Exposure to Media Violence

The relationship between the viewing of violence in such forms as video games and television shows has been widely contested and thoroughly researched. Various conclusions can be drawn from multiply sources, though as of yet there has been no one final conclusion as to the nature of the relationship. Some research has studied how media violence can affect other aspects of behaviour, such as memory (Bushman 1988), or the long-term effects that it can have from early childhood, to adolescence (Huesmann, Eron, Klein, Brice & Fischer (1983). If it was proved that exposure to media violence increased the likelihood of aggressive behaviour, it may force a re-evaluation of what young children are exposed to during early childhood.

Research done on the topic of media violence is widespread and variable, with many different approaches and theories. One example of such research focuses on the different effect violent video games have on aggressive behaviours in a controlled laboratory environment to those who are exposed to violence in video games in real life and the effect this has on aggressive traits, such as Ferguson et al. (2008). This experimental design focused on the direct link between viewing violent material in an animated game and then the aggressiveness of the response when told to deliver a loud noise to an opponent that has answered a question in a staged test incorrectly. The chosen participants were volunteers studying at an undergraduate level at university, this sample was 45.5% male and may not be representative of the population as the participants chose to participate and were not selected at random, thus possibly limiting the application of the findings.

To prove the hypothesis that; “Exposure to video game vi...

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...rough a search in Google Scholar of keywords “effect of media violence on aggression” and selected specifically because of the inclusion of other emotions such as fear, and anger, and the inclusion of the written word, rather than visually violent stimuli.

6. Corinne David-Ferdon, Marci Feldman Hertz, (2007) Electronic Media, Violence, and Adolescents: An Emerging Public Health Problem, Journal of Adolescent Health, Volume 41, Issue 6, Pages S1-S5, ISSN 1054-139X, 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2007.08.020.)

-This article was located through a Google Scholar search for keywords “media violence on aggression”. I chose this entry specifically because the research focused on adolescents and how the demographic is being effected not only by media violence, but the ease of which technology is aiding in the exposure of violence from the media, and from uploaded home videos.