Dossier
I: Background: Violent Entertainment and the Socialization of Aggression
The controversy
about too much violent entertainment in children’s media has a long
history spanning half a century (Murray 1995 etc.) In this respect violent
entertainment is a lifestyle risk controversy which like so many others seems
to bog down in conflicts between consumers rights and community values and
safety.). Ever since the Hays code was written in 1930 for the fledgingly film
industry, the battle between the public and the cultural industries over
children’s the sex and violence in entertainment has grown ever more
vociferous. Especially after television, the most powerful medium ever
invented, the politics of children’s culture
has been characterized by high profile media panics
followed by sluggish policy making and endless calls
for more scientific evidence.
•
1954
Kefauver Inquiry - insufficient science
1960 on rising crime rates and juvenile delinquency
1961 Vast Wasteland debate – first regulations
•
1969
Charles Manson slayings: they are what they watch
•
1972
Surgeon General Report repeated commissions and reports - needs more research
•
1982:
NIMH report: grounds for relationship
•
1989:
Concordia Massacre 1.7 million signature petition
•
1993:Jamie
Bulger murder
•
1993-97:
Spicer’s watersheds to V-chips
•
1994:
Natural Born Killers Mortal Kombat Hearings – copy cat killings
•
1995:
Canadian Public Broadcasters campaign “Violence makes Victims of us All”
•
1998-2000:
V-chip legislation
•
2000 BC,
Minnesota, St. Louis court cases “
It also seems fair to say that
in spite of the academic debates there has been persistent public concern about
the escalation of violence in entertainment, and that periodically, in the wake
of spectacular school yard killings like Littleton and Taber,
we go through periods of great public hand-wringing. Surveys show that Canadian
parents continue to be anxious about the prominenence of scenes of graphic
violence in children’s media, which studies confirm have certainly not abated,
(Coles) but to the contrary is spreading to video games and the internet.
Perhaps this is why the public generally agrees with the statement that violent entertainment
contributes to aggression in society, and in Canada
overwhelming supports regulation of violence in all media (Media Watch 2001).
With the recent high profile news coverage of schools shootings, it
is not surprising that many parents feel disturbed by
and anxious about crime and aggression at schools. Policies such as zero tolerance for weapons and drugs
have been adopted by many US schools
as parents adjust to the prospect of raising their children in an increasingly mean and brutal world. But actual youth
crime rates do not support the idea that we are raising a generation of
killer kids on the playground. Attention to such homicides is perhaps
unhelpful, for they account for only 1% of child murders in the USA, and mask
the real problems of fighting bullying and
intimidation the persist in schools. So are we
missing the mark!
• School
shootings are 1% of all child killings
• 10%
still bring weapons to school
• Although
declining 17% of children still report getting in fights at school = 6 million
assaults per year on school grounds
Thinking beyond the media panic:
It
is hardly surprising that this high profile controversy has produced conflicted
opinions on what the science says about the effects of
media violence. (Bushman and Anderson media study) On one side stand the
industry sponsored scientists who maintain that
media violence is not a problem and there
is no reason to restrict or regulate the media. (Grossman,Freedman)
-
Violence, war and crime have existed long before
media were invented and won’t disappear even if you sanitize children’s mass
culture.
-
-
The psychologists who study media effects are
misleading the public about evidence of effects: they claim that correlations
are not causes, and that the effects hypothesis has not been validated with studies.
-
The panic over children’s culture arises not from
any ‘real’ condition in children’s lives but because a small group of
moralizing adults over-react to generational change
-
So get over it old fashioned moralizers! Sex and
violence are so much a part of our social world, that young people need to be
exposed to it and learn to cope
rather than be protected from it.
On the other side are the vast majority of psychological and medical professionals
who upon successive reviews of the literature have proclaimed that heavy
exposure to media violence does constitute a risk to children’s health and safety.
Evidence from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey in the USA gathered from over
13,000 high school students found that youths who watch more than 4 hours per day of television are 7% more likely to get
in fights at during the year than those who watch less than 1 hour per day.
Insert chart:
The research reviews identify
five major mechanisms to explain the relationship between media
–
Imitation and Copycat; (Bandura, 1977,
1986). Developmental theories
have noted that children will learn by means of imitation and
reinforcement. The role models that
children will imitate will be those individuals who are continually rewarded
for their behaviours. Content analysis
of TV shows by The National Television Violence Study (1996) showed that 75% of
violent acts go unpunished. Therefore heavy viewers of television will
continually be exposed to unpunished and often rewarded act of violence. Studies of children's behaviour have
indicated that their learned behaviours seem to rely on the direct reinforcement
a child receives (Bandura, 1965). Other
studies have suggested that the imitation of a model is dependent on the
attractive characteristics of that character.
1996-1998 national Television Studies have continually indicated that
40% of violent acts seen on TV were perpetrated by characters who possess
attractive role model characteristics.
–
Scripts;
(Huesmann, 1988, 1998). Observed
learning theory suggests that children learn how to deal with everyday problems
in a variety of ways. These methods of
scripts have been examined in relation to a child's media use and studies have
suggested that problem-solving scripts may be imitated or unconsciously used in
a child's play and life skills.
Therefore heavy views of violence may continually perceive the TV way of
dealing with problems as the ideal way of dealing with similar problems in
their lives.
–
Desensitization; Theorist
have suggested that the more we view and experience violence the more we accept
it as a way of life and a way of dealing with issues. Psychologists have suggested that children
who are heavy viewers of violent media will not view violence in a negative
respect and will become used to it and won't be as cautious about using
aggression in dealing with issues (Dominick & Greenberg, 1972). Both theoretical and experimental studies
have indicated the existence of children's desensitization to violence. Cline,
Croft, & Courrier, 1973 studied boys reception to new images of violence
and found that prior viewing of violent images were the variable that
determined how physically aroused the boys got while watching new images. It was suggested that the natural arousal
reaction of viewers of violent images did not seem to exist with heavy viewers of
violent images thus they had become desensitized to such images.
–
Identification/ justification; (Huesmann, 1982). It has been suggested that
violent individuals may enjoy violent media because it justifies their own
actions and behaviour as normal and acceptable.
The notion that a child who behaves aggressively should be remorseful is
in conjunction with the theory of desensitization. If a child becomes desensitized to acts of
aggression their remorse for imitation and acting aggressively is also
negated. Thus the child will view their
acts as the norm and they way to deal with issues that arise. (Fernie, 1981; Huesmann & Eron, 1986).
–
Mean world; (Gerbner & Gross, 1976, 1981). While children view television
they may be cultivating a sense of risk associated with the real world
experiences. Studies have shown that
heavy TV viewers tend to be more anxious about becoming a victim of
violence. These heavy viewers perceive
the world to be a dangerous and scary place therefore developing a heightened
sense of fear as well as a heightened need to protect themselves, therefore
they may be more aggressive.
From
their reviews the Surgeon General’s Report, Youth
Violence, 2000
• “a small
but statistically significant impact on aggression over many years”
• “the
science shows that media violence and this is primarily TV, can in fact in the
short term increase aggressive behavior”
Their
concerns about what children learn by spending so much time with media leads
the American Assoc. Pediatricians Voice of Medical
Science has come to view media as constituting a learning environment in
which children
• Learn their attitudes about violence at a very
young age and these attitudes tend to last.
• Although
TV violence has been studied the most, researchers are finding that violence in
other media impacts children and teens in many of the same harmful ways.
• From
media violence children learn to behave aggressively toward others. They are
taught to use violence instead of self-control to take care of problems or
conflicts.
• Violence in the "media world" may
make children more accepting of real-world violence and less caring toward
others. Children who see a lot of violence from movies, TV shows, or video games may become more fearful
and look at the real world as a mean and scary place.
However,
like just about every mandated science debate –
from cigarettes and melatonine to PCB’s – there are plenty of reasons to see a
few grains of truth in both sides of
this argument. It is true that violence has played a role in children’s
folkstories and folkplay; yet it is also true that the cultural industries
design the violence into stories and games because it helps market them to
kids. And although everyone agrees that
there is a significant correlationship – in the order
of .10-.15 between heavy consumption of violent media and aggressive and
anti-social behavior, no-one can say whether this relationship implies that
aggressive kids watch more violent programmes, or vice versa. Certainly the early laboratory studies that
tried to assess whether media caused violent behaviour directly were poorly designed. But that does not invalidate
the many studies that confirm that indirect effects of viewing violence on
children’s play, or their attitudes and feelings about the world which are part
of the socialization of aggression.
Generally,
the evidence from longitudinal studies have
found that those children who develop early preferences for violent
entertainment and identify with those characters, are more likely to develop
positive role models and become aggressive later on in life depending of course
on other factors (in family, peer groups and community) which can accentuate
or mitigate the effects of media consumption.
(Eron, Heusman ). As Garbarino notes, it
all depends on the peer, family, and community
resources available to the individual. A recent study published in
Science for example (Johnson et al. 2002)
reported that whereas 45% of the boys who watched television more than 3 hours
per day at age 14, subsequently committed aggressive acts involving others,
only 8.9%, who watched television less than an hour a day were aggressive later
in life [i] and that this relationship
existed even after other factors that contribute to aggression such as
neighbourhood, family disfunction and developmental issues are accounted for.
Many
people have wondered about the relationship between
school yard killings and video games.(Grossman etc.) Most researchers note that the extremely
violent video games like Quake and Counter-strike have not been around long
enough to know much about their long term consequences.
But that said, we cannot conclude that there are no learning effects from
playing violent games, especially given the fact that that the game players are
more deeply immersed in the action. (Griffith,Kline etc) What is learned
however will depend on the children and the social and psychological resources
they bring to their video game play.
So faced with these opposing academic claims, what can we
say: Perhaps the conclusion of the Canadian Government Standing Committee on
Communications and Culture, in their report Television Violence: Fraying our
Social Fabric. Ottawa 1993 says it best:
•
“television
violence is one of many risk factors which may contribute to aggressive
tendencies and antisocial behaviour.
•
We have clearly found that the violence portrayed
on television reflects and shapes unhealthy social attitudes.
•
The committee has concluded that although the risk
may be small... It cannot be ignored”.
They go on to espouse the precautionary principle urging
that it was prudent given the limits of psychological and medical scientific
knowledge to err on the side of safety, and undertake reasonable efforts to
reduce children’s exposure to violent entertainment. But 10 years later, it is
fair to say that nothing much has happened as a result of 50 years of public
concern. The V-chip is a bust and attempts to regulate the video game industry
and internet have produced no result.
Many people in Canada despair that anything will ever be done to curtail
media violence when commercial interests who profit from the sales, are responsible for their regulation.
This is why the
District School Board and Parents Advisory Council, and RCMP in North Vancouver
have become partners in a politics of hope
supporting a highly innovative community mobilization project that sets out to
reduce children’s interest in and exposure to violent entertainment through a
media risk reduction strategy. This strategy combines community health, media
education and social marketing techniques to persuade children to reduce and repattern their consumption of
violent media.
Surgeon General Report= link to this website
http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/youthviolence/chapter4/appendix4bsec3.html#implications
U.S. Public Health Service
Youth Violence; A Report of the Surgeon General
Accessed
Feb. 7, 2003