How Violence Is Portrayed In The Media

The relationship amid media portrayal of crime and succeeding violent behavior is actually tremendously complex. It is true that there are some numbers of interacting variables that actually play a significant role in determining who really will be affected as well as by what material and also in what method as said by Dowler, K. (2011). The background whereby the violence is actually portrayed as well as

Television is the source of the most broadly shared images and messages in history; it is the mainstream of the common symbolic environment into which children are born and which has a major part to play in our lives. One can argue that media violence contribute towards social violence where the effects place a huge impact in ones being. Television violence is not only a form of media violence; there are other significant forms of media that contribute to media violence which are computer games, comic books and music. In this essay I will compare the theoretical perspectives and methodologies of at least three different approaches to the study of the effects of media violence and how effective they are in establishing a link between

A sixteen-year-old boy sits on the couch and watches a horror movie. Suddenly, a scene where a man stabs a woman emerges on the television screen. The boy is not distressed by this scene because he is used to witnessing a great deal of violence before. He just learned a new idea and increased his criminal expertise. As a result, horror movies inspire copycat crimes. Copycat crimes are defined as those that are “inspired, motivated or modeled after acts that have occurred before in the media” (“Understanding”). The crimes themselves either mirror the inspiring acts or are simply based upon them. Violence and criminal behavior shown in horror movies affect people psychologically and physically. Watching violence in the media desensitizes people to the world around them and enables them to become more familiar with violence and crime. One may conclude that horror movies do not affect them because they watch horror for fun, however, people are unconsciously affected by watching horror movies. Although most people believe horror movies do not impact them, horror movies inspire people to commit copycat crimes in real life because the violence portrayed in the media psychologically damages people and makes them more aware of violence.

It is evident that tensions between truth and representation exist in all manner of situations. It can be argued that such tensions as represented through media are more influential than others.

In America, violence has always been an integral part of national culture. Crime and bloodshed, euphemized through use of “action” (this has a source) plots, are glorified both on and off screen. The more disturbing the act of violence, the more enthralled the public seems. The most prolific of crimes, those committed by infamous serial killers, inspire the most attention. As said by Jeff Lindsay, creator of the book series that inspired the wildly-popular television program, Dexter, “We’re sickened and disgusted, but we need to know. And the more we know about the scene, the more we really are horrified” (“Sympathy for the Devils”). Violence, especially committed by this special class of felons, is enthralling. News reports play a role in this strange attraction, as it is through the news that people even have knowledge of such killers, but the evolution in the “serial killer genre” (Lindsay, “Sympathy for the Devils”) of film and television helps to desensitize people to the gruesome murders that are committed. This begs the question of whether this disturbing trend should be stopped, lest the American “culture of violence” (this has a source) continues to grow stronger. Through news reports, film, and television, criminals are constantly romanticized through use of sympathetic characterization and gratuitous depictions of their crimes, which lends to peoples’ incr

I have found that there has been talk and theories on whether media has an effect on the ideas and behaviors of its viewers since media has caught up with technology. It was only until relatively recently though that there was thoughts that the media can cause someone to present a specific behavior. Usually this talk is in the form of media causing someone to have violent tendencies, such as violent videogames causing violence in the players. I thought it might be better to look at this in a different perspective to see how media makes people view crime.

     There are many Psychological concepts that contribute to people’s deviance such as their personality, containment, and also through learning, which is observation of others. Television violence influences behavior through observational learning, by reducing social constraints, and by arousing aggressive tendencies. External social control is the attempt of others to control one’s behavior, however, it may not be just control but also influence. Although the viewer may not blindly mimic violent acts portrayed on television, although it is all possible, many factors can contribute to what dictates a viewers actions. One method by which the media may promote violence is through imitation. Imitation includes more than simply applying a crime technique the criminal learned by watching television. Fictional treatments of crime can inspire and empower potential criminals.

​Over the many years media has had a tremendous impact on society. Media has been responsible for shaping the culture for generations through music, movies and television. It seems logical that since the media has an influence on society’s norms when the media promotes violence and crime the audiences become more likely to imitate those behaviors. The media has been known to contribute to the violent culture through music, art, television and movies (action, suspense and horror); Movies and music where the dominant violent roles were occupied by men and when they involved women they were often accomplices or accessories to the crime. Although they may be amusing they are also exposing the

- Sex and and violence portrayed in media has become an important topic of how it affects the minds of individuals. There have been several debates involving whether more censorship is necessary. Sex and violence are very similar in the media however they can be treated very differently.

Violence in the media has become an overlying and controversial issue. On one hand, some people feel that Hollywood is becoming excessive with violence and should tone it down or remove it altogether due to the newfound correlation between fantasy violence and behavioral issues. Others note that movie producers shouldn't be held to blame for the issues of unsupervised kids and that aggressive tendencies cannot be simplified to a simple cause and effect relationship. Both authors of the passage work on each others' claims by arguing and correcting their proposals. For example, the second author uses a firsthand experience in order to protect her claims while the first author regards this as "flawed reasoning when it comes to violence in Hollywood

The first point that will be discussed in this essay is that media portrays violent crime as the most common and greatest through to our society, when in reality official crime statistics indiciate that most crime is infact non-violent. It is acknowledged worldwide that the media’s representations of crime can be misleading and damaging as they often portray a distorted view of events (Goddard, 1999)

From 2000 to 2013 there were a total of 160 active shooter incidents and that number is increasing every year. The main reason shootings have become so prominent is because the media has oversaturated the news with pictures of the shooter, their life stories, and their histories of mental illness. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Deitz has repeatedly told the media to localize mass shootings to the area effected because the more they fan the flames across the nation of potential shooters, the greater likelihood that another mass shooting will occur in the following weeks (“Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe 25/03/09”). If the media continues to overflow the minds of their viewers with nothing but 24/7 coverage of mass shooters, then we are increasing the likelihood of someone committing such an atrocity. We need to stop the media from extensively covering these stories of men and woman shooting up the public in order to keep the peace.

According to E.F Dubow and L.S Miller, authors of Television Violence and Aggressive Behavior: Social Science Perspectives on Television, “Ignoring consequences of violence (including the pain of victims, the victims’ families, and the families of perpetrators) or depicting the consequences unreasonably sets in motion a destructive encoding process.” There could be found a direct correlation between aggressive behavior and violence witnessed on television. The more violence watched, the more desensitized a viewer would become. Dubow and Miller further state “viewers become [fearful] and begin to identify with the aggressors and the aggressors’ solutions to various problems.” It is this identification that causes violent behaviors to become encoded in the person’s mind when exposed to repeated violent acts. The person may then come to see the world as a bleak and sinister place. Along with this

Today, media take a major part of our lives, shape our society and create reality. The Banning violence in the media is an efficient approach the government should take to handle the growing violence in our society. I argue that the US Government should make a law that bans violence in the media. The law needs to limit broadcasting of violence content at times and places that kids are likely to view, and enforce the use of personal code in TV which allows individuals to control the media they consume.

It has been said that violence in the real world becomes “much more acceptable after you 've seen infinitely greater violence on the screen" (Maslin 1982). Seeking to test that hypothesis, researchers have sought to find how long it takes for individuals to become desensitized to violence in television. As intimate partner violence accounts for 15% of all crime, researchers have sought to understand the causes behind the violence. Linz, Donnerstein, and Penrod operationalized violent television exposure by using five slasher films that were found to directly contain violence against women. The men in the study were tested before and after each film on their perceptions and reactions to the on-screen violence. It was found that desensitization increased as exposure to the films increased. After the film viewing, the participants were asked to watch a criminal trial where the victim was a domestic violence women. After hearing the case, the men who had watched the slasher films did not express as much sympathy towards the victim as the men who had not seen the film.