Media Violence Primary Source is George Gerbner: Television Violence: The Power and the Peril 1995

1. 1 Media Violence Primary Source is George Gerbner: Television Violence: The Power and the Peril (1995)

2. 2 Socialization In traditional societies, stories about life and values are told to children by parents, churches, schools and others in the community. These agents of socialization have no hidden agenda. They are driven by the desire for children to learn the proper way of life and to develop into mature, sociable adults. It is important that children learn the cultural stories and myths which instill a sense of cultural pride and develop their moral stance.

3. 3 Socialization In the past, cultural stories about life were told by people who had something to tell. Today they are told by people who have something to sell. They are told by distant conglomerates whose agenda is to maximize their stockholder�s profits. Their stories may not serve the child�s best interests. A key issue, therefore, involves the centralized mass production of cultural stories and myths.

4. 4 Socialization The TV has brought about a radical change in the way American children grow up and learn about the way to live in our society. Children are a captive audience for television. They are highly susceptible to TV messages. TV watching represents a mainstream way of life � it is the single most common leisure activity of Americans. Those who program our TV shows are the principle storytellers of our lives today. Yet their agenda is not the parent�s agenda.

5. 5 Socialization Unlike other forms of media, TV 1. Requires no literacy skills. 2. Requires little selectivity or previously acquired tastes. 3. Requires little or no attention. Anyone can watch TV. Commercial TV uses repetitive patterns and messages which are insidious � they are absorbed into the pattern of everyday life in a taken-for-granted way. This makes commercial TV a powerful instrument of socialization.

6. 6 Socialization In the past, the roles children grew into were handcrafted and community inspired. Today, children learn much about roles and life from watching TV. Most television content is the product of a complex, integrated, globalized manufacturing and marketing system. TV corporations earn money by delivering a receptive audience to their corporate sponsors. This is their Number One priority. Serving the public interest is their Number Two priority, if prioritized at all.

7. 7 TV Violence � why so much? The usual argument promoted by broadcasters regarding TV violence is that they are �giving the audience what it wants.� This view is not supported by the research. TV watchers tend to prefer nonviolent over violent content. Generally the more violent the TV content, the more most viewers will get turned off. But it gets more complex than this simple point.

8. 8 TV Violence � why so much? While TV violence is generally not highly regarded, it makes up for this by grabbing a greater diversity of viewers. TV violence, like TV sex, especially grabs younger viewers. Younger viewers are a key demographic to corporations because they tend to be spenders, not savers. They generally make ideal consumers. The potential diversity of viewers is relevant to the ultimate goal of consumer capitalism � to create a mass consumer base.

9. 9 TV Violence � why so much? To create a mass consumer base, corporate television has developed a least-cost marketing formula for reaching and massifying a diverse public.

10. 10 The Mass Marketing Formula Mass marketing television programs requires looking for the lowest common denominator themes. These are themes that everyone � regardless of age or ethnicity � can understand. Two themes are universally understood by all people: sex and violence.

11. 11 The Mass Marketing Formula Commercial TV portrays lots of violence because formula violence is readily understood by nearly everyone � even those who don�t speak the language. According to the producer of Die Hard 2 �Everyone understands an action movie. If I tell a joke, you may or may not get it. But if a bullet goes through the window we all know how to hit the floor, no matter the language.�

12. 12 The Mass Marketing Formula The basic motive of media conglomerates is to forge a global assembly line of mass culture. They emphasize themes that people can understand or relate to across cultures, even though most specific groups tend to prefer culture-specific content. To industry, subcultural specificity is costly. It is cheaper to look for lowest common denominator themes that sell across cultures. This is the nature of the mass media. Their mass-profits agenda is to break down most subcultural differences, replacing them with mass habits.

13. 13 The Mass Marketing Formula Therefore, it is inaccurate to say that the public �wants� violence. It is more accurate to say that violence is more universally understood by the widest array of potential viewers. Note: research suggests that those who watch lots of TV tend to be less selective over program content. These viewers are at risk of addiction to television as escapist behavior. They risk becoming �teleholics.�

14. 14 The Mass Marketing Formula Supporting diversity of cultures is more expensive to industry than imposing monolithic lowest common denominator themes. This is one of the reasons why local cultures erode in the face of global media empires. Action-movies exploit sex and violence, violence especially. Action-movies are universally understood. Even young children understand action-movie violence.

15. 15 Action-movies are the #1 U.S. movie export. Action-Movie Killings by Movie

16. 16 How much violence is on TV? George Gerbner directed the Cultural Indicators Project at the University of Pennsylvania. They did extensive research from the 1960s thru the 1990s. By 1994, they had studied 2,816 TV programs and 34,882 TV characters. They found that the TV is on about 7 hours per day on average and the average viewer watches at least 2 hours per day (children too). The average TV viewer witnessed 21 criminals per week committing an average of 150 acts of violence, including 15 murders (not counting cartoons or news).

17. 17 How much violence is on TV? They found that there had been a stable pattern over the last 30 years (thru 1994) in primetime shows that depicted white, middle class males as the dominant characters who have power. They were less likely to be the victim of violence and more likely to use violence for �good� rather than �evil� purposes.

18. 18 How much violence is on TV? While the TV heroes tended to be white middle class males, TV victims tended to be women, children, the poor, seniors, and minorities. TV villains tended to be young adult males, ethnic minorities, or the mentally ill. Of all the main TV characters, 52% were involved in violence in any given week.

19. 19 What is the overall message? 1. The world is a mean and dangerous place (the mean world syndrome). Viewers feel vulnerable. More on this later. 2. White middle class males are �the good guys�. 3. Young minority males are often �the bad guys�. 4. Women, children, seniors, the poor, and minorities are often the victims. Conclusion: TV depictions of violence reinforce the status-quo pecking orders of society, favoring the dominant groups.

20. 20 It�s not just quantity, it�s the quality of the violence. TV violence is qualitatively different from the violence found in the historical literature. Not all violence is alike. In some contexts violence can be a legitimate cultural expression used to symbolize important moral themes. Example: Shakespeare relied on the theme of murder and violence to reveal the tragic costs of deadly compulsions. Tragic violence is common in historical mythologies.

21. 21 Commercial TV Violence Commercial violence, however, tends to be �happy violence.� Happy violence is presented as hip or cool and is usually sanitized to lead to a happy ending. Tragic violence is largely censored by commercial television outside of the news. This is because the goal of commercial TV is to deliver the audience to the next commercial. The audience must be in a receptive mood. Happy violence is used to entertain - not to upset - the �consumer.� People are more likely to consume when they are not upset or provoked into introspective thinking.

22. 22 What are the effects of violence on TV or in the commercial media? Those who watch TV 3 hours or more per day see much more violence - and they are susceptible to forming long term assumptions about the real world that mirror what they have seen on TV. To Gerbner, TV violence cultivates long term assumptions about how the real world operates for heavy TV watchers. His model is known as cultivation theory. The cultivation theory asserts that heavy viewers' attitudes are cultivated primarily by what they watch on television.

23. 23 The Mean World Syndrome Gerbner argued that long term regular exposure to violent TV tends to cause people to feel that they are living in a mean and dangerous world � the mean world syndrome.

24. 24 The Mean World Syndrome: Heavy TV viewers tend to� 1. Be more fearful about society and crime. 2. Buy more guns and protective devices. 3. Be more aggressive themselves. 4. Be more desensitized to violence. 5. Support right-wing political platforms favoring more jails and harsher punishments.

25. 25 The Effects of Media Violence There have been more than 3000 studies of media violence, with about 300 of these studies being quite extensive. The research points to three basic effects: 1. Aggressor effect. 2. Victim effect. 3. Desensitization.

26. 26 The Aggressor Effect Watching violence teaches viewers via observational learning how to perform violence. This is especially true for children, who model what they have seen. The Columbine high school massacre (1999) was largely modeled from watching violent content in various commercial media. It may also be that heavy viewers of violence tend to become aggressive themselves because they learn to distrust and suspect strangers � they distrust young minority males especially.

27. 27 The Aggressor Effect Finally, observing violence that has been rewarded (the violent good guy usually gets a reward) promotes the belief that aggression is an appropriate way to solve problems. Media heroes are role models. We learn to see their violent style of problem solving as appropriate. We learn to see their weapons as �good.�

28. 28 The Victim Effect Media violence promotes the fear that one will become a victim of violence. A prevailing fear culture of violence permeates American culture. This fear culture is nurtured by the commercial media, and it is exploited by politicians catering to right-wing solutions that compromise citizen rights in the name of law and order and security. Women especially are conditioned to fear victimization by the commercial media. Parents are conditioned to be afraid to let their children play outside. Recall the Mean World Syndrome.

29. 29 The Desensitization Effect Constant exposure to media violence is associated with becoming somewhat numb or desensitized to violence. It now takes extremely graphic violence to produce the �pop effect� so often desired by male adolescent audiences who have been regularly exposed to violence. This helps explain why video games are progressively more graphically violent.

30. 30 Long and Short term Effects of Media Violence The effects of TV violence are both long term and short term. Long term effects include the mean world syndrome, the aggressor effect, the victim effect, and the desensitization effect. Short term effects include 1. Observational learning, especially for children, about about violent techniques and social appropriateness. Children imitate what they have seen. 2. Heightened emotionality and increased adrenaline puts people into an excited state. This is an immediate positive reinforcement.

31. 31 The Quantity of Violence Matters Those who are frequent and regular viewers of TV are significantly more likely to suffer from exposure to violence in the media. George Gerbner found that those who average 3 or more hours of TV viewing per day are at risk. Redundancy of violence produces subconscious effects, one of which is desensitization. Repeated exposure to guns in the media has normalized Americans to their presence. We are no longer shocked to see them used.

32. 32 The Quality of Violence Matters 1. Level of realism. Cartoons are less realistic than an action movie. 2. If the violence is associated with positive reinforcement. If a positive role model uses violence, or is rewarded for using violence. 3. Whether the viewer identifies with the hero or the villain (anti-heroes), both of whom are typically males. 4. The extent to which the story or character is relevant to the viewer. The commercial media rely upon stereotypes in order to assure relevance.

33. 33 Who is most likely to be affected by TV violence? Heavy TV viewers. The poor and working class, partly because they spend more time watching TV. They also tend to be less educated, and are therefore likely to be more impressionable. Those who are young and/or immature. Boys. Most media violence role models are men. In American culture, masculinity and aggression are tied together. It is a simple step to tie violence to masculinity. Those who have never become media-aware, or developed a critical awareness of the media.

34. 34 Whose fault is it? Producers of TV violence like to argue that they are simply giving the audience what it wants. Most audiences DON�T want much violence. Also, television is not a free market where audiences/consumers pull the strings. Television is big business. It is run by oligopolies with tremendous ability to dictate TV content. Studies of TV ratings reveal that ratings are inaccurate indicators of popularity. Ratings are best determined by The time of the program The lead-in program What else is or is not on another channel

35. 35 Whose fault is it? TV violence cannot be properly understood as being driven by the force of audience demand. Rather it is driven by the force of centralized mass production of lowest common denominator themes in the interest of massification and mass profits. In commercial TV, commercial concerns outweigh the public interest.

36. 36 Whose fault is it? Large media conglomerates have imposed their formulas of �happy violence� and �happy sex� on the channels they own because this is what pleases sponsors more than audiences. This is why talk radio became so right-wing, too. It is driven by private interests, not the public concern. We are getting less diversity of viewpoints as we get bigger oligopolies. The same corporation dictates the content of many channels, and it has chosen to emphasize happy violence and happy sex out of its own self interest.

37. 37 Who makes media policy in the U.S.? The usual question, �does TV violence incite real-life violence?� obscures a deeper issue. Behind the problem of TV violence is the critical issue of �who makes cultural policy and on whose behalf?� This question is rarely asked in the U.S. Media images and messages in the U.S. are almost entirely determined by powerful private media corporations, with little public input.

38. 38 We need to ask fundamental questions about the media: Who are the storytellers in American culture? What is their underlying purpose? What do they gain from the stories they tell? How can we assure that diverse and alternative stories will be told, even if they lack �selling power�? To what extent does the public have the right to participate in making decisions about which stories are told?

39. 39 Possible legal reforms: Allow more public input. Reform legislation to protect citizens from excessive violence and commercialism, and to assure educational content. The 1990 Children's Television Act required more educational content for kids on Saturday mornings. The conglomerates responded by labeling �The Jetsons� and �G.I. Joe� as educational content. Enforce the anti-trust laws. Very unlikely, given the lobbying power of the conglomerates on both sides of the political aisle.

40. 40 Where do we go from here? Currently, there are 4 basic social policy approaches to responding to television violence being discussed. 1. Laissez faire. Do nothing. 2. Total ban on TV violence. This violates the First Amendment. 3. Limit TV violence to certain times. The FCC encourages this and has established the post 10pm slot for all broadcast stations for risqu� content. 4. The V-Chip. Great potential, but currently the V-Chip is programmed by private industry, not public citizens. Even so, it basically works if parents use it. Parents need more information and education.

41. 41 End