Does A Violent Media Create A Violent Society? Essay, Research Paper
This issue is one of constant debate, with no real solution. There are many things society as a whole and individuals can do to appease or inflame the issue, however each argument has a counter argument and a counter argument will exist for that and so on.
Because it is an issue of such heated debate with no answer or possibility of an answer should we just leave the issue be and choose not to address it further? Or should we make the issue widely known so society is more aware of the role the media can play. Or perhaps we should leave it to the media to publicise that. After all the media does have a strong influence.
Take the late 1980’s film Terminator, one of the highest grossing films of the 80’s. This means millions of people worldwide have been to see it at the movies, and then most probably, rented it out on video. Have these millions of people gone out and killed their arch enemies? I think not.
However the file Terminator may have inspired, planted the idea, or conceptualised the seed of an idea in someone’s mind. And one or, possibly more murders can be associated with the movie Terminator, a certain method of killing perhaps mimicked in a psychos’ rage.
Yet isn’t it more than likely that the ONLY aspect of the murder affected by Terminator and such films may have been just the technique used. I believe it is more than likely the killer/murderer/stalker would have performed his duties anyway.
I should not single out one form of media alone. News broadcasts, in comparison to films and fictitious TV shows, show us the reality of day to day living. We see footage of car-wreck, murder scenes and hear of graphic telling of ones’ untimely demise. We take this information in, absorb it as real life, and perhaps over time become de-sensitised to these effects as we see them on the news.
The news is a medium which is there to present the facts of the events during the day. A real account of what happened. We understand that Brian Naylor, David Johnston and Mal Waldon are telling us what happened, In Real Life.
Some may claim de-sensitisation to these events in real life, due to seeing them on the news. I can speak from experience that no amount of news footage, re-creations, re-enactments or re-telling of a car accident could have prepared me for what I saw, a minor incident, while driving home from Bairnsdale.
Others claim that violence existed before TV and Films, and perhaps an even more violent society. Take the Delinquents (again) for example. The brutal beating delivered to Brownie in public. That sort of punishment was accepted. Today it would be labelled child abuse. The real life media, the news has opened our eyes to the danger of these types of relationships and how they can distort people’s perception in the future.
A persons perception of ANY event is uniquely their own, Shacter describes emotions as a subjective experience felt by a person as a result of their cognitive interpretation of physiological change. This is backed up by many Psychologist, who all agree ones emotions, motives and motivators are all different. And the same stimulus can be interpreted in many ways by many individuals.
That is why it is hard to study the REAL effects of violence in the media among the general population. Many studies have been done such as the Bobo Doll, The Lewis and Harristein theory, Rogers and Son and Eckman, have all conducted studies on both children and adults. But when it comes to violence seeping from the media into society it is virtually impossible to determine and to determine accurately.
Virtually impossible as we are studying human behaviour.
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