Impact of Violent Media on Social Behaviour: An Analysis

“There is little, if any, evidence to support the idea that that there is a direct relationship between exposure to violent media content and violent social behaviour‟. Discuss this statement with reference to the strengths and weaknesses of “media effects” research.

Human life has always contained some brutality, murderousness and violence. Recent researches link violence among viewers, young people especially, to the media violent substances. Albert Bandura, as an example, accused media for its direct stimulation of offenders to behave violently. Consider in contrast, George Gerbner argues that media has long term and lasting impacts on viewer’s lives rather than mere immediate direct effect. In this essay, this academic argument about media

Long-term effect occurred when the child 's behavioural patterns derived mostly from media in a process of cognitions supporting aggression. On the other hand, the short-term effects, which rely on "already existing aggressive behavioural scripts" (Bushman and Huesmann, 2006: p349). Nonetheless, unlike this clarification, other researchers like Stone and McCombs (1981) studied the agendas of Time and Newsweek observing the receivers 6 months prior and after the published works. They found that "4 months was the optimal span" (Gilbert and McCombs, 1986: p9). The long term effects were studied by Winter and Eyal (1981) who claimed that media impacts can last for "over a 22-year period" (Gilbert and McCombs, 1986:

Media role, mainly Television according to Gerbner is “the absorption of divergent currents into a stable and common mainstream”. In other words, mass media may involve functions and processes other than mere overt change.

In relation to one of another related study belongs to him, George Gerbner claimed that, media can reinforce violence against young people through certain patterns of presentations “images depicting children cultivate certain assumption about and behaviours towards them” (Gerbner, 1980: 239). However, children abuse as a result of deliberate depiction was not a problem-to-solve in the media agenda. “out of 63 stories a year mention children on the network evening news less than 6% or only 3 stories a year deal with child abuse” (Gerbner, 1980: 240).

Lastly, George Gerbner claimed that media can be produced in certain ways so it could affects how society works and therefore media effects studies were professionalized institutionally and globally. Moreover, he states that Television has power in terms of creating symbolic environment as the power traditional religion or formal education