EFFECTS TRADITION
There is a vast amount of research on the 'effects' of the media,
much of it inconclusive or contradictory. Most of it relates
to television rather than film or video.
Psychologists have used different methods to investigate the effects
of the media, including laboratory experiments and studies of children
in their ordinary lives. The most famous laboratory experiments by
Bandura in the sixties involved showing young children scenes of
a man attacking a large doll with a mallet. The children's responses
when left alone with the doll and the mallet were then recorded.
Activity
What problems can you identify with this method? The children attacked
the doll in the same way as the man when left alone with it but if
the sequence showed the man being punished they were less likely
to attack it themselves. However, a sequence showing twice as much
violence made the children less aggressive. Can you account for these
results?
Some laboratory studies have suggested that when violence is seen
to be justified or rewarded people are more likely to imitate it.
Other studies suggest that people are made anxious rather than aggressive
by scenes of gratuitous violence. It is also claimed that real-life
violence has a stronger effect than fiction.
A number of researchers have criticized laboratory studies, for
example Gauntlett (1995). They claim it is an unnatural environment,
and the material shown often lacks context and story and so doesn't
duplicate the real experience of watching television. People may
behave more aggressively in the laboratory simply because they are
aroused or excited by the film content - this could equally happen
if they were played white noise. Also people involved in experiments
often behave as they imagine the experimenter wants them to do. The
strongest criticism is that it makes no sense to detach responses
to specific scenes from the meaning of the film as a whole.
Another method, used in a 1978 study of 1500 adolescent boys by
Belson, is to ask young people to rate their level of aggression
and then find out what sort of TV programmes they enjoyed. It is
often found that aggressive children like more violent programmes.
This study found the high viewers of violent TV were more likely
to commit aggressive acts than low viewers. However, there were contradictions
in these results too, as low viewers were more aggressive than moderate
viewers were. It is impossible in such studies to say if violent
material causes violence, or an aggressive personality creates a
preference for violent material, though the latter view has been
confirmed more credibly.
Activity
Try devising an experiment of your own to test the 'effects' of
the media. What problems do you come up against?
Look at the contradictory research results (do some reading of your
own and use other ideas from this pack if they are relevant). What
predictions would this research make for the effects of viewing of:
- a news item about war
- a violent action film
- a western
- a horror film
- a crime documentary
- a gangster thriller.
CONTENT ANALYSIS
This method counts and codes violent incidents in the media according
to the level of threat and type of interaction (e.g. verbal threat,
threat with knife, physical assault etc.) to try and find out how
much there is. The method is most frequently applied to television.
Recent content analysis of British television showed that the level
of violence had remained about the same over the last ten years.
The technique is often used to create alarmist headlines - for example
about the number of murders or violent assaults witnessed by children
before they reach a certain age.
Activity
In a small group or as a class conduct a small-scale content analysis
of violence on television. To do this you will need to decide when
you are going to watch (daytime, early evening, post watershed TV)
and for how long. (For example you may decide to monitor from 4 -
5 on two days, from 6 - 7 on two days, from 9 -10 on two days and
do this for three weeks.) Write a code for the sorts of violent actions
you are going to record (verbal threat, threat of punch, actual punch,
kick, knife threat, stabbing, gun threat, shooting etc.). Watch an
extract together to ensure that you all agree on the way the code
is to be applied. Think about what you are going to do about issues
such as cartoon violence.
Compile and analyze your results.
What were the problems you experienced?
This method has also been criticized, for simplifying, (Gauntlett
(1995). It is stated that it is not the quantity of violent acts
but their meaning that is important to the audience. For example
some content analysis has rated cartoons or routine police series
as 'violent'. The method simplifies both the way films and television
show violence and the way the audience understands it.
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