Violence in Media

Between 2000 B.C. and 44 A.D., the ancient Egyptians entertained themselves with plays reenacting the murder of their god Osiris -- and the spectacle, history tells us, led to a number of copycat killings. The ancient Romans were given to lethal spectator sports as well, and in 380 B.C. Saint Augustine lamented that his society was addicted to gladiator games and "drunk with the fascination of bloodshed." Violence has always played a role in entertainment. But there's a growing consensus that, in recent years, something about media violence has changed.( Media Awareness Network).

On April 16, 2007, almost exactly 8 years after the horrible assault of gunfire and bombs that left many students and one teacher dead at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, another deadly assault took place at Virginia Tech University. The aftermath of the Virginia Tech horror was even more gruesome than Columbine. Including the gunman who took his own life, a total of 33 people died—making it the worst school shooting in America’s history. (Media effects research : A basic overview :Glenn G. Sparks)
The national discussion that followed both the Columbine and Virginia Tech incidents had some striking similarities. After Columbine, a persistent theme was sounded over and over again: The mass media must share a significant part of the blame for this incident and others like it. President Clinton called on the producers of mass media messages to reduce gratuitous violence. The clear implication of Clinton’s rhetoric was that exposure to violent entertainment images increased the probability of this type of violent behaviour. Similarly, after Virginia Tech, it took only hours before the media devoted intense coverage to the possibility that the perpetrator of the shootings had been influenced by playing a violent video game. The prominent TV psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live and said: “We’re going to have to start … recognizing that the mass murderers of tomorrow are the children of today that are being programmed with this massive [media] violence overdose.” (Media effects research : A basic overview :Glenn G. Sparks)
The media landscape is ever changing, with new technologies resulting in greater interactivity on smaller, graphically superior, and computationally more powerful devices. These new technologies are tremendous resources for learning and knowledge acquisition at a rate unparalleled in the past. Unlike traditional media (such as broadcast TV), these new technologies, in combination with an Internet connection, give children and adolescents new ways of playing games as well as access to more diverse forms of visually stimulating content than ever before (Donnerstein, 2011). Access to such content has many benefits, but it also carries risks. Youth can now download, view, play, and listen to violent material any time of day or night, often from the privacy of their own rooms, and with little supervision from their parents. With new technologies, the opportunities for viewing violent content, which was once relegated to more public spaces (such as the neighborhood, the movie theater, or the living room), have become increasingly private. For other media contents unrelated to violence, it is widely accepted that what people see in the virtual reality of the media has an effect on their behavior in the real world(Media Violence Commission, International Society for Research on Aggression).
By watching aggression, children learn how to be aggressive in new ways and they also draw conclusions about whether being aggressive to others will bring them rewards (Huesmann and Eron, 1986). Those children who see TV characters getting what they want by hitting are more likely to strike out themselves in imitation. Even if the TV character has a so-called good reason for acting violently (as when a police officer is shown shooting down a criminal to protect others), this does not make young children less likely to imitate the aggressive act than when there is no good reason for the violence (Liss, Reinhardt and Fredriksen, 1983).

Besides making children more likely to act aggressively, violence on media may have other harmful effects. First, it may lead children to accept more aggressive behaviour in others (Drabman and Thomas, 1974). Second, it may make children more fearful as they come to believe that violence is as common in the real world as it is on media (Bryant, Careth and Brown, 1981).
Other problems arise with viewing given that a child‘s cognitive development has not yet matured in order for him or her to completely understand, dissect and analyse all of the messages being thrown at him or her by the media. According to Potter (2008) a lack of cognitive development can be a barrier to appropriate emotional reactions to media messages (p. 58). “Until children have developed many knowledge structures, they don‘t have many perspectives from which to view the world” (p. 61).

Violence is one of many messages disseminated through the sensation of television, which plays an active role in entertaining and impacting the lives of today‘s youth. Because of its prevalence, violence on media has grown to be a controversial issue on which several studies have been conducted since the 1950s. Based on his research, Gerbner asserts that growing up in a mediated violence-laden culture breeds aggressiveness in some and desensitization, insecurity, mistrust, and anger in most (Brittany T. Rawlings, August 2011) . While debate ensues over potential long and short-term effects of media, children are often at the forefront as a special group that needs protection from the risks of any negative media effects (Potter, 2008, p. 62).