Essay On Effects Of Violence On Media

As television watching increased severely over the past half-century, it also became more violent. In 1969 the National Commission on the causes and prevention of violence indicated that ‘The preponderance of the available research evidence strongly suggests…that violence in television programs can and does have adverse effects upon audiences’ (cited in Berkowitz, 1993, p.199.) Since that time, television violence has increased largely. Research reports in 1970, published that children has seen over 11,000 murders on television by the age of 14. More recent researches and reports have demonstrated that now, the average child sees more than 100,000 violent crimes on television every year and about 200,000 crimes when they reach their teens.

The main finding from randomized experiments on this topic is that youths who are often exposed to media violence act and display more physical aggressive behavior, aggressive thoughts and aggressive emotions than those children who are not exposed to it. Short-term effects of exposure to media violence are due to three main aspects which are (a) priming processes, (b) excitation processes, and (c) imitation of specific behaviors. Priming is a process in which exposure to one stimulus (the locus representing an external observed stimulus) influences a response to another stimulus representing a cognition, emotion or behavior. This means that the external stimulus can be linked to cognition or to something inherently neutral. Thus, when media violence primes aggressive acts, aggression is more likely. Excitation transfer and general arousal are also two main factors that lead to aggressive behavior. For example, right after an exciting media presentation, such excitation transfer could cause higher aggressive responses to provocation. Imitation is the third short term process. (The Cambridge handbook of violent behavior and aggression