CONTINUED : Ashley Heiberger:
A study was performed on one hundred undergraduate males at a university in 2006. The objective was to “test the effects of media violence exposure on blood pressure, negative affect, hostile social information processing, uncooperative behavior, and attitudes toward health risk behaviors among young men varying in lifetime violence exposure within the home and community” (Brady, Matthews). The conclusion was that those young men “developed negative attitudes and behaviors relating to health” (Brady, Matthews). However, children who grow up in an abusive household “may become more physiologically aroused by media violence exposure,” whereas all kids have that chance of becoming outwardly negative (Brady, Matthews). Since 2006, more violent and better graphic video games have been released; therefore, a chance in more negative outcomes.
View clip Grand Theft Auto (GTA): WATCH FROM 2:00-4:00
There are cases online about tweens and young adults who have copied the behavior of Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and went on shooting sprees and car thefts. Video games are specifically for audience involvement; “that is, players are much more involved in the on-screen activity than are television viewers” (Baran, Davis 203). Therefore, the player is not just moving around the character but also becoming “emotionally and psychologically interacted” (Baran, Davis 204). Will these players go out and refabricate what they are doing with the controller? Or do the players believe what most of us accept as the truth- other people are swayed by the media but not us, known as the third-person effect (Baran, Davis 11).
This resembles the hypodermic needle theory in which we covered in class. Where media puts all their ideas and information in a tube and shoot it right into the passive audience’s brain. This creates a direct effect in the audience of violent video games. There have been reports of cases where people mimic GTA. The previous study mentioned that those undergraduate men had negative attitudes towards overall health after playing GTA. But how can we point our fingers at the media when parents are the ones allowing video games inside their home? As an individual who grew up with five older siblings and around plentiful video games, I can say that I own GTA. I believe in the third-person effect because I know issues are out there but I do not believe I am the one who is affected by the video games. According to Baran and Davis, “research on violent television and film, videogames, and music reveals unequivocal evidence that media violence increases the likelihood of aggressive and violent behavior in both immediate and long-term contexts” (204). Therefore, do you believe that video games, such as GTA, increase violent behavior?
Works Cited
Baran, Stanley J, and Dennis K Davis. Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, Ferment and Future, 6th ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. Print.
Brady, Sonya S, and Karen A Matthews. “Effects of Media Violence on Health-Related Outcomes Among Young Men.” Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. American Medical Association, Apr. 2006. Web. 3 Feb. 2012. http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/160/4/341.
McQuail, Denis. Mcquail’s Reader in Mass Communication Theory. London: Sage, 2012. Print.
When you think of video games what do you think of? The young adult men waiting in line at midnight to get the new Call of Duty video game, Grand Theft Auto, or the fat geeky kid sitting behind his online façade on World of Warcraft. If you asked me 10 years ago my view of videogames would have been drastically different. Back when I grew up I started playing Super Nintendo at a young age. Playing the Aladdin video game, Donkey Kong, Super Mario and Tetris. Did those games change my mind on violence? No. You just had to conquer evil and protect the people you love, or save the princess. There was no killing, or death. Just a bit of fighting and making the person pass out. Nowadays however there is constant killing in the video game realm. In this weeks reading McQuail discusses the prevalence of media in the home. “98% of the 95 million American homes have television sets” (McQuail 399). While the majority of “young people have a game console at home, and half have a game device in their bedroom” (Baran, Davis 203). Myself included. Violence in our world has in my opinion, not increased, it is just made more publicly accessible. I know when my parents went to school if a boy was mad at another boy they would get in a fistfight in the school yard. But now the way we handle that same violence is by being bullied online, being called slurs, sending text messages, or other ways where you do not have to muster the courage to say how you feel face to face. It is the technology however, that I believe has changed bullying and made it more socially acceptable and prevalent.
ReplyDeleteIn the Media Law and Ethics class here at Quinnipiac we discussed columbine and other bullying based killings. Columbine was said to have occurred because the boys were being called “Gay” and bullied every day, and the fact that their violent video game use made them more susceptible to committing a murder. We later found out that this was not the case. The two boys who committed this horror were disturbed and suicidal, so there is no way to link it to the media itself. There was also another case we looked into about the band Slayer and its power over three teenage boys. These boys killed a young girl the exact way that the lyrics described. But just because a song is about killing and you listen to it, does not make you a killer or inclined to kill. There has to be a predisposition or inclination to these tendencies. I play Call of Duty, Saints Row and Grand Theft Auto and I would never think of doing any of these acts in real life. It is a game. And if someone cannot tell the difference between a game and the real world, well needless to say they need to get some serious help. It bothers me when people say the violence in our world, culture, and society is caused by the media, when it clearly isn’t. they are just looking for someone to blame other than their parenting. If any kid was brought up properly and has a functioning mind without murderous tendencies then we should not be worried about having them be the next Zodiac killer. Video games are not the cause for violence, and if you think they are…. Don’t play them.
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