to help at work.
Emotional intelligence may
influence apparent getting ahead leadership behaviors through
9. and to help executives in leadership positions understand how
they were perceived by their
colleagues at work. This questionnaire was answered by 929
managers who were rated on 12
leadership behavior dimensions. The information was collected
through a 360-degree leadership
behavior instrument, the Global Executive Leadership Inventory
(GELI), which was used to
measure and operationalize the variables considered in the
study. Emotional intelligence was
evaluated by 12 items on a seven-point Likert scale (a
psychometric scale usually involved in
research that utilizes questionnaires), with entries similar to “I
give my full attention to someone
talking to me.” The reliability of the dimensions and the error
variance were calculated using an
appropriate formula (Guillen & Florent-Treacy, 2011).
Research Analysis
Stage 1 of the analysis assessed the methods used to evaluate
the getting ahead and
getting along behaviors at work. The results of the assessment
showed that the two kinds of
leadership behaviors, getting along and getting ahead behaviors,
are distinct. Stage 2 of the
11. limitations. First, emotional intelligence was evaluated through
a self-report measure. Further
research is needed to confirm the relationship between the
emotional intelligence dimensions
using other accepted emotional intelligence measures such as
Wong’s Emotional Intelligence
Scale (Wong’s Emotional Intelligence Scale, 2015). The second
limitation revolves around the
implications concerning the causal relationships between
emotional intelligence and getting
along behaviors. It was hypothesized that emotional intelligence
has a direct impact on
collaborative activities at work, however, the methodology
utilized excludes definitive
statements concerning causality. Also, the study shunned the
dimension bias characteristic in
single indicator models by utilizing latent variables to evaluate
the getting ahead and getting
along behaviors. Further, no information is provided to
determine if the approach followed while
conducting the leadership survey was free from unethical
practices or bias. Hence, the ethical
aspect of the research is questionable.
13. completely (Ovans, 2015).
Applicability of Research to Professional Practice in
Psychology
In recent times, psychology practices have a great need to be
evidence-based.
Researchers now a days are known to offer more advice about
strategies and new techniques in
the professional practices. As they observed the experiment
results first-hand, they are able to
offer evidence of what can happen if the suggested new
techniques are implemented (Smedslund
& Ross, 2014). Similarly, the research evaluated in this paper
and its findings would benefit
professional practitioners in numerous ways. Some of the
benefits are listed below:
• The findings from the research would remind psychology
professionals of certain
influences that they tend to neglect. For instance, many
organizational psychology
professionals ignore the influence of emotional intelligence in
leadership behaviors. The
above evaluated research literature identifies that emotional
intelligence not only instills
self-awareness in a leader but also helps him/her understand
15. key role for leaders during difficult situations or changes in
work environment.
Effective leadership requires insights about human behavior.
The evaluated research
literature recognizes emotional intelligence as an effective tool
for prospective use by
leaders in understanding their employees better.
Conclusion
The research conducted by Guillen and Florent-Treacy (2011),
showed that getting along
behaviors are the intermediates between getting ahead behaviors
and emotional intelligence. It
further advocated that behaviors at work are highly influenced
by emotional intelligence, and
these collaborative behaviors in turn translate into inspirational
leadership performance. Some
other researchers believe that emotional intelligence has a very
low influence on leadership and
that emotional intelligence is not the only way for a leader to be
successful. However, it
definitely cannot be neglected and working toward gaining a
strong level of emotional
intelligence is still a wiser option.
17. http://business-management-degree.net/30-innovative-business-
leaders-2013/
Matthews, C., & Gandel, S. (2015). The 5 biggest corporate
scandals of 2015. Retrieved from
http://fortune.com/2015/12/27/biggest-corporate-scandals-
2015/
Ovans, A. (2015). How emotional intelligence became a key
leadership skill. Retrieved from
https://hbr.org/2015/04/how-emotional-intelligence-became-a-
key-leadership-skill
Smedslund, J., & Ross, L. (2014). Research-based knowledge in
psychology: What, if
anything, is its incremental value to the practitioner?
Integrative Psychological &
Behavioral Science. 48(4), 365–383. doi: 10.1007/s12124-014-
9275-1
Ugoani, J., Amu, C.U., & Kalu, E.O. (2015) Dimensions of
emotional intelligence and
transformational leadership: a correlation analysis. Retrieved
from
https://researchgate.net/publication/277930912_Dimensions_of_
Emotional_Intelligence_
and_Transformational_Leadership_A_Correlation_Analysis
19. linking hits to the head and the Alzheimer’s-like condition
known as chronic trau-
matic encephalopathy prompted the league to institute rule
changes to limit violent
tackles. Harrison was repeatedly punished by the league office
and criticized by
sports media outlets for his violent tackles and recalcitrant
attitude. Guiding both
the discipline and media coverage of Harrison are narratives
rooted in a neoliberal
logic situating the existence of and responsibility for football
violence within the
individual decisions of football players. Intensifying these
narratives is the NFL and its
media partners’ invocation of discourses of Black criminality to
construct the most
damaging moments of football violence as unsanctioned acts
that operate “outside
the game.” This invocation serves to place the authority over
the judgment and
legitimation of football violence within the White corporate
morality of the league’s
offices and its media partners, allowing them to preserve the
sport’s central place in
producing and maintaining dominant American masculinities
through football vio-
lence while casting off the responsibility for the consequences
of that violence to the
footballing bodies that administer and receive it.
1 Department of Communication, Fairfield University, Fairfield,
CT, USA
Corresponding Author:
Adam Rugg, Department of Communication, Fairfield
20. University, Fairfield, CT 06824, USA.
Email: [email protected]
Communication & Sport
1-18
ª The Author(s) 2017
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Keywords
football, masculinity, race, violence, concussions
The National Football League (NFL) is in a period of serious
transition in the way it
sanctions physical contact within the sport of football. The
increased focus on the
sport due to massive television ratings, record profits, and
global television exposure
coincides with an increased focus on the medical dangers of
playing the game. Over
the past decade, the medical community has been building an
increasingly strong
21. link between concussions sustained playing football and the
eventual onset of
chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition similar to
that of Alzheimer’s.
The mounting evidence from the medical community has led to
increased awareness
and discussion of the issue in sports media and popular media
alike and has pre-
cipitated a moment of uncertainty and instability in the
dominant discourses that
shape the game.
In the present moment, the dangers and consequences of CTE
are widely known
among athletes, sports fans, and the general public. The
postmortem findings of CTE
in the brains of high-profile former players such as Hall of
Famer Junior Seau have
brought the condition to the most elite players in the game.
Continuing studies have
only confirmed the pervasiveness of CTE. A 2017 study finding
all but one of 111
brains of former NFL players having the condition received
significant media atten-
tion and even prompted John Urschel, a 26-year-old lineman for
22. the Baltimore
Ravens, to retire from the league (Mez et al., 2017). Urschel’s
retirement joined
those of a growing number of players such as A. J. Tarpley,
Eugene Monroe, and
Chris Borland who have retired early due to fears of long-term
brain damage (Bel-
son, 2017).
While the number of current players wary of the dangers of the
game may be
concerning for the league, it is the potential desertion of the
game at the youth levels
that stands to most significantly hurt the league’s pipeline of
both future laborers and
fans. Stories about the debate over how and when children
should play football (if
they should at all) receive coverage in mainstream news outlets
such as CNN, the
New York Times, and CBS News, while the release of surveys
about youth partici-
pation in football and other contacts sports is scrutinized in
search of larger trends
(Jones, 2015; Marcus, 2017; Omalu, 2015; USA Today, 2016).
Even those who have
23. found success in professional sports have begun to vocalize
their concerns over
children playing football. Kurt Warner, a retired Hall of Fame
quarterback, drew
significant media attention in 2012 when he stated that he did
not want his sons
playing football because it “scares” him (Smith, 2012a).
National Basketball Asso-
ciation (NBA) star LeBron James went further to declare that
his sons were prohib-
ited from playing football due to the risk of brain injury
(Broussard, 2014).
The NFL, aware of the potential consequences of CTE for the
sport, sought to
undermine, stifle, and discredit early research into CTE. High-
profile exposes on the
NFL’s attempts to downplay or marginalize research into the
condition have been
2 Communication & Sport XX(X)
produced in the New York Times and Public Broadcasting
Service’s League of
Denial documentary and dramatized in the major Hollywood
24. film Concussion. In
recent years, as public awareness of CTE has increased, the
NFL has begun enga-
ging in explicit marketing and corporate social responsibility
campaigns in
attempts to keep children invested in playing and consuming the
game and
ameliorate the fears of mothers who may pull their children
away from the game
(Dohrmann, 2016; Johnson, 2016; Montez de Oca, Meyer, &
Scholes, 2016; Wilk-
ing, Golin, & Feick, 2015).
As Morrison and Casper (2016) argue, the NFL’s response to
CTE is a reflection
of the “sports-masculinity complex,” which is “deeply
embedded in the politics of
race, gender, and capital” (p. 159). Other scholars have also
interrogated the links
between responses to CTE and larger structures of gender and
race (E. Anderson &
Kian, 2012; Benson, 2017; Furness, 2016; Johnson, 2016;
Oates, 2017; Oriard,
2014; Rugg, 2016). This article seeks to broaden these critical
inquiries into the
25. role of race and gender in the NFL’s response to the emergence
of CTE by focusing
on an important, yet understudied, moment in the time line.
Between 2009 and 2011,
as the NFL first begin grappling with how to make the game
ostensibly safer for its
players, it instituted a bevy of new rules between 2009 and 2011
that reshaped the
rules governing tackling in order to reduce hits to the heads. In
outlawing specific
types of hits and modulating the types of hits allowed
depending on the offensive
player’s specific circumstance, the NFL sought to present the
dangers of football as
not inherent to the game, but as the result of deviant acts that
can be legislated away.
However, these new rules proved controversial among fans,
sports media, and the
player themselves who argued that the rules deprived the game
of its essential
qualities or attempted to control the game at a granular level
that the speed of the
game does not allow. The use of these new rules to penalize
players, then, became
26. material manifestations in the game of a larger debate over
violence and danger in
football and just who is responsible for it.
This article utilizes an intersectional approach to assess the
application of these
rules and their surrounding coverage in sports media to better
understand and cri-
tique the ways in which the NFL and media partners sought to
preserve the economic
momentum and masculine formation of the league by off-
loading the dangers of
football to the unsanctioned actions of “deviant players.”
While the rhetoric employed by the league and its media
partners was directed at all
players who violated (or could violate) the new rules, no player
received as much
attention as Pittsburgh Steeler linebacker James Harrison. The
article argues that
guiding both the disciplining of Harrison and its depiction
within the media are
narratives rooted in a neoliberal logic that firmly situates the
existence of and respon-
sibility for football violence within the individual decisions of
27. football players. Con-
comitant with these narratives was the NFL and its media
partners’ reinterpretation of
Harrison’s aggression, stubbornness, and confrontational
personality—previously
celebrated as embodiments of the violent masculine ideal—
through historical racial
discourses of Black criminality and mental instability and
immaturity. These
Rugg 3
discourses helped reconstruct Harrison from an exemplar of
footballing masculinity to
an “out of control” and maliciously violent deviant, bringing to
the debate over
football violence a familiar construct of deviant Black athletes
needing to be con-
trolled by the White corporate morality of the league’s offices
and its media partners.
In doing so, the NFL and its media partners attempted to
preserve the sport’s central
place in producing and maintaining dominant American
masculinities through football
28. violence while casting off the responsibility for the
consequences of that violence to
the predominately Black footballing bodies that administer and
receive it.
To better understand this moment, I utilize Birrell and
McDonald’s (2000)
“Reading Sport” framework for interpreting the circulation of
media narratives
around specific sport celebrities in order to understand how
different “power lines”
intersected in the construction of James Harrison to reformulate
a new relationship
between the NFL, violence, masculinity, and race. The analysis
centers on the
treatment of Harrison by the NFL along with the accompanying
media coverage
from October 2010 through July 2011. The media coverage
analyzed is the con-
stellation of media outlets most invested in promoting the sport:
prominent national
sports media outlets such as ProfootballTalk.com, Sports
Illustrated, and the sports
section of USA Today; the sports sections of daily newspapers
in NFL markets; and
29. the national and regional outlets of NFL television rights
holders (Fox, ESPN, CBS,
and NBC). In combining the specific actions taken by the NFL
against Harrison with
the coverage of Harrison in sports media into a singular
representation, I am recog-
nizing the mutual economic interests of both the NFL and the
media apparatus that
cover it to promote the league and protect its long-term viability
(McChesney, 1989;
Jhally, 1984)
The Celebration and Punishment of Black Sporting Bodies
The black male athlete occupies an unstable place within the
larger cultural forma-
tion of sport. Oscillating between a figure of celebration and
consternation, the black
male athlete reflects the larger structures of racism that other
Black bodies while
simultaneously exoticizing them in ways that produce perverse
pleasures for White
audiences. As King and Springwood (2001) describe the
meaning of the Black body
in sport,
30. Ultimately a social artifact, it naturalizes distinction, physically
inscribing racial dif-
ference and materially legitimating social asymmetries. The
body of the African-
American athlete, as a site and source of (exceptional) ability,
(criminal) deviance,
and (spectatorial, if not sexual) pleasure, simultaneously
facilitates imagination and
exploitation. And as it entertains, inspires, troubles, and revolts,
it legitimates, if not
encourages, discipline, regulation, and control. (p. 104)
As others have ably shown, the institutions of sport, the sports
media, and White
audiences resolve the paradoxical relationship of a fear of Black
athletes and the
4 Communication & Sport XX(X)
http://ProfootballTalk.com
attraction to them through the controlling of Black bodies and
the sanctioning of
Black athletic behavior by White moral authorities such as
coaches, team owners
and league offices, and the sports media, structures that remain
predominately White
31. (King & Springwood, 2001; Lapchick, 2015a, 2015b; Oates,
2007, 2009).
Andrews (1996) has shown, for example, that the NFL has used
changes to its
rules to exert control over the expressive behavior and
celebratory performances of
players to restrain and restrict Black cultural expression.
Through this rulemaking,
Andrews argues, the league “wield[s] not only economic power,
but also the power
over what is construed as normal and abnormal behavior in
professional football”
(p. 48)
This power to construe what is normal and abnormal has
increasingly moved
away from ostensibly governing behavior within the field of
play to dictating accep-
table and unacceptable behavior and performance in the spaces
around and adjacent
to the game, such as in the NBA’s change to its dress code
requiring players to dress
in “business casual” attire (Cunningham, 2009). In the current
moment, the anger of
32. disgruntled fans (as well as the president) at the inability of the
league or its owners
to formally “punish” players who protest racial inequality
during the national
anthem reflects the contemporary role of rulemaking within
sport. Their frustration
reveals the expectation that rules put forth by the leagues
should operate not merely
as technical guidance for determining winners and losers of the
game but as mechan-
isms that reflect the larger cultural and racial politics of the
leagues and their owners.
As Cunningham argues, the legislating and subsequent
punishment of “deviant”
Black athletes emerged from a sporting environment which saw
“a fusion of the
black athlete with the black criminal” (p. 40). Indeed, the
criminalized Black athlete
figure, whether criminalized in their off-the-field actions or on-
the-field actions,
carries weight not only in sports media, where Black athletes
are overrepresented
as criminals compared to White athletes and covered in more
explicit and negative
33. ways (Lapchick, 2000; Leonard, 2010; Mastro, Blecha, &
Atwell, 2011; Primm,
DuBois, & Regoli, 2007), but also in the minds and perceptions
of sports fans (L. C.
Anderson & Rainey, 2017).
While the overrepresentation of the criminalized Black athlete
figure offers the
most explicit rationale for controlling and “taming” Black
athletes, it works in
conjunction with another common racist stereotype: that of the
infantile simpleton.
As Collins (2006) argues, this representation works to showcase
“safely tamed
Negroes who pose little threat to white society” and who are
“castrated, emascu-
lated, and feminized versions of black masculinity” (p. 75).
This infantilization,
then, rooted in the practices of slavery, works not just to
promote White masculinity
over Black but to justify the need for White control by
presenting Black men as
mentally and emotionally incapable of fulfilling the duties of a
“real man” without
guidance and direction (Hall, 1997).
34. While these two negative representations seem contradictory,
they each point
toward the same conclusion: that Black athletes need to be
controlled, guided,
punished, and harnessed. Whether that is due to malicious
deviance or inherent
Rugg 5
incapableness matters less than the resulting ways in which
those representations are
seized upon to reinforce dominant racial hierarchies.
Complicating the performance and reception of Black sporting
bodies in football
is the prioritization of the game as a space for what Morrison
and Casper (2016) label
the “routine spectacle of gendered cultural politics” (p. 157).
Football has, since its
inception, been intimately intertwined with a culturally centered
masculinity based
on aggression, strength, and dominance. As Messner (1990)
argues, the incorpora-
tion and promotion of these qualities within the structures of
play naturalized the
35. equation of violence with male identity, constructing sport as a
continuously replen-
ishing source of rationalization and legitimation for patriarchy
(p. 205). Similarly,
these violent sporting masculinities found cultural synergies
with militarism and
nationalism, transforming football into a politically valuable
crucible for the pro-
duction and maintenance of the militarized citizen (Butterworth,
2012; Butterworth
& Moskal, 2009; Montez de Oca, 2013; Rugg, 2016).
Crucially, these idealized forms of masculinity necessitate not
just the enactment
of violence on others but also the acceptance of violence on
oneself. As Sabo and
Panepinto (1990) argue, the structures of football condition
players to become
“ritualistically accomplices in one another’s physical
brutalization” (p. 123). This
focus on the willful acceptance of violence has resulted in a
sporting culture in which
pain and vulnerabilities are masked and hidden in an
expectation that they are to be
36. stoically withstood or, if unavoidably visible, solemnly
appreciated as necessary
sacrifices to maintain the masculine ideal (E. Anderson & Kian,
2012; Howe,
2004; Messner, 1990; Sparkes & Smith, 2002; Trujillo, 1995).
Ultimately, then, successful participation in football encourages
the adoption of a
masculine performance rooted in the display of excessive
violence, bravado, and
domination. Yet it is these same displays that become
articulated as evidence of
Black deviance and provide the rationale for regimes and
structures of discipline and
control of Black bodies that permeate sport and society at large.
Thus, the inter-
pretation and representation of Black violent masculinity within
sports and sports
media is always perilously contingent on its perceived
usefulness in maintaining the
mutually constitutive dominant structures of race and gender.
In the case of James Harrison, his displays of masculinity were
historically seen
as largely positive. His success as an individual player and the
success of his team
37. were often presented as validations of the masculine qualities he
possessed. This can
be clearly seen in the major media profiles of Harrison between
2008 and 2010. This
was a time period in which Harrison was named defensive
player of the year and
won a Super Bowl in which he orchestrated one of the greatest
plays in Super Bowl
history, a 100-yard interception return for a touchdown. In the
week leading up to
that Super Bowl in 2009, in an extensive ESPN profile (Merrill,
2009) titled
“Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison’s glare is only
half the story,”
Elizabeth Merrill depicts Harrison as a fierce competitor on the
field and a kind,
caring individual off of it. Calling Harrison, a “thinker buried in
240 pounds of
chiseled steel,” the reporter recounts numerous positive
anecdotes about Harrison,
6 Communication & Sport XX(X)
from his charitable work with hospitalized children, to his
38. dogged determination to
do well in school and obey his mother, to his stubbornness to
succeed by doing
things his own way. Throughout the article, Harrison is
presented as a man of
principle and relentless determination, who continually
overcame being told he was
not good enough and lived to prove people wrong.
This positive portrayal of Harrison is mirrored in a 2011 video
profile of Harrison
for the NFL network program “NFL100” (Top 100, n.d.). The
program, created by
the NFL as a promotion for its network, profiled every selection
of the NFL’s “Top
100 players” list. An opposing player introduced each player
profiled by the pro-
gram. James Harrison was Number 21 on the list. For Harrison’s
video segment,
New York Jets offensive lineman Damian Woody provided the
introduction, saying:
He’s mean, man. He doesn’t care about who talks about him, or
anything like that. He
only knows one way of playing football. And even though I
don’t like defensive guys I
39. can appreciate the way he plays the game . . . You know,
another one of those undrafted
guys. They’ve got a great story. The one thing he said early in
his career was he wasn’t
coachable. And that can get you cut a lot of times. He got cut 3
or 4 times from
Baltimore, landed on his feet in Pittsburgh. And once he got
inserted into the lineup
that was it. That was all she wrote.
While the Harrison NFL100 segment aired in 2011, it is still
worth considering it
within the scope of Harrison’s positive representations of pre-
October 2010. As a
large-scale promotion by the NFL network to celebrate its
players, the NFL100
avoided any mentions of controversy and produced only
uniformly positive por-
trayals of the players. Thus, in Harrison’s case, it neglected any
mention of Harri-
son’s recent history with the league and relies primarily on the
pre-2010 narrative
of Harrison.
In these portrayals, Harrison is celebrated for his
40. unconventional route to success
and the aggression with which he plays the game. The fact that
Harrison became a
star despite being undrafted is seen as a testament to his will,
determination, and
strength. His continual recalcitrant attitude toward coaching and
his isolation from
others is regarded with admiration for a man who “goes his own
way.” His playing
style, heavily built upon intimidation and aggression, reflected
the qualities of
violent masculinity that football, and contact sports in general,
had long favored.
Rearticulating James Harrison
As E. Anderson and Kian (2012) argue, however, the emergence
of CTE and the
increased awareness of the dangers of football violence brought
about a cultural shift
in the performance of masculinity within football spaces. While
the “masculine
warrior narrative” would still be present and visible, it would
increasingly be modu-
lated and softened by an emerging concern over health.
Harrison, whose perfor-
41. mance of violent masculinity was uncompromising, would
quickly move from being
Rugg 7
the embodiment of a celebrated masculine model to a
representation of the ills of the
game. The accompanying rearticulation of Harrison, then,
utilized the preexisting
frames of Black deviance to individualize the dangers within the
Black criminal/
infantile body in an attempt to protect the economic futures of
the league and its
media partners.
The NFL first began issuing rule changes in response to the
emerging medical
concerns regarding concussions and violent hits to the head in
2009. Initially, the
rules were often unenforced except in egregious circumstances
and the game played
in much the same way it always had. Things changed in Week 6
of the 2010 NFL
season, however, when there were four separate instances of
extremely violent
42. helmet-to-helmet hits on defenseless receivers. James Harrison
was involved in two
of them. Press coverage was immediate and heavily focused on
the hits and their
repercussions. Describing the potential fallout of the events,
Sports Illustrated writer
Peter King (2010), one of the most prominent NFL reporters in
the country, declared
that Week 6 was a “seminal” moment that “may have changed
how defense gets
played in the NFL.” Trotter (2010), another NFL writer for
Sports Illustrated, wrote
an article declaring the events of the week as “carnage” and
calling on the NFL to
further protect defenseless players.
The NFL responded quickly, fining the three players a total of
US$175,000 and
threatening suspensions for future illegal hits on players.
Harrison was the most
heavily fined at US$75,000 because he was a “repeat offender”
(Florio, 2010a). The
next week, the NFL sent a video to all teams detailing what is
and is not a legal hit. In
43. the video, Ray Anderson, the NFL’s executive vice-president of
football operations,
frames the issue as one of individual noncompliance by directly
addressing the
players and stating, “you are on notice” (NFL’s Video, n.d.). In
the 11 weeks
following Week 6 of the 2010 season, the NFL fined 27 players
a total of
US$533,000. Combined with the US$175,000 in fines from the
week before, the
final 12 weeks of the 2010 season saw US$708,000 in fines for
illegal hits on
defenseless players or almost 4 times as much as the entirety of
the 2009 season
and the first 5 weeks of the 2010 season combined.
Many players, coaches, fans, and commentators responded
negatively to the
NFL’s aggressive policing of the game. Defensive players, in
particular, many of
whom who grew up learning an aggressive and violent style of
play, vocally cri-
tiqued the league on two fronts: that the rules were confusing
and impossible to
correctly follow within the speed of the game and that the new
44. rules were an attempt
to eliminate the historically favored qualities of power,
aggression, and toughness
from the sport (Chase, 2010; Serby, 2010; Silver, 2011).
Unfortunately, the articulations of many who criticized the new
rules often were
packaged within the same gendered frameworks that naturalize
male violence and
reinforce problematic depictions of violent masculinity. In an
ESPN Radio inter-
view in 2010, Kevin Mawae, at that time the president of the
NFL Players Asso-
ciation, criticized the league’s renewed efforts to penalize
helmet-to-helmet by
stating that the rules were too ambiguous and unfairly punished
well-intentioned
8 Communication & Sport XX(X)
players. He finished his critique by saying, “I think it’s
ridiculous and I think the
skirts need to be taken off in the NFL offices” (Rosenthal,
2010). Former NFL
player and current NFL Network Commentator Warren Sapp
45. said, “It’s gotten
sissyfied, it really has” (N. Davis, 2011). Current players who
felt they were being
unfairly targeted by the new rules also utilized this language.
Redskins player
LaVar Arrington told ESPN’s Outside the Lines in an interview
on adopting
greater safety measures, “to me, it’s sissification, and I think
that’s the only way
to put it” (Smith, 2011, 2012b). Even Ed Reed, a respected
veteran, spoke out
against what he perceived as unfair treatment by the league by
declaring, “They
want it like powder puff to where you can just run around and
score points ‘cause
that’s going to attract the fans” (Rosenberg, 2012).
Harrison was at the forefront of these criticisms, even
threatening at one point to
retire. Although his retirement threat barely lasted longer than a
day, the football
media was quick to criticize him. In an article titled “Memo to
Harrison: Go ahead
and quit the NFL,” Orange County Register’s Earl Bloom
(2010) invokes many of
46. the framing tactics found in later coverage of Harrison. He
declares Harrison to be
a “reckless, dangerous man” who “doesn’t care about the lives
and livelihoods of
his competitors.” Further, in a caption to a photo of Harrison,
the article accuses
Harrison of “headhunting” and posits that he does not
“understand” the conse-
quences of his actions.
Despite some criticism of Harrison’s recalcitrant attitude toward
the fines and
emphasis on safety in the aftermath of “Black and Blue
Sunday,” much of the sports
media seriously engaged with Harrison’s early criticism of the
NFL. Many articles
focused primarily on the dry mechanics of Harrison’s fines or
engaged with larger
discussions about safety and violence in the NFL, of which
Harrison’s viewpoint
was widely shared. This can be seen in the numerous articles in
which Harrison’s
teammates and coaches defended him. Even the owner of the
Steelers, Art Rooney,
47. questioned the fines and penalties levied on Harrison and
spurred debate over how
football should be played. However, as Harrison continued to
rack up penalties and
fines through November and December 2010, the narrative
began to shift, with
Harrison increasingly depicted as an angry problem child for the
NFL to deal with.
This emerging negative narrative of Harrison was cemented and
intensified on
July 13, 2011, when Men’s Journal released excerpts from a
provocative interview
with Harrison entitled “Confessions of a NFL Hitman.” The
interview, which was
conducted over several days, was full of many inflammatory
quotes from Harrison,
including negative statements about two of his teammates,
accusations of racism by
the NFL, and many profane statements about NFL commissioner
Roger Goodel
(Solotaroff, 2011). Accompanying the article was a picture of
Harrison—a vocal
gun advocate and collector—posed shirtless against a Black
background holding two
48. of his guns across his chest (Figure 1).
As mentioned in the positive 2009 profile of Harrison, he was
once accused of
hitting the mother of his son, though the charges were
eventually dropped. Negative
media descriptions of Harrison, however, were quick to invoke
criminal metaphors
Rugg 9
in describing the actions and mentality of Harrison. During the
infamous “Black and
Blue” Sunday from October 2010, Pro Football Talk (2010), one
of the heaviest
trafficked football sites on the web, ran a story with the
headline, “James Harrison
claims another victim.” Numerous times he is identified as a
“repeat offender” when
referring to his penalized hits on players (Florio, 2010a, 2010b,
2010c)
While criminal metaphors such as these are frequently used in
sports when
referring to rules and on-field actions, media reactions to
Harrison’s interview in
49. Men’s Journal began to use criminal metaphor in describing
Harrison’s off-field
actions and his general person. In particular, the picture of
Harrison and his guns
enabled discussions that connected Harrison to gun violence.
For instance, the
picture prompted Boston Herald writer Ron Borges (2011) to
exclaim, “Judging
by the Harrison photo and recent police reports from around the
country, NFL
owners best end the lockout soon before their players all end up
in lock-down.”
Going further, ESPN writer L. Z. Granderson (2011) ended a
lamenting editorial on
Harrison with the graph,
I guess I’m at the point where my desire for someone to be
something he’s not has
given way to accepting who he really is. Fines and suspensions
can punish, jail can
deter but eventually a person’s going to be who he is going to
be. I hope for change but
accept people may not. If Harrison was reported arrested
tomorrow, I doubt anyone
would be shocked. He’s projected that kind of image
50. In continuingly describing Harrison’s on-field behavior as
criminal and drawing
criminal interpretations from his interview photo, a slippage
occurred that
allowed many in the media to re-interpret Harrison’s on-field
actions as
“reckless” and “dangerous,” and as troubling manifestations of
an intentionally
Figure 1. Confessions of an NFL Hitman.
10 Communication & Sport XX(X)
criminal mind-set, not as the necessary machinations of a
hegemonic masculi-
nity previously celebrated by the league and its fans. The Men’s
Journal inter-
view enabled Harrison to become marked as a criminal visually
(through the
accompanying photo) and mentally (through the vitriol of his
responses). In
many ways, the Men’s Journal article became the ex post facto
explanation
of Harrison’s entire career.
51. In addition to positioning Harrison as having a criminal mind-
set, the media
repeatedly positioned Harrison as a child through the use of
metaphor. In November
2010, after being penalized for a hit on Saints’ quarterback
Drew Brees, Harrison
met with Roger Goodell to discuss the NFL’s agenda against
illegal hits. In a short
and mundane news item on the meeting, Florio (2010d) attached
the headline,
“James Harrison gets called to the Principal’s Office.” After the
Men’s Journal
interview, the child comparisons came back in even greater
numbers. The princi-
pal/student metaphor reappeared in a July 13, 2011, article by
Fox Sports Ohio
reporter Zac Jackson (2011) who stated that Harrison was “no
stranger to a trip to
the principal’s office.” Also, Harrison’s obsession with
cartoons, positively seen as
an escape from the stress of the world in his 2009 ESPN profile,
became the basis for
a Washington Times article that compared Harrison to Elmer
Fudd and argued that
52. he lives in a “cartoon world” (Daly, 2011).
The most egregious example of the infantilization of Harrison
can be found in an
article in the Orlando Sentinel by Owens (2011). The article,
“James Harrison needs
to be responsible with the truth,” begins with an anecdote about
how one of the first
lessons parents teach a child is to tell the truth, before leading
into the statement,
“Ladies and gentlemen, meet the man-child otherwise known as
James Harrison.”
The article maintains the child motif for the length of the story,
culminating in the
author comparing the “filter” of Harrison to that of a 3-year old.
In addition to the use of child metaphors in describing
Harrison’s actions and
comments, Harrison’s mental stability and level of intellect are
repeatedly ques-
tioned. He is depicted as “without a clue” (Bloom, 2010),
“stupidly” (Borges, 2011),
“looking like an idiot” (Fox, 2011), and a man who “could not
get from thought A to
thought B without demeaning this person or ridiculing that one”
(Lopresti, 2011).
53. Florio (2010e) at Pro Football Talk repeatedly questioned
Harrison’s understanding
of the game, sarcastically detailing the rules and concluding
with “it’s as simple as
that,” and suggesting that a Steelers coach needs to teach the 8-
year veteran “the
rules of the game.” The demeaning, or ignoring, of Black
intelligence has long been
a technique of racism. In sports, in particular, many scholars
have shown how
representations of Black and White athletes often invoke
descriptive binaries that
situate the Black athlete as athletic and the White athlete as
intelligent. While many
of these studies refer to in-game descriptions of athletes, they
are still cultural
descriptors that place players within larger cultural frameworks
based on race and
would thus work to guide and inform off-field representations
of athletes (L. R.
Davis & Harris, 2002; Rada & Wulfemeyer, 2005; Van
Sterkenburg, Knoppers, &
De Leeuw, 2010).
54. Rugg 11
Harrison’s mental maturity was also challenged in the form of
his sanity. Jackson
(2011) called Harrison “a little bit nuts” and suggested that he
might be “genuinely
crazy.” Brinson (2011) of CBS Sports declared that Harrison
had taken a “spin over
into crazytown.” The Rap Sheet (2011), a sports blog for the
Boston Herald, easily
provided the most explicit use of the descriptor, headlining an
article about Harri-
son’s interview with the title, “Steelers LB James Harrison,
possibly crazy, says a
bunch of crazy about everyone.”
Frequently in the coverage of Harrison, columnists made
allusions to how
Harrison’s interview did contain legitimate criticisms. However,
those criticisms
could never be addressed because of the incivility in which
Harrison presented
them. Lopresti (2011) of USA Today accused Harrison of using
“flamethrower
55. rhetoric” that could only be defended by “those whose bar for
civility is no higher
than an anthill.” Kerry Byrne (2011) of Sports Illustrated said
Harrison “took a
machete to sports etiquette.” Freeman (2011) of CBS Sports
stated, in an article
generally approving of Harrison’s critiques, that Harrisons’ lack
of filter prevented
him “from being taken seriously.” NBC Sports’ Mike Florio
(2011) echoed similar
feelings, stating “If Harrison could confine his comments to
those points and avoid
reckless accusations and name calling, Harrison’s views would
be taken far more
seriously.”
The discursive constructions of Harrison as negatively
exceptional were fur-
ther reinforced by coverage that continually emphasized
Harrison’s disconnect
with his teammates and other NFL players. Indeed, much of the
reaction to the
Harrison interview centered on Harrison’s attacks on his fellow
players and
gauging negative responses to the interview by current and
56. former players on
other teams. Harrison was repeatedly criticized for not being in
a “team frame of
mind” during the interview, with Burton (2011) even
questioning whether his
teammates would “take it out on him.” The NFL Network (2011)
aired a group
discussion segment entitled “Has Harrison lost his teammates
with his words?”
Other reporters wondered whether Harrison would even be
invited to teammate
Ben Roethlisberger’s wedding (he was). Reactions to Harrison’s
comments by
current and former players were collected by many reporters,
with much news
being made of former Steelers player Jerome Bettis’ comments
that he was
“disappointed” in Harrison (Smith, 2011). Brooks (2011) of The
Washington
Post’s “The Early Lead” blog even ran an article titled “James
Harrison’s
incendiary comments drawing ire of fellow NFL players” that
contained screen-
shots of critical tweets of Harrison from only two players in
57. addition to a
fictional dialogue the author envisioned between Harrison and
Roethlisberger.
However, despite the preponderance of articles on Harrison’s
falling out with
teammates and players around the league, there was very little
evidence of
actual fallout between Harrison and the player fraternity. In
fact, Harrison’s
teammates continually defended him in the aftermath of the
interview, and some
articles even emphasized that many players around the league
quietly shared
Harrison’s feelings about Roger Goodell (Fox, 2011).
12 Communication & Sport XX(X)
Conclusion
Ultimately, the handling of James Harrison by the league and
the subsequent media
coverage by the sports media represent an early indicator of the
ways in which the
NFL and its media partners would attempt to keep an unstable
compromise—to
58. preserve the league as a favored producer of violent masculine
identities while
simultaneously absolving itself of the consequences of those
identities. With James
Harrison, the league and its media partners were able to do this
by pinning the
negative consequences of violent football masculinities on a
reimagined represen-
tation of Harrison based on preexisting frames of Black
criminality and mental
instability and immaturity.
Thus, the disciplining of Harrison represented a hegemonic
negotiation aimed to
preserve football as a realm of (White) masculine dominance.
As Enck-Wanzer
(2009) argues, certain aspects of violent masculinity, such as
domestic abuse, violent
crime, and debilitating injuries, are rhetorically expunged from
the whole of mas-
culinity by casting them off as machinations of deviant,
criminalized, racialized
bodies. This is now occurring in the NFL, with the increasing
amount of medical
59. evidence suggesting that football is an inherently debilitating
enterprise to those who
play it. Moving forward, it is most likely that the most violent
and damaging hits of
football will increasingly be depicted as abnormal occurrences
of deviant players
rather than the consequences of a sport that has historically
cultivated an expression
of masculinity based on the use of violence as a tool of
domination and an expression
of power.
Importantly, Harrison’s actions, style of play, and demeanor
remained consistent
through the shift in coverage from a masculine ideal to an out-
of-control deviant.
Rather, it was his recalcitrance regarding the rules and his
subsequent refusal to
acquiesce to punishment from the league and admonishment
from sports media that
affected the shift. In doing so, the qualities he possessed which
previously drew him
much acclaim—his aggression, stubbornness, and
confrontational approach—
became threatening and unacceptable marks of deviance.
60. Regardless of the ques-
tionable efficacy of the new rules, the upheaval they required in
individual defensive
players’ approach to playing the game, or the culpability of the
league’s investment
in constructing and promoting the masculine identity which
Harrison embodied, the
new rules reflected a “new normal” that players were expected
to follow. More
importantly, they stood as a reassertion of the league’s
perceived right to legislate,
control, and dictate the behaviors of its players.
The rearticulation of Harrison, then, reveals the fragility of
positive Black athlete
portrayals in media. With such a broad gamut of negative
representations available,
from those based in weakness, laziness, and unintelligence to
those based in aggres-
sion, passion, and individuality, the depiction of Black athletes
is conditional more
than it is illustrative. The shifting relationship between the NFL
and violence amid
the emergence of CTE produced new masculine formations
within the sport that
61. Harrison did not align with. Without the accompanying support
of broader gender
Rugg 13
hierarchies within the sport, Harrison’s actions quickly
reemerged as a front in the
larger struggle over White control over Black sporting bodies.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
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By CRAIG A. ANDERSON, MA, PhD
I
Of course, like most young men and
women of that era, I had grown up wit-
nessing thousands of killings and other
acts of aggression in a wide array of
television shows and films. Today’s
youth are even more inundated with
media violence than past generations,
mostly from entertainment sources but
also from news and educational media.
And even though the public remains
largely unaware of the conclusiveness
of more than six decades of research on
the effects of exposure to screen media
violence, the scientists most directly
involved in this research know quite a
bit about these effects.
The briefest summary of hundreds
of scientific studies can be boiled down
to two main points. First, exposure to
media violence is a causal risk factor for
physical aggression, both immediately
after the exposure and months, even
years, later. Second, in the absence of
other known risk factors for violence,
86. high exposure to media violence will
not turn a normal well-adjusted child
or adolescent into a mass killer.
SOME DEFINITIONS
One reason for much of the confusion
and debate among even highly edu-
cated citizens, health care profession-
als and even a few scientists is that
when media violence researchers use
certain terms and concepts, they have
somewhat different meanings than
when the general public uses the same
words.
By “aggression,” researchers mean
“behavior that is intended to harm
another person who does not
wish to be harmed.” Thus,
hitting, kicking, pinching,
stabbing and shooting are
types of physical aggression.
Playing soccer or basket-
ball or even football with
energy and confidence are not usu-
ally considered acts of aggression,
even though that is what most coaches
mean when they exhort their charges
to “play aggressively.” Somehow, the
phrase “play assertively” doesn’t have
the same ring to it.
By “violent behavior,” most mod-
87. ern aggression and violence scholars
mean “aggressive behavior (as defined
above) that has a reasonable chance
of causing harm serious enough to
require medical attention.” Note that
the behavior does not have to actually
cause the harm to be classified as vio-
lent; shooting at a person but missing
still qualifies as a violent behavior.
By “media violence” we mean
scenes and story lines in which at least
one character behaves aggressively
towards at least one other character,
using the above definition of “aggres-
sion,” not the definition of “violence.”
Thus, television shows, movies, and
video games in which characters fight
(Power Rangers, for example), or say
mean things about each other (often
HEALTH PROGRESS www.chausa.org JULY -
AUGUST 2016 59
killed my first Klingon in 1979. It took place in the computer
center at Stanford
University, where I was playing a new video game based on the
Star Trek televi-
sion series. I was an “early adopter” of the new technology of
video games, and
continued to be so for many years, first as a fan of this
entertainment medium, and
later as a researcher interested in the question of what
environmental factors influ-
ence aggressive and violent behavior.
88. Media Violence Effects on Children,
Adolescents and Young Adults
Today’s youth are
even more inundated
with media violence
than past generations,
mostly from
entertainment sources
but also from news and
educational media.
S U F F E R I N G V I O L E N C E
JULY - AUGUST 2016 www.chausa.org
HEALTH PROGRESS 60
called relational aggression), or kill bad guys, all
are instances of media violence, even if there is
no blood, no gore, no screaming in pain. By this
definition, most modern video games rated by the
video game industry as appropriate for children
— up to 90 percent, by some estimates — are vio-
lent video games.
AGGRESSION AND VIOLENCE
Short-term and long-term effects of violent media
use on aggressive behavior have been demon-
strated by numerous studies across age, cul-
ture, gender, even personality types. Overall, the
research literature suggests that media violence
effects are not large, but they accumulate over
time to produce significant changes in behavior
89. that can significantly influence both individuals
and society.
For example, one of the longest duration stud-
ies of the same individuals found that children
exposed to lots of violent television shows at age
8 later became more violent adults at age 30, even
after statistically controlling for how aggressive
they were at age 8.
Similar long-term effects (up to three years,
so far) on aggressive and violent behavior have
been found for frequent exposure to violent video
games. One six-month longitudinal study found
that frequent violent video game play at the begin-
ning of a school year was associated with a 25 per-
cent increase in the likelihood of being in a physi-
cal fight during that year, even after controlling
for whether or not the child had been in a fight
the previous year.
Short-term experimental studies, in which
children are randomly assigned to either a vio-
lent or nonviolent media expo-
sure condition for a brief period,
conclusively demonstrate that the
media violence effects are causal.
In one such study, for example, chil-
dren who played a child-oriented
violent video game (i.e., no blood,
gore, screaming …) later attempted
to deliver 47 percent more high-
intensity punishments to another
child than did children who had been randomly
assigned to play a nonviolent video game. Even
cartoonish media violence increases aggression.
90. In recent years, there have been several inter-
vention studies designed to test whether reducing
exposure to screen violence over several months
or longer can reduce inappropriate aggressive
behavior. These randomized control experiments
have found that, yes, children and adolescents
randomly assigned to the media intervention con-
ditions show a decrease in aggression relative to
those in the control conditions.
HOW MEDIA VIOLENCE INCREASES AGGRESSION
How does exposure to media violence lead to
increased aggressive behavior? Media violence
scholars have identified several basic psychologi-
cal processes involved. They differ somewhat for
short-term versus long-term effects, but they all
involve various types of learning.
Short-term effects are those that occur imme-
diately after exposure. The main ways that media
violence exposure increases aggression in the
short term are:
Direct imitation of the observed behavior
Observational learning of attitudes, beliefs
and expected benefits of aggression
Increased excitation
Priming of aggression-related ways of think-
ing and feeling
In essence, for at least a brief period after view-
ing or playing violent media, the exposed person
91. thinks in more aggressive ways, feels more aggres-
sive, perceives that others are hostile towards him
or her and sees aggressive solutions as being more
acceptable and beneficial.
The short-term effects typically dissipate
quickly. However, with repeated exposure to vio-
lent media, the child or adolescent “learns” these
short-term lessons in a more permanent way,
just as practicing multiplication tables or playing
chess improves performance on those skills. That
is, the person comes to hold more positive beliefs
about aggressive solutions to conflict, develops
what is sometimes called a “hostile attribution
bias” (a tendency to view ambiguous negative
events in a hostile way) and becomes more con-
One of the longest duration studies
of the same individuals found that
children exposed to lots of violent
television shows at age 8 later became
more violent adults at age 30.
fident that an aggressive action on their part will
work.
There also is growing evidence that repeated
exposure to blood, gore and other aspects of
extremely violent media can lead to emotional
desensitization to the pain and suffering of others.
In turn, such desensitization can lead to increased
aggression by removing one of the built-in brakes
that normally inhibits aggression and violence.
92. Furthermore, this desensitization effect reduces
the likelihood of pro-social, empathetic, helping
behavior when viewing a victim of violence.
Interestingly, these same basic learning and
priming effects account for the fact that expo-
sure to nonviolent, pro-social media can lead to
increased pro-social behavior.
SCREEN TIME EFFECTS
For a number of years, the American Academy of
Pediatrics has recommended very strict limits on
children’s exposure to any types of screen media,
including TVs and computers, primarily because
of concern about attention deficits. For example,
they recommend that children under the age of
2 years have no exposure to electronic screens,
even nonviolent media. Recent research with chil-
dren, adolescents and young adults suggests that
both nonviolent and violent media contribute to
real-world attention problems, such as attention
deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactiv-
ity disorder. Furthermore, these attention prob-
lems are strongly linked to aggressive behavior,
especially impulsive types of aggression.
Another emerging problem with video game
usage goes by various addiction-related labels,
such as video game addiction, internet addiction
and internet/gaming disorder. Research across
multiple countries and various measures of prob-
lematic game use suggests that about 8 percent of
“gamers” have serious problems with their gam-
ing habit. That is, their gaming activities inter-
93. fere with significant aspects of their lives, such as
interpersonal relationships, school or work activ-
ities. This newer research literature suggests that
for some individuals, video game problems look
much like gambling addiction.
MAGNITUDE OF HARM
News media often report exaggerated claims
about “the” cause of the most recent violent trag-
edy, whether it is a school shooting or
another mass killing. Sometimes the
cause that is hyped by these stories is
violent video games; other times it is
mental illness, or gun control, or lack of
gun control.
Behavioral scientists (and reason-
ably thoughtful people in general) know
that human behavior is complex, and it
is affected by many variables. Violence
researchers in particular know that such
extreme events as homicide cannot be
boiled down to a single cause. Instead, behavioral
scientists (including violence scholars) rely on
what is known as risk and resilience models, or
risk and protective factors.
All consequential behavior is influenced by
dozens (maybe hundreds) of risk and protective
factors. In the violence domain, there are dozens
of known risk and protective factors. Growing up
in a violent household or seeing lots of violence
in one’s neighborhood are two such risk factors.
Growing up in a nonviolent household and hav-
94. ing warm, caring parents who are highly involved
with child rearing are protective factors. From
this perspective, exposure to media violence
is one known risk factor for later inappropriate
aggression and violence. It is not the most impor-
tant risk factor; joining a violent gang is a good
candidate for that title. But it also isn’t the least
important risk factor.
Indeed, some studies suggest that media vio-
lence exposure carries about the same risk poten-
tial as having abusive parents or antisocial par-
ents. One major difference from other known risk
factors for later aggression and violence is that
parents and caregivers can relatively easily and
inexpensively reduce a child’s exposure to media
violence.
WHY BELIEVE THIS ARTICLE?
It is easy to find very vocal critics of the main-
HEALTH PROGRESS www.chausa.org JULY -
AUGUST 2016 61
There also is growing evidence that
repeated exposure to blood, gore
and other aspects of extremely
violent media can lead to emotional
desensitization to the pain and
suffering of others.
S U F F E R I N G V I O L E N C E
JULY - AUGUST 2016 www.chausa.org
95. HEALTH PROGRESS 62
stream summary that I have presented in this arti-
cle. A simple web search will generate links to any
number of them. Many of the critics are supported
by the media industries in one way or another,
many are heavy users of violent media and so
feel threatened by violence research (much like
cigarette smokers once felt threatened by cancer
research), some are threatened by anything they
see as impinging on free-speech rights, and many
are simply ignorant about the science. But, a few
appear to have relevant scientific credentials. So,
a reasonable question for a parent or health care
professional to ask is why believe that exposure
to media violence creates harmful effects, rather
than maintain the much more comfortable posi-
tion that there are no harmful effects.
The simple answer is this: Every major profes-
sional scientific body that has conducted reviews
of the scientific literature has come to the same
conclusion. This group includes the American
Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical
Association, the American Psychiatric Associa-
tion, the U.S. Surgeon General and the Interna-
tional Society for Research on Aggression, among
others. I have posted these and other, similar
reports online.1
In 1972, former U.S. Surgeon General Jesse
Steinfeld, MD, testified before the U.S. Senate on
his assessment of the research on TV violence and
behavior: “It is clear to me that the causal rela-
tionship between televised violence and antiso-
cial behavior is sufficient to warrant appropriate
96. and immediate remedial action,” he said. “There
comes a time when the data are sufficient to jus-
tify action. That time has come.”2
In response to one or two vocal critics of the
mainstream research community and perhaps to
pressure from other groups, the American Psy-
chological Association created a new media vio-
lence assessment panel in 2013 to assess the asso-
ciation’s 2005 statement and update it. They took
a very unusual step to avoid any appearance of
bias by excluding all major mainstream media
violence scholars from the panel. Instead, the
panel was composed of reputable psychological
science scholars with expertise in developmen-
tal, social and related psychology domains, along
with leading meta-analysis statistical experts.
Their report, released in 2015, confirmed what
the mainstream media violence research commu-
nity has been saying for years: There are real and
harmful effects of violent media.
Violent media are neither the harmless fun that
the media industries and their apologists would
like you to believe, nor are they the cause of the
downfall of society that some alarmists proclaim.
Nonetheless, electronic media in the 21st cen-
tury dominate many children’s and adolescents’
waking hours, taking more time than any other
activity, even time in school and interactions with
parents. Thus, electronic media have become
important socializing agents, agents that have a
measurable impact.
Many of the effects of nonviolent electronic
97. media are positive, but the vast majority of vio-
lent media effects are negative. Parents and other
caregivers can mitigate the harmful effects of vio-
lent media in several ways, such as by increas-
ing positive or “protective” factors in the child’s
environment, and by reducing exposure to violent
media. This is not an easy task, but it can be done
with little or no expense. The benefits of doing so
are healthier, happier, more successful children,
adolescents and young adults.
CRAIG A. ANDERSON is Distinguished Professor,
Department of Psychology, and director of the
Center for the Study of Violence, Iowa State Uni-
versity, Ames, Iowa.
NOTES
1. http://public.psych.iastate.edu/caa/Statementson-
MediaViolence.html.
2. Jesse Feldman, statement in hearings before Subcom-
mittee on Communications of Committee on Commerce,
United States Senate, Serial #92-52 (Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972) 25-27.
Some studies suggest that
media violence exposure
carries about the same risk
potential as having abusive
parents or antisocial parents.
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