Topic Always Connected: Key insights in youth, media and technology
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Minor Children & Media
Media Literacy and Parental Mediation
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Plugged In
Chapter 7: media and violence
Copycat crimes
Copycat crime
= a crime inspired by similar crime in the past or in media
ex: Media suggested that Adam Lanza, who shot and killed twenty-six people,
used the
first-person-shooter game Combat Arms to practice “head shots”.
Are copycat crimes evidence of media effects?
To establish causality between media use and crimes, the circumstances must meet
at least two criteria:
1. The person’s exposure to media violence must predate his or her criminal
behaviour.
2. All other possible explanations for that behaviour can be excluded.
Criminal behaviour is usually the result of a complex combination of factors, including,
for example, genetic predisposition, neglect, and exposure to violence in early
childhood.
Research on media violence and aggression
Aggression
= refers to aggressive thoughts and feelings.
ex: desire to punch someone or take revenge.
Aggressive behaviour
= refers to a display of physical or verbal behaviour meant to hurt someone.
ex: fighting, cursing, or bullying.
Laboratory and field experiments
There are two types of experiments: laboratory experiments and field experiments.
Laboratory experiments
Researchers measure aggression by observing the subjects while playing with their
dolls or other children. Sometimes, they use instruments that allows the subjects to
send a loud blast or noise to someone wearing headphones.
Have a high internal validity
- The ability to establish a causal relationship
Lack external validity, since it takes place in an artificial environment
- The ability to generalize to settings typical of everyday life.
Field experiment/ quasi-experiment
Field researchers often work with existing groups in their own environments, for
example, with pupils at a school. These experiments are conducted in a subjects’
natural environment, giving the results a relatively high degree of external validity.
Yet it can never lead to definitive conclusions about causality, which results in a lower
internal validity.
,Correlational research: the chicken-or-egg dilemma
Correlational studies assume that if media violence stimulates aggression, then
children exposed to high levels of media violence will be more aggressive than those
who are not.
- External validity is similar to that of field experiments
- Internal validity is minimal
Correlational studies can establish a relationship between media violence and
aggressive behaviour, but they cannot demonstrate that media violence causes
aggressive behaviour.
- It is impossible to determine which came first – media violence or aggressive
behaviour (the chicken-or-egg dilemma)
Causal-correlational, or longitudinal, research
Involves evaluating children’s media use and aggressive behaviour, but the
measurements are conducted at two or more time points. -> researchers can better
establish whether media violence exposure may be a precursor to or a consequence
of aggressive behaviour.
- Internal validity stronger but still, it remains possible that unmeasured third
variables (ex. a child’s temperament) may explain potential associations
between media violence and aggression.
Meta-analyses
Studies that use statistical techniques to summarize the results of numerous
experimental and correlational studies.
First large meta-analysis (Haejung Paik and George Comstock)
Encompassed 217 empirical studies.
Found a correlation of r=.31 between watching violent movies or television shows and
aggressive behaviour.
Correlation between media violence and criminally violent behaviour
In Paik and Comstock’s meta-analysis, the correlation was smaller than that between
media violence and aggressive behaviour (r=.06). This result was replicated in a
meta-analysis by Joanne Savage and Christina Yancey.
- In their study the meta-analytical correlations ranged from r=.06 in experiments
to r=.12 in longitudinal research.
- They concluded that the relationship between media violence and criminally
violent behaviour has yet to be established, but that this does not mean that
such a relationship does not exist.
Minor effects, major consequences
Statistically small-to-moderate effect
= there is a small-to-moderate chance of media violence exposure causing aggressive
behaviour.
- Based on earlier research it’s estimated that 5-10 percent of children are
vulnerable to depictions of violence in media (effects like hyperactivity,
creativity, fear, empathy, or impulsive behaviour are not included in the
estimated percentages).
May present two different groups of youth:
1. Those who may be strongly influenced by media violence
2. Those who may be less affected or unaffected
, While the group that is strongly influenced is small, it is a minority that must be taken
seriously; in absolute terms, you could be talking about millions of children worldwide.
Theories: why media violence can lead to aggression
Social cognitive theory (Albert Bandura)
Children learn behaviour in two ways: by direct experience and by observing others.
According to this theory, aggressive behaviour, like other behaviour, is learned.
Social environment
Young children try out behaviours in their social environment and learn which ones
are considered appropriate and which are not.
ex. they learn that they can bang away with a hammer in the backyard, but
can’t hit their sibling
with that same hammer.
Observing behaviours
Children can also learn aggressive behaviour by observing other people’s behaviour
and its consequences.
ex. a child sees his brother kick the family dog. When the father punishes the
brother, the child
learns that it’s wrong to kick dogs. A different child sees his brother kick the
family dog while his
friends around him laugh at the yelping dog; that child will acquire a very
different set of values.
Social cognitive theory (previously known as social learning theory) (1960)
Bandura developed and tested his theory in the “Bobo doll: experiments.
The bobo doll experiment
Bandura had a group of preschool-age children watch a movie showing an adult
punching and kicking a clownish Bobo doll. Bandura divided the pre-schoolers into
three groups:
1. Saw the adult male in the movie being rewarded for his aggressive deeds
2. Saw the man being punished by being smacked with a rolled-up magazine
3. Saw the man was neither punished nor rewarded for his aggressive behaviour.
Afterward, all children were allowed to play with the Bobo doll.
- The children in the rewarder condition imitated more aggressive acts than the
children who had seen the man being punished and those who had seen the
man that experienced no consequences.
Bandura’s updated theory (1980)
Bandura placed a greater emphasis on youth’s cognitive and self-regulatory
processes. While still focussing on the importance of rewarded behaviours, the
updated version of social cognitive theory suggests that:
- Children’s individual traits (ex their interest in the content of media, their
general level of aggression)
- Social environment (ex. attitude towards aggression in the child’s home and
peer environment)
Play an equally crucial role in predicting whether a child is likely to imitate rewarded
media violence.
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