Influence of Violence in the Media

Sociology:

Using material from the study of violence in the media assess the view that the media has a direct and immediate influence on their audience

Many people believe that films and television can have an influence on audiences. They may mostly believe this because of the Jamie Bulger and Suzanne Capper murders, where the film Child's Play has been mentioned in relation to both cases though there is no evidence that the film was watched in either murders.

There have been a huge number of research studies that have examined possible relationships between viewing and behaviour. Well over 1,000 research studies have been undertaken and yet no satisfactory consensus has emerged.

Bandura did an experiment with an aim to show that imitative learning could take place despite the absence of reinforcement and award. In one experiment he used a film showing an inflatable doll being jumped, kicked and sat upon. The nursery children who watched the film displayed much more imitative aggression than those who had not seen it. It was also seen that the children who had seen the film were still imitating the aggressive responses when re-observed six months later.

Another experiment that showed that media could have a direct influence on its audience is also by Bandura where psychology students were put into six groups. The researcher angered one group, one was not, one was shown a film clip, which included a fight, one a film of canal-boating, and one group given an explanation of the violence in the film which justified it and one which said it was unjustified. The experiment was concluded that the group who were told that media aggression was justified were most likely to lead to further aggression.

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...ibition and control in "real life." Finally the sample sizes have been criticised, as have the ways in which the experimental and control groups were matched, making it impossible to know to what extent the differences observed reflected real differences between the different groups.

There is also criticisms to the social surveys as both studies failed to take into account of such variables as sex, age and ethnic origin. Once these are inserted, the correlations identified by the researchers tend to disappear.

Taking the material from all the evidence I think that media does not have a direct and immediate effect on its audiences as it has shown that young offenders are not watching any more violence than comparison schoolchildren. This is not to say that in extreme and rare cases people will not imitate what they see, as in the Jamie Bulger murder.