Media and Violence
Essay II
The issues pertaining to the media and the influence on violent behavior can be grouped under a social learning theory. The idea is that people learn to be violent through experiences in life and that they may be born with a predisposed gene indicating that that individual will be a mass murderer they however, they have the ability to activate or not activate the feelings. This usually happens when a person sees a goal be acheieved after aggressive behavior and when a criminal is rewarded for their actions in film. Mass media is one of the three priciple sources of aggressive acts in a society the other two being family members and environmental experiences. In mass media according to the text, Films and teleision shows commonly depict violence graphically. Moreover, violence is often portrayed as an acceptable behavior, especially for heros who never have to face legal consequences for their actions. The text gives the example of David phillips saying that a crime rate increases dramatically after a prize winning fight is televised. There are several explanations for the effects of television and film on behavior: Media violence can provide aggressive scripts that children store in their memory and then they become exposes to the shows over and over again and this then causes the children to change their attitude towards something. Next, Children learn from what tehy observe so if they are shown a violent show they can learn to be violent. Third, There is an increase in arousal levels in young children when they are watching violent sceens on television and this can cause them to act more aggressively. Fourth, television violence promotes negative attitudes and when this violence is watched often enough it becomes socially accepted as being normal. Fifth, When watching the television people may be able to rationalze their aggressive behavior and this might also help them to see that their own violence will be accepted. Sixth, There can be a contridiction of learned beahvior and instead of seeing the behavior as wrong like before it become accepted by society and disinhibit aggressive behavior. Controlled experiments were conducted in labs to study human behavior after engaging in a viewing of violent acts in film and television. Upon analysis the evidence showed that violent media has an immediate impact on people with preexisting tendency toward crime and violence.
Should the media be held accountable for such behavior? I think that it is the responsiblity of everyone to make sure that people are not becoming violent because of a Johnny Depp movie. If the people being affected by the media crime that become aggressive because of it live in violent communities then I think that the thing we should be worried about is there living conditions because that is a larger factor in becoming a criminal than what is on film. For children it should be the responsibility of the parents as well because they are allowing their child to watch the shows and it is there job to say this movie is rated R I think we should change the channel that is not the responsibilty of the networks. There is also the supply and demand. If the people weren't screaming for this type of entertainment then it would not have been made. We make the movies because we know what will sell and as of late violence sells. There is a competition with the productions companies to make the best horror and action films. I highly doubt our Duel Masters generation today which involves fighting one another would be able to sit through a syndicated episode of Captian Kangaroo. There are also good cartoons like Kim possible that shows children that crime doesn't pay. Even in the adult world of television hit shows like CSI, CSI:NY, CSI:MIAMI, Without a trace and the such show the violence in the world but also that they can and will be caught. There are the heavly influencing shows like Cold Case that show even 20, 30, 40, 60, years later your crime will eventually catch up with you. So no I don't think that all the responsibilty should be placed on the media but they could be making a stronger effort to encourage that type of program that does'nt involve murderous rampages.
