Media Violence: What’s all the noise about?

Running Head: Media Violence: What’s all the noise about?

Media Violence: What’s all the noise about?

Amina Asim


Northwestern University

Abstract

The effects of media violence on television audience has been has been of great interest in

communication research, by social scientists, physicians, psychologists and other social action

groups. This paper presents a review of literature that has emerged out of this discourse, with a

particular focus on television news media. The literature on media violence can be divided into

three broad categories: whether there is more violence shown on television than in real life,

research on the negative psychological effects of watching violence on television, and studies on

how violence on television might increase levels of violence and aggression in society. Though

we hope that there is more violence on television or digital video news than in real life; for the

latter two categories, some studies have not been able to establish a high level of correlation. It

is concluded that violence on television might in fact, have a positive impact as it serves as a

form of “catharsis” for people in society. I suggest that watching violence on news satisfies

violent urges they might want to exercise in outside social spaces – a strand of questioning

which has not been studied as much when it comes to explaining audience effects of “violent”

depictions in media.

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Introduction

In a 2007 essay “A History of Violence,” Steven Pinker says:

In the decade of Darfur and Iraq, and shortly after the

century of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, the claim that violence

has been diminishing may seem somewhere between

hallucinatory and obscene. Yet recent studies that seek to

quantify the historical ebb and flow of violence point to

exactly that conclusion (p. 1).

He goes on to discuss contemporary historical studies that seem to

support the claim that human beings are in fact becoming more peaceful

over the years. Pinker wrtiers:

On the scale of decades, comprehensive data again

paint a shockingly happy picture: Global violence has

fallen steadily since the middle of the twentieth

century. According to the Human Security Brief 2006, the

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number of battle deaths in interstate wars has

declined from more than 65,000 per year in the 1950s

to less than 2,000 per year in this decade (p. 3).

The question might be asked of why this fall in violence is so

surprising? Wasn’t the whole point of all those crusades, the

colonizations, wars for democratic rule, human rights campaigns, that

we, as humans, stop being so violent and have become less barbaric in

time. Might it be that globally human conflict is at its lowest in

recorded history; yet, for the first time we are more aware of its

prevalence than ever before.

There is a fascination in violent imagery. We have depicted it and we

have cringed when looking at it – yet, can’t help but look at it. In

the past, it was gladiators in Rome fighting each other or wild

animals, in huge arenas, while thousands of spectators cheered in a

frenzy; today, its large wrestling federations minting money while

hundreds buy tickets to a fictional fight between odd muscled men and

women. There were crusades, there were witch-hunts, there were

massacres in the name of the King or the Queen; today, there are

terrorist plots, there are genocides and wars in the name of democracy

or communism. But violence has gone down. Public hangings are a

rarity, there are laws against abortion, organizations for animal

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rights and a government needs months of justification before it can

begin a war with another country, with always the fear of

international condemnation. But the difference today is that news of

one act of violence can reach the other end of the world within a

matter of seconds.

The reach of digital networks has made news available any time,

anywhere. We live in a news environment which is termed as “360⁰”

because of the “multiple feeds of cable news” that are “accessible

through the Web, on cellular phones and PDA’s, on satellite radios,

through downloadable podcasts, and also at multiple access points such

as airport terminals and in-flight satellite television feeds

(Vishwanath, 2008, p. 7).” This ubiquitous nature of news has rapidly

developed over the past couple of decades, as news media has moved

from gazettes to newspapers, and then from television to the internet.

This proliferation in media technology has given rise to new studies

that have added to the communication literature that already existed.

The debate has moved from the Dominant Paradigm into the Technological

Paradigm, in which studies explore what it means for an audience to be

surrounded by media stimulants 24/7. But as audience found themselves

with an increasing choice in entertainment options, so did news about

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real life issues and events become increasingly available. Where

previously evening news on CBS, NBC or ABC was the only option, now,

news audience has access to entire channels that deliver news all day

long and they can choose whichever one they want (Prior, 2008;

Webster, 1986). Hundreds of news websites and blogs and still to an

extent, newspapers; and with this ubiquity of information, viewers

find themselves in the center of a world of political debate and

violence. News about crimes, wars, genocides, and human rights

violations in their countries, and in the international arena has

entered people’s bedrooms and it weighs on their palms. But with this

ample choice came the problem of, what Herbert Simon famously called,

the “Poverty of Attention”. The mediated audience found itself in the

midst of too little time and too many options – their attention span

decreased to seconds, and keeps decreasing every day. Producers try

harder and harder to gain this attention. Simon (1998) uses the

analogy of a superhighway to describe the state consumers of media

found themselves in:

We are constantly reminded that we live in an information

society-more than a society, an information world. We are

told that we are going to drive on a superhighway in this

world; or perhaps we will stay at home while the information

that is on the superhighway races toward us at the speed of

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light. … Superhighways, after all, frequently offer a

superabundance of traffic, as well as superscarcity of

parking spaces (p. 1)

This growing superscarcity of parking spaces has led many producers of

media messages to focus their energies on producing meaning in a way

that audience will respond. Novels have become shorter, with shorter

chapters and shorter sentences; majority of films have become shorter

with lighter plots and more engrossing characters; thrillers and

action movies have become more common. News producers, in the same

wake, find themselves focusing on more and more rousing stories, as

they try to compete with thousands of other entertainment options

available. As this vying for audience attention becomes harder and

harder, what is noticed is that there is also a rise in violent media,

particularly “negative news” (Klein, 2003). And media has received its

fair share of criticism for it as well, as hundreds of studies have

been conducted trying to find out the connection between violence and

stress in real life and violence shown in media images.

This paper presents an overview of this literature that looks at the

correlation between media and violence and its effects on audience,

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with particular focus on news media. The analysis is used to glean the

reasons behind why this connection persists and hundreds of federal

dollars are spent on it each year; an attempt is made to reach an

understanding of whether this violence on television is there because

the receiver is indeed the producer, or the producer has created their

own meaning (Hall, 1980). The purpose is to find out whether the

correlation between media violence and its negative effects is as

strong as generally suggested, and if so, then what are the reasons

that it continues and even grows with time.

A preliminary look at media violence literature can be divided into

three areas of studies that generally overlap: more violence on

television, than in real life; violence on television having negative

effects on its audience, like stress, fear and lack of trust; and

violence on television creating more violence in real life.

Is there more Violence on Television than there is in real life?

This argument asserts that violence in the media creates negative

effects on its audience, since the media shows more violence that

there actually is in society; this leads to unwarranted feelings of

fear and stress for its viewers. Literature in this area can be8


divided into pre and post-9/11 papers, as post-9/11 literature has

mainly focused on terrorism or influence of reporting on such stories.

Bushman and Anderson (2001) report that there is in fact more violence

on television while quoting film critic Michael Medved:

About 350 characters appear each night on prime-time TV, but

studies show an average of seven of these people are

murdered every night. If this rate applied in reality, then

in just 50 days everyone in the United States would be

killed and the last left could turn off the TV (p. 479).

These statistics refer to reality shows like Cops and America’s Most

Wanted, which show real life crimes and murder stories and are run all

over the country at different timings. Oliver (1994), in a study of

five such shows discovers that most of these shows “strongly

overrepresent violent crimes”. He also finds that 50% of crimes shown

in these shows are murders, whereas, the FBI reports only 0.2% of

crimes are murders.

Besides reality shows, television series and movies dedicated solely

to murder stories and other crime investigation lines might be

innumerable; some of the most popular series in recent ears are based

on criminal investigations and other violent themes, including shows

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like CSI, Prison Break, Bones and Dexter. News stations are not far behind;

they have been accused of focusing solely on violent stories, in order

to gain more audience and make more money. In a related study, Johnson

(1996) examines 100 news reports for a 6 month period, in order to

gauge the number of stories dealing with violence. He found that “100%

of the news programs contained violence (p. 209)” and stresses that

television news had 2 ½ times more violence than wire news. More

studies (Graber, 1979; Singer, 1971) have also pointed to media

overrepresenting violence under the popularly held belief that the

more violent a story, the more it will sell, under the formula that

“If it bleeds, its leads”.

In another area focusing on mass murders in the news, Duwe (2000) says

that studies on crime news have shown that crimes like murder, assault

and robbery, which are the most infrequently occurring but most

serious are reported much more heavily, compared to more widespread

crimes like property and white collar crimes. He goes on to show how

stories about mass murder receive a lot of airtime because they are

most sensational and cover all aspects of a tragedy, in that innocent

people are killed without any reason. Chermak and Chapman (2007) also

report that “Violent crime is overrepresented in the news,

characteristics of violent victims and offenders in the news are not

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representative of real life demographic distributions, and so-called

‘media waves’ do not necessarily coincide with increases in crime (p.

354).”

Another set of studies focuses on the reasons why news reports and

media outlets overdramatize violence and tragedy. This rationale is in

keeping with the idea of Attention Economy and also asserts that

people prefer violent stories to non-violent ones and basically

violence sells. In a study, on the dramatic presentation of news,

Milburn and McGrail (1992) divide the underlying assumptions regarding

the effectiveness of Arousal and Melodrama, and Myth and Drama. They

say that emphasis on certain words and images helps create emotional

arousal which can catch the audience’s attention; myth, on the other

hand, helps create a cultural context to the news story. Telling the

story of a survivor of a bomb attack or showing images of grieving

families of an airplane crash victim, create the melodrama that

appeals to the audience as a whole. They conclude that “Sensationalism

is not only easier to portray on television than complexity, it is

easier to sell (p. 629).” Lule (2001) in his book Daily News, Eternal Stories:

The Mythological Role of Journalism suggests that the relationship between news

and myth is stronger than one might think, and goes on to relate seven

master myths that are used when developing a news story: The Victim,

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The Scapegoat, The Hero, The Good Mother, The Trickster, The Other

World and The Flood. He says that news stories use these common myths

to dramatize the story enough to create emotionality.

Altheide (2009) in an essay on Moral Panic and its implications

asserts that news agencies create a discourse of fear through

extensive coverage of stories of crime and victimization in order that

the audience lives vicariously through the mass media (p. 95). He

discusses the similarities between stories about moral panic and

terrorism and draws parallels between the two. For instance, the 9/11

terror attacks generated highest news viewing in the history of

television news till then, which signals to interest generated by

unusual and mass violence imagery on news viewing (Althaus, 2002).

After the attacks, focus on researching emerged which demonstrated how

news media portrayed terrorist episodes and what effects did the

coverage have on audience.

Cho et al. (2003) analyze the difference in medium representation of

9/11 attacks and how the audience reactions to the two differed. They

found that television news showed more emotional images and used a

higher frequency of emotional language than newspapers; in return,

audience had more emotional reactions to television news and it also

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boasted being the primary news source during the time (Althaus, 2002).

Other studies (Iyengar, 1991; Jacobs, 1996) seem to support this

claim, as eye witness accounts and video footage of the 9/11 attacks

fit into all the categories of Lule’s myths and what could be more

dramatic than the extent of damage by the attacks.

What effects does media violence have on the audience’s

psychological health?

This strand of questioning has resulted in the largest number of

studies, particularly in psychology and communication studies. The

overwhelming argument is that violence on television affects audience’

psychological health negatively, especially for younger audience;

stories of crime and terrorism increase psychological stress, cause

stranger anxiety, a hyper fear of crime, and lowers levels of social

trust (Heath, 1987; Warr, 1983). These studies hold that the

Cultivation Theory, which suggests that “widespread fear of crime is

fueled in part by heavy exposure to violent dramatic programming on

prime-time television (Romer, Jameison & Aday, 2003)” rings true for

most violent media content. Producers of violent media imagery have

been accused of causing damage to society by continuing to show

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violence on television, whereas, producers themselves have not paid

much attention to the complaints; the counter-argument generally

presented is violence shown is only a mirror to what happens in

society in reality.

Other literature has focused on whether consistency in violent

portrayals in the media can have such negative effects on the audience

(Gerbner & Gross, 1976). Some have emphasized differentiating types of

violent content and the way that the content is presented; for example

a dramatized or glamorized portrayal of negative content can have very

different effects than a less dramatic portrayal of the same content

(Potter, 1999). Most studies also present a gendered approach to

audience effects as women are found to be more susceptible to finding

violent images disturbing (Pfau et. al. 2008). A study by Klein (2003)

finds that “women were significantly more likely than men to report

being negatively affected” by violent images in the news and

television; whereas, men, particularly in the college population,

seemed to find violent and tragic content entertaining and almost

enjoyable (p. 1669). This is in line with the assertion made in some

studies that audience characteristics are important in determining

whether there could be any psychological effects or not, even though

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fewer focus on differences in effects according to these

characteristics.

In this vein, the substitution and the resonance thesis emerge. The

substitution thesis asserts that “heavy exposure to media portrayals

of crime has particularly strong effects on those with no direct

experience of crime (Weitzer & Kubrin, 2004, p. 500).” This suggests

that women and elderly who have the lowest rates of victimization are

most likely to become negatively influenced by such news. On the other

hand, there are also a number of studies that find support for the

opposing resonance thesis, which holds that “when media images are

consistent with lived experience (e.g., criminal victimization,

residing in a high-crime community), media and experience mutually

reinforce citizens’ fear (Weitzer & Kubrin, 2004, p 500).” Children

have been the subject of many studies as pediatric societies and

parents have made cry about the violence on television (Redlener &

Grant, 2002; Weingarten, 2004; Walma van der Molen, 2004). Children

have also been an important focus in post-9/11 literature that

discusses the psychological stress caused by constant images of

terrorism on television (The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Report

2003).

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Gross, Aday, Brewer & Brewer (2004) add to understanding how violence

on television, especially in news media, might lead to negative a

social impact, for example, it can diminish social capital, by

creating a general feelings of mistrust, resulting from the fear of

being attacked anytime by anyone. In a study, on Third-person effects

of the September 11 attacks, according to the uses and gratifications

approach, Haridakis & Rubin (2005) study whether “individual

dispositions, media exposure, third-person perceptions, and viewing

motivation may work in concert to foster or lessen support for

restrictive policies aimed at combating terrorism (45)”. This is in

assumption with the belief that people might want stricter measures

under the perception that others are affected more by violence shown

in the media. As Perloff (1996), suggests that people tend to

overestimate media’s effects on others and underestimate them for

themselves.

Images of war, especially of war casualties might also decrease trust

in the government, a fear that has continued since the Vietnam (Pfau

et. al. 2008). Called “casualty intolerance” it has been argued that

visual footage of such nature did in fact, reduce viewers pride in

American involvement in Iraq, but the rest of the results were mixed

and there was not much effect on viewers’ reaction to the government,

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when news stories with or without visual images were compared. This

conclusion is in line with many other studies, which come to mixed

conclusions or have not found very strong correlations between

violence and audience being affected negatively. Rubin et. al. (2003)

in one such study, checking the strength of the cultivation theory,

concludes that young adults, after watching the September 11 news

coverage for a number of days, “… did not exhibit a high degree of

faith in others. However, these young adults, contrary to what was

expected, were not fearful and generally, felt safe, despite the

almost around-the clock- coverage of terrorist acts and war on

terrorism (p. 140).”

Does violence on television create more violence in society?

A number of studies in the effects literature focus on whether seeing

so much violence on television can actually increase levels of

aggression in society, thus resulting in a higher crime rate. This

discussion has expanded into violence in video games, which appear to

have a strong correlation with violence because of their highly

interactive nature; but this paper is more concerned with violence on

“television,” which in the past has been blamed for creating a strong

copycat effect on criminal aggressions. Social scientists have17


asserted that media violence and aggression have almost as strong a

correlation as smoking has with lung cancer (Huesmann & Taylor, 2006;

Bushman & Anderson, 2001). Journalists are held responsible for being

too graphic and providing too much information, and criticized when

they give certain crimes labels or criminals certain names, in a way,

glorifying them e.g., the case of the Unabomber or the serial killer

known as “Son of Sam”.

An instance of this is a study by Vives-Cases, Torrubiano-Dominquez &

Alvarez-Dadet (2009) as they explore how the media might create models

of violent behavior which might have played a role in increase in

intimate partner violence (IPV), over a certain period of time. They

study the number of times “IPV” is used in news reports and the number

of crimes of a similar nature that take place in the same time period.

They conclude that: “News reports which focus exclusively on

transmitting information about deaths from this cause would also

appear to increase the possibility of death by between 28% and 32% (p.

594).”

Murder and suicide (Pirkis, Burgess & Blood, 2007; Sudak & Sudak,

2005) have been the main focus of many of these studies, asserting the

copycat effect mentioned earlier. It is suggested that violent media

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creates aggressive feelings that can increase the number of people who

might want to indulge in acts of aggression. These studies are

generally linked to psychological studies of how an observed event

might lead one to recreate it personally, especially in the case of

suicide; and the moral implications of becoming desensitized by the

continuous repetition of violent events in front of one’s eyes.

On the other hand, many studies find the correlation to be not that

strong. For example, a very convincing and comprehensive longitudinal

meta-analysis of 57 content analyses dealing with this issue, from the

period of 1960 to 2002, by Hestroni (2007), suggests that the

correlation between media violence and aggression might have been

exaggerated. They use the rationale that if it were true that violence

on television increases violence in society, then as violence on

television would decrease, so would the latter, but historical

evidence does not support that claim. They also use the argument that

Japan and Australia show much more violence on their televisions but

have a much smaller crime rate than the United States. They conclude:

… several intervening factors from catering to the needs of

demanding sponsors and powerful media watchdog groups and

up to regulation policy are at least partly responsible for

the fact that despite its repeated use in media content

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analyses, TV violence is probably not the most accurate

cultural indicator in the United States (p. 778).

A much more serious effect of showing violence on television and

dramatizing it or maybe its use by networks and journalists for

financial gain, is discussed more thoroughly in terrorism discourse.

The news media is blamed for giving so much coverage to terrorist

events that it gives terrorists an incentive to make their attacks

even more violent, frequent, and large-scale. The more public the

place of the attack and the more people killed, only means that their

agenda will get more attention; the September 11th attacks are an easy

example of that or the recent example of a man crashing his plane into

an I.R.S building. This has generated a lot of criticism towards the

media’s role and has even been called the “theatre of terror,”

implying that terrorists have found a welcoming stage in the form of

today’s media environment (Nacos, 2000; Seib, 2004).

Though not enough strong evidence exists, but Bushman & Anderson

(2001) make a convincing analogy that might be enough to give this

argument another thought:

When an ad is shown on TV, no one expects that it will sell

the product to everybody. If the ad influences only 1% of

viewers, it is considered a great success (Medved, 1995).

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Suppose violent media make only 1% of the population more

aggressive. Should society be concerned about a percentage

so small? Yes! Suppose 10 million people watch a violent TV

program … then the program will make 10,000 people more

aggressive! (p. 482)

Discussion

Dayan & Katz (1994) in their book Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History

say that the appeal of watching Live events on television – or in

contemporary media climate, on digital devices – is not just that

thousands of people are performing the same ritual together, but there

is always this expectation that something sensational might happen,

that something might go wrong. This is not to say, that we as people,

are always sitting on the edge of our seats wanting to watch people

die or get hurt, but there is no point denying that we love drama. In

Poetics, Aristotle said that Tragedy is a natural part of human life and

the reason that the audience enjoys watching tragic scenes in front of

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them is because it acts as a form of catharsis. The more painful, the

more pathetic, the better; the audience feels a certain sense of

satisfaction when watching the tragedy unfolds. He describes what the

poet is supposed to portray when writing a tragedy, which might very

well apply to some of journalists of today: “… the function of the

poet [is] to relate what has happened, but what may happen -- what is

possible according to the law of probability or necessity (Translated

by Butcher, S. H.)”. Hans-Georg Gadamer (1995) attempts to describe

this process of catharsis:

What is experienced in such an excess of tragic suffering is

something truly common. The spectator recognizes himself [or

herself] and his [or her] finiteness in the face of the

power of fate. What happens to the great ones of the earth

has exemplary significance. . . .To see that "this is how it

is" is a kind of self-knowledge for the spectator, who

emerges with new insight from the illusions in which he [or

she], like everyone else, lives (p. 132).

Sensationalist magazines sell hundreds of copies every day and we are

submerged in digital advertising; Hollywood and other major film

industries are using grandiose visual graphics to make movies as

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action packed as possible; the average number of hours spent playing

violent video games is going up every year (Pereira, 2009); and

Youtube is overflowing with videos of fighting or one sort of violent

incident or another. We laugh when someone trips over and falls down

and news viewing is highest in times of crises. This might not satisfy

what we like to believe, as we prefer to think ourselves civilized and

non-combatant, but the fact that historically, people as a group enjoy

violence or its excesses is recorded.

Marvin & Ingle (1999), in their book Blood Sacrifice and the nation use the

idea of myth to suggest that human beings are violent by nature, and

that violence is the part of us that cannot be eradicated and can only

be channeled. They filter out this aggression by sending their

soldiers to war, in the name of democracy or freedom, but in fact, war

as such just purges society of all the negative feelings that are

built up and helps maintain group cohesion. If we did not send them

out to war then we would take out this aggression on each other,

increasing crime rates. This might be going too far, but what if

watching violence on television actually helps us cleanse our violent

urges? What if playing violent video games and shooting a person from

the Red team, brings down violent tendencies that we might exercise on

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our own society? Maybe some research could go into studying this

hypothesis – studies exploring the positive effects of media violence.

This paper has reviewed selected literature in the media violence

discourse; three conclusions have been drawn: there is more violence

on television, than in real life; violence might be stressful, create

fear or create feelings of mistrust in certain audience types, mainly

women and children, but not on everyone; it might increase violence in

society, and there is evidence in favor of it, but also evidence

against it.

All these conclusions seem to be valid, though vague, but that is true

of evidence in any discipline in the social sciences. What is

justifiable though is that over the past couple of decades, media has

emerged as a 360⁰ part of life, but also, as noted at the beginning of

this paper, violence has gone down. Attention spans are short, number

of choices is profuse, and apparently, violence or thrilling images

catch the audience’s attention. As long as there is not enough

evidence against it that might establish causation, it seems that

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media and digital networks are making money and the audience is

getting what it wants. Then who is to complain?

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Documents

Media Violence: What’s all the noise about?