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Violence… cr pb 3/3/06 9:47 am Page 1

I S S U E S CR I S S U E S
IN CULTURAL AND MEDIA STUDIES
S E R I E S E D I T O R : S T U A R T A L L A N
IN CULTURAL AND MEDIA STUDIES

Violence and the Media

Critical Readings:
Critical Readings
Violence and the Media
The relationship between media representations and real acts
of violence is one of the most contentious and hotly debated
issues today.This book is the first to bring together a selection
Critical Readings:
of highly influential readings that have helped to shape this area
of research. It includes key investigations of how, and with what
implications, the media portray violence in the twenty-first century.
Critical Readings: Violence and the Media contains sections
examining how media violence and its ‘effects’ have been
theorized; how media production contexts influence the
reporting and representation of violence; and how audiences
Violence and
the Media
engage with depictions of violence. Violence is analysed in
different media formats, including television, film, radio, the
news, public information campaigns, comics, video games,
popular music, photography and the internet. The readings
cover a range of perspectives, including social learning,

Weaver and Carter

desensitisation and cultivation theories, ‘no-effects’ models,
sociological, feminist and postmodern arguments. An editor’s
introduction and section introductions serve to contextualise
the readings.
Edited by C
Kay Weaver
Providing a detailed and theoretically grounded consideration
of the cultural and social significance of media violence, Critical and Cynthia Carter
Readings: Violence and the Media is an essential resource for
students of media studies, cultural studies, sociology and
communication studies.
C. Kay Weaver is Associate Professor at the
University of Waikato, New Zealand. She has published
in numerous journals and book collections and is co-
author of Violence and the Media (Open University
Press, 2003) and Women Viewing Violence (1992).
Cynthia Carter is Senior Lecturer at Cardiff
University, UK. She is the co-author of Violence and the
Media (Open University Press, 2003) and co-editor of
Critical Readings: Media and Gender (Open University
Press, 2004), Environmental Risks and the Media (2000)
and News, Gender and Power (1998).
Cover illustration: Charlotte Combe
Cover design: del norte (Leeds) Ltd

ISBN 0-335-21805-9

9 780335 218059
CRITICAL READINGS:
VIOLENCE AND THE MEDIA
 I S S U E S in CULTURAL and MEDIA STUDIES

Series editor: Stuart Allan

Published titles:
News Culture, 2nd edition Media and Audiences
Stuart Allan Karen Ross and Virginia Nightingale
Modernity and Postmodern Culture Critical Readings: Sport, Culture and the
Jim McGuigan Media
Television, Globalization and Cultural Edited by David Rowe
Identities Rethinking Cultural Policy
Chris Barker Jim McGuigan
Ethnic Minorities and the Media
Media, Politics and the Network Society
Edited by Simon Cottle
Robert Hassan
Sport, Culture and the Media, 2nd edition
David Rowe Television and Sexuality
Jane Arthurs
Cinema and Cultural Modernity
Gill Branston Identity and Culture
Chris Weedon
Compassion, Morality and the Media
Keith Tester Media Discourses
Masculinities and Culture Donald Matheson
John Beynon Citizens or Consumers
Cultures of Popular Music Justin Lewis, Sanna Inthorn and
Andy Bennett Karin Wahl-Jorgensen
Media, Risk and Science Science, Technology and Culture
Stuart Allan David Bell
Violence and the Media Museums, Media and Cultural Theory
Cynthia Carter and C. Kay Weaver Michelle Henning
Moral Panics and the Media Media Talk
Chas Critcher Ian Hutchby
Cities and Urban Cultures Critical Readings: Moral Panics and the
Deborah Stevenson Media
Cultural Citizenship Edited by Chas Critcher
Nick Stevenson
Mediatized Conflict
Culture on Display Simon Cottle
Bella Dicks
Game Cultures
Critical Readings: Media and Gender Jon Dovey and Helen W. Kennedy
Edited by Cynthia Carter and Linda
Steiner Perspectives on Global Cultures
Ramaswami Harindranath
Critical Readings: Media and Audiences
Edited by Virginia Nightingale and Understanding Popular Science
Karen Ross Peter Broks
CRITICAL READINGS:
VIOLENCE AND THE MEDIA

Edited by
C. Kay Weaver and
Cynthia Carter

OPEN UNIVERSITY PRESS

Maidenhead and New York
Open University Press
McGraw-Hill Education
McGraw-Hill House
Shoppenhangers Road
Maidenhead
Berkshire
England
SL6 2QL

email: [email protected]
world wide web: www.openup.co.uk

and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121–2289, USA

First published 2006

Copyright © C. Kay Weaver and Cynthia Carter 2006, for editorial material
and selection, © Individual authors for their chapters

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of
criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the
publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Details of such
licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained from the Copyright
Licensing Agency Ltd of 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1T 4LP.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN-10: 0 335 21805 9 (pb) 0 335 21806 7 (hb)

ISBN-13: 978 0 335 21805 9 (pb) 978 0 335 21806 6 (hb)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

CIP data applied for

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

Printed in Poland by OZGraf S.A.
www.polskabook.pl
 CONTENTS

SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi

ORIGINAL REFERENCES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOR READINGS xiii

1 | MEDIA VIOLENCE RESEARCH IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: A CRITICAL INTERVENTION 1

C. Kay Weaver and Cynthia Carter

| PART I CONCEPTUAL APPROACHES TO MEDIA VIOLENCE 27

2 | IMITATION OF FILM-MEDIATED AGGRESSIVE MODELS 30

Albert Bandura, Dorothea Ross and Sheila A. Ross

3 | TELEVISION VIOLENCE: AT A TIME OF TURMOIL AND TERROR 45

George Gerbner

4 | TEN THINGS WRONG WITH THE MEDIA ‘EFFECTS’ MODEL 54

David Gauntlett

5 | FROM BAD MEDIA VIOLENCE RESEARCH TO GOOD – A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED 67
Martin Barker and Julian Petley

6 | THE SOCIAL AMPLIFICATION OF RISK AND THE MEDIA VIOLENCE DEBATE 83

Annette Hill
vi | CRITIC AL RE ADINGS: VIOLENCE AND THE MEDIA

7 | PRIVATE SATISFACTIONS AND PUBLIC DISORDERS: FIGHT CLUB , PATRIARCHY AND THE
| POLITICS OF MASCULINE VIOLENCE 95
Henry A. Giroux

| PART II PRODUCING MEDIA VIOLENCE 109

8 | THE ROLE OF RADIO IN THE RWANDAN GENOCIDE 112

Christine L. Kellow and H. Leslie Steeves

9 | SURVIVING VIOLENCE: HILLSBOROUGH, DUNBLANE AND THE PRESS 128

Ann Jemphrey and Eileen Berrington

10 | TUPAC SHAKUR: UNDERSTANDING THE IDENTITY FORMATION OF HYPER-MASCULINITY OF A

| POPULAR HIP-HOP ARTIST 143
Derek Iwamoto

11 | IMAGINE THE TERROR OF SEPTEMBER 11 153

Medhi Semanti

12 | HORRIFIC BLINDNESS: PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES OF DEATH IN CONTEMPORARY MEDIA 159

David Campbell

13 | CYBERSTALKING AND INTERNET PORNOGRAPHY: GENDERED VIOLENCE 177

Alison Adam

| PART III REPRESENTING MEDIA VIOLENCE 193

14 | VIOLENCE IN CHILDREN’S CARTOONS: THE ROAD RUNNER AS MYTHICAL DISCOURSE 196

Douglas R. Bruce

15 | PORTRAYALS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN POPULAR HINDI FILMS 210

Srividya Ramasubramanian and Mary Beth Oliver

16 | PERSONAL APPEARANCE AS A SOCIAL PROBLEM: NEWSPAPER COVERAGE OF THE

| COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL SHOOTINGS 226
Jennifer Paff Ogle, Molly Eckman and Catherine Amoroso Leslie

17 | BETWEEN FEMININE EMPOWERMENT AND SUBJUGATION: SEXUALIZING THE VIOLENT

| FEMALE HERO IN THE BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER VIDEO GAME 244
Magdala Peixoto Labre and Lisa Duke
 CONTENTS | vii

18 | CONSTRUCTING ARABS AS ENEMIES AFTER SEPTEMBER 11: AN ANALYSIS OF SELECTED

| SPEECHES BY GEORGE W. BUSH 259
Debra Merskin

| PART IV MEDIA VIOLENCE AUDIENCES 275

19 | CHILDREN VIEWING VIOLENCE 279

David Buckingham

20 | INTERNET RESEARCH ON HATE CRIME: WHAT MAKES RACISTS ADVOCATE VIOLENCE? 289
Jack Glaser, Jay Dixit and Donald P. Green

21 | READER RESPONSES TO THE ANTI-GAY HATE CRIME STORY LINE IN DC COMICS’ GREEN
| LANTERN 304
Valerie Palmer-Mehta and Kellie Hay

22 | REVELLING IN THE GORE IN THE ROOM NEXT DOOR: VIDEO GAME VIOLENCE AND US TEEN
| CULTURE 319
Charles Piot

23 | ZERO TOLERANCE: PUBLIC RESPONSES TO A FEMINIST ANTI-SEXUAL VIOLENCE

| ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN 331
Jenny Kitzinger

24 | GLOBAL DISCOURSES OF COMPASSION: AUDIENCE REACTIONS TO NEWS REPORTS OF

| HUMAN SUFFERING 346
Birgitta Höijer

GLOSSARY 361

INDEX 369
 SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD

The body count in prime-time television entertainment, anecdotal evidence

would suggest, is on the increase. Leading the way are crime-oriented
dramas, such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Law & Order or The
Sopranos, which are remarkably popular with audiences and critics alike.
Meanwhile in the cinema, grisly films with chilling special effects regularly
top the box office – some of the most gruesome of which end up being
watched by viewers otherwise too young to see them, thanks to videos,
DVDs and the internet in the home. Why, we may be tempted to ask, is this
so? What is it about such material, with its gratuitous splatter of human
misery, that makes it so compelling? More to the point perhaps, what is it
about our everyday cultures that engenders the desire to welcome it so
warmly into our lives in the first place?
Questions such as these are easy enough to pose, of course, yet satisfac-
tory answers to them have proven surprisingly elusive over the years. In
seeking to help identify ways forward, C. Kay Weaver and Cynthia Carter’s
Critical Readings: Violence and the Media highlights a number of import-
ant contributions to this area of investigation. The Reader is divided into
four substantive sections, the first of which provides a broad introduction to
some of the influential ideas that have inspired research over the past four
decades. Together these essays elucidate several key concepts in the course
of outlining the principal terms of debate within media violence research.
The second section revolves around essays focusing on the dynamics of
media institutions – emphasizing the significance of media ownership and
regulation, among other factors – where the production of violent material
is concerned. Essays in the third section examine media content, paying
x | CRITIC AL RE ADINGS: VIOLENCE AND THE MEDIA

close attention to the ways in which violence is represented, and how such
portrayals connect with society more widely. The fourth and final section
presents essays exploring how audiences actively negotiate the contradic-
tory meanings of media violence as part of their everyday lives. Across its
breadth, then, this volume’s alignment of such a rich array of topics and
perspectives promises to help reinvigorate current thinking, pushing it
forward in new and exciting directions.
The Issues in Cultural and Media Studies series aims to facilitate a diverse
range of critical investigations into pressing questions considered to be
central to current thinking and research. In light of the remarkable speed at
which the conceptual agendas of cultural and media studies are changing,
the series is committed to contributing to what is an ongoing process of re-
evaluation and critique. Each of the books is intended to provide a lively,
innovative and comprehensive introduction to a specific topical issue from a
fresh perspective. The reader is offered a thorough grounding in the most
salient debates indicative of the book’s subject, as well as important insights
into how new modes of enquiry may be established for future explorations.
Taken as a whole, then, the series is designed to cover the core components
of cultural and media studies courses in an imaginatively distinctive and
engaging manner.
Stuart Allan
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

C. Kay Weaver would like to thank Cynthia Carter for her support, enthusi-
asm, good humour, and extraordinary energy over the years that we have
worked together. A number of people have been very generous with, vari-
ously, their friendship, advice, sustenance and entertainment during the
time that I have been involved with this book: Trena Marshall, Olive Jones,
Ann Hardy, Michele and Mutzi Schoenberger-Orgad, Liz Lake, Juliet
Roper, David McKie, Ted Zorn, Mary Simpson, Cheryl Cockburn-
Wootten, and Debra Fraser. Thanks to you all. I would like to dedicate this
Reader to Nan Seuffert, and thank her especially for her tolerance, sense of
fun, and contagious capacity for adventure.
Cynthia Carter thanks Kay Weaver for cheerfully agreeing to work on a
second book together. The 11-hour time difference between New Zealand
and the UK, and our respective back to front semesters, made coordinating
this project somewhat complicated at times. But, of course, the intellectual
challenge of putting together this Reader and the fun that we had discussing
its contents, scope, and potential contribution to media violence debates far
outweighed whatever logistical difficulties we encountered. Thanks for
being such a great co-editor, Kay. I am grateful to Geoffrey and Stuart for
their love, support, and patience with me while I was working on this
project. Thanks guys. I owe you.
We would both also like to thank Christopher Cudmore of Open Uni-
versity Press for his enthusiasm to follow up our co-authored book, Vio-
lence and the Media, with this accompanying Reader. Also at the Press,
we’re grateful to Hannah Cooper, Editorial Assistant, for dealing with all of
our changing requests for different permissions. We would also like to thank
xii | CRITIC AL RE ADINGS: VIOLENCE AND THE MEDIA

all those authors whom we contacted to ask them if they would be willing
to have their work reprinted in this volume. Regrettably, in the end, we were
unable to include all the papers we would have liked due to the exigencies of
constructing a broadly based Reader with only a limited number of words
at our disposal. To those who kindly agreed to have their chapter included,
and who worked with us to ensure that the redactions still reflected their
main arguments and conclusions, we are grateful to you for your patience
and graciousness. And, lastly, our warmest thanks to our Series Editor,
Stuart Allan. His advice, encouragement, and commitment to this project
certainly resulted in our producing a much more engaging Reader than the
one we originally had in mind.
 ORIGINAL REFERENCES AND
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOR READINGS

The authors and publishers wish to thank the following for permission to
use copyright material:
Adam, A. ‘Cyberstalking and Internet Pornography: Gender and the Gaze’,
in Ethics and Information Technology, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 133–42, © 2002,
Kluwer Academic Publishers. Reproduced with kind permission from
Springer Science and Business Media and the author.
Bandura, A., Ross, D. and Ross, S.A. ‘Imitation of Film-mediated Aggres-
sive Models’, Journal of Abnormal & Social Psychology, Vol. 66, pp. 3–11,
© 1963, American Psychological Association. Reproduced by permission of
the American Psychological Association and the first author.
Barker, M. and Petley, J. ‘Introduction: From Bad Research to Good – A
Guide for the Perplexed’, in Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate (2nd
edn), Barker, M. and Petley, J. (eds), Routledge (2001). Reproduced by
permission of the author. Originally published by Routledge in 2001.
Bruce, D.R. ‘Notes Toward a Rhetoric of Animation: The Road Runner as
Cultural Critique’, in Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol. 18,
No. 2, pp. 229–45, © 2001, Routledge. Reproduced by permission of
Routledge (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals) and the author.
Buckingham, D. ‘Children Viewing Violence’, in After the Death of Child-
hood, Polity (2000). Reproduced by permission of Polity and the author.
Campbell, D. ‘Horrific Blindness: Images of Death in Contemporary
Media’, Journal for Cultural Research, Vol. 88, No. 1, pp. 55–74, © 2004,
xiv | CRITIC AL RE ADINGS: VIOLENCE AND THE MEDIA

Routledge. Reproduced by permission of the author. Originally published

by Routledge in 2004.
Gauntlett, D. ‘Ten Things Wrong with the Media “Effects” Model’, © 2005,
David Gauntlett. Reproduced by permission of the author.
Gerbner, G. ‘Television Violence: At a Time of Turmoil and Terror’, in
Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text-Reader (2nd edn.), Dines, G and
Humez, J.M. (eds), © 2002, Sage. Reproduced by permission of Sage and
the author.
Giroux, H.A. ‘Private Satisfactions and Public Disorders: Fight Club,
Patriarchy, and the Politics of Masculine Violence’, in Public Spaces, Private
Lives: Democracy Beyond 9/11, Rowman & Littlefield, © 2002, Henry
Giroux. Reproduced by permission of the author.
Glaser, J., Dixit, J. and Green, D.P. ‘Studying Hate Crime with the Internet:
What Makes Racists Advocate Racial Violence?’, Journal of Social Issues,
Vol. 58, No. 1, pp. 177–93, © 2002, Blackwell. Reproduced by permission of
Blackwell Publishing and the authors.
Hill, A. ‘Media Risks: The Social Amplification of Risk and the Media
Violence Debate’, Journal of Risk Research, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 209–25, ©
2001, Routledge. Reproduced by permission of Routledge and the author.
Höijer, B. ‘The Discourse of Global Compassion: The Audience and the
Media Reporting of Human Suffering’, Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 26,
No. 4, pp. 513–31, © 2004, Sage. Reproduced by permission of Sage
Publication Ltd and the author.
Iwamoto, D. ‘Tupac Shakur: Understanding the Identity Formation of
Hyper-Masculinity of a Popular Hip-Hop Artist’, The Black Scholar, Vol.
33, No. 2, pp. 44–9, © 2003, Black World Foundation. Reproduced by
permission of Black World Foundation and the author.
Jemphrey, A. and Berrington, E. ‘Surviving the Media: Hillsborough, Dun-
blane and the Press’, Journalism Studies, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 469–83, ©
2000, Routledge. Reproduced by permission of Routledge (http://
www.tandf.co.uk/journals) and the authors.
Kellow, C.L and Steeves, H.L. ‘The Role of Radio in the Rwandan Geno-
cide’, Journal of Communication, Vol. 48, No. 3, pp. 107–28, © 1998,
Oxford University Press. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University
Press and the authors.
Kitzinger, J. ‘The Zero Tolerance Campaign: Responses to a Feminist
 ORIGINAL REFERENCES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOR RE ADINGS | xv

Initiative’, in Framing Abuse: Media Influence and Public Understanding of

Sexual Violence Against Children, Pluto (2004). Reproduced by permission
of Pluto and the author.
Labre, M.P. and Duke, L. ‘ “Nothing Like a Brisk Walk and a Spot of
Demon Slaughter to Make a Girl’s Night”: The Construction of the Female
Hero in the Buffy Video Game’, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Vol.
28, No. 2, pp. 138–56, © 2004, Sage. Reproduced by permission of Sage
Publications and the authors.
Merskin, D. ‘The Construction of Arabs as Enemies: Post-September 11
Discourse of George W. Bush’, Mass Communication & Society, Vol. 7,
No. 2, pp. 157–75, © 2004, Lawrence Erlbaum. Reproduced by permission
of Lawrence Erlbaum and the author.
Ogle, J.P., Eckman, M. and Leslie, C.A. (2003) ‘Appearance Cues and the
Shootings at Columbine High: Construction of a Social Problem in the
Print Media’, Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 73, No. 1, pp. 1–27, © 2003, Black-
well. Reproduced by permission of Blackwell Publishing and the authors.
Palmer-Meta, V. and Hay, K. ‘The Anti-gay Hate Crime Story Line in DC
Comics’ Green Lantern: An Analysis of Reader Responses’, GLAAD: Cen-
ter for the Study of Media and Society (2003). Reproduced by permission of
the authors.
Piot, C. ‘Heat on the Street: Video Violence in American Teen Culture’,
Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 351–65, © 2003, Routledge. Repro-
duced by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd (http://www.tandf.co.uk/
journals) and the author.
Ramasubramanian, S. and Oliver, M.B. (2003) ‘Portrayals of Sexual Vio-
lence in Popular Hindi Films, 1997–99’, Sex Roles: A Journal of Research,
Vol. 47, No. 7, pp. 327–36, © 2003, Kluwer Academic Publishers. Repro-
duced with kind permission from Springer Science and Business Media and
the authors.
Semanti, M. ‘Imagine the Terror’, Television and New Media, Vol. 3, No. 2,
pp. 213–18, © 2002, Sage. Reproduced by permission of Sage Publications
and the author.

Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders but if any have
been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to make the
necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.
 MEDIA VIOLENCE RESEARCH IN
1 THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
A CRITICAL INTERVENTION
C. Kay Weaver and Cynthia Carter

Why Study Violence and the Media?

Debates about the possible effects that media violence – from Hollywood
cinema to Saturday morning cartoons – may have on audiences have long
been hotly contested in media research and policy. The key issues have
attracted attention well beyond the confines of research institutions and
policy-making bodies, with questions about whether the media play a role
in encouraging violent and criminal behaviour proving to be particularly
vexing. Indeed, from the early days of the newspaper, to the invention of
moving pictures, then radio, comic books, television and the internet, fears
have been expressed about the potential risks associated with violent
imagery. Expressions of concern about the harmful influence depictions of
violence may have on children have been particularly salient (Anderson and
Bushman 2001, 2002; Cantor 2002; Johnson et al. 2002; Starker 1989), even
to the extent of encouraging moral panics (Critcher 2003).
Researchers who subscribe to ‘effects theory’ arguments tend to assume
that there is a strong link between viewing violent media content and vio-
lent behaviour in individuals. As Geen (1994: 158) suggests, media violence
can ‘engender a complex of associations consisting of aggressive ideas,
emotions related to violence, and [serve as] the impetus for aggressive acts’.
Fictional representations of violence are considered of particular concern,
especially where they are regarded to be glamorizing crime and violence or
trivializing it by way of encouraging audiences to simply view such con-
tent as entertainment. It is claimed that by failing to ensure that the serious
and harmful consequences of crime and violence are understood, and by
2 | CRITIC AL RE ADINGS: VIOLENCE AND THE MEDIA

often portraying those who commit acts of violence as heroes, the media are
encouraging audiences to imitate aggressive and anti-social acts. Moreover,
even if people are not affected by media violence in terms of behaving more
aggressively than they otherwise might, it is often contended that the
media’s use of increasingly explicit and sensational violence to sustain rat-
ings and increase revenue is desensitizing audiences’ abilities to empathize
with others when real violence occurs (Gunter 1994; Molitor and Hirsch
1994; Potter 2003; Wilson et al. 2002). With these and related assumptions
in mind, then, researchers have sought to understand how specific media
content might affect or cultivate audience attitudes towards violence, or
document possible links between the viewing of violent media content and
personal behaviour.
Other media commentators have taken a different stance on the issue of
media representations of violence, claiming that such representations have
no causal effects on audiences. They reject the implicit notion that people
are largely passive recipients of powerful media messages and, therefore,
susceptible to their influence. From this perspective, researchers have
asserted that there is a need to appreciate the complex ways in which
audiences engage with media portrayals of violence, and argue that such
portrayals are never the single most important factor contributing to the
development of personal aggression or violent behaviour. Those who argue
this position claim that research studies that identify a direct cause–effect
relationship between media representations of violence and aggressive or
criminal behaviour in audiences are conceptually flawed in methodological
design, as well as in terms of how conclusions about media effects are
extrapolated from research data (Barker and Petley 2001; Gauntlett 1995;
Heins 2002; Hill 1997). Advocates of the no effects position on media vio-
lence argue that depictions of violence need to be understood in the wider
cultural context within which they are produced and distributed. It is only
one of a variety of factors influencing public attitudes and social behaviour
(Freedman 2002; Jones 2002; von Feilitzen 2001).1 Furthermore, these
researchers contend that audiences are very capable of differentiating
between fictional and factual portrayals of violence, and appropriately
responding to real incidents of violence when they occur.
The debate about the relative extent that media portrayals of violence
may be affecting audience attitudes and behaviour has been extraordinarily
polemical in nature, with powerful media effects and no effects advocates
holding firm to their own positions, while seeking to refute the claims of
alternative perspectives. It was in order to move beyond this unfruitful,
binaristic game of oppositions that we argued for the need to rethink the
media violence debate in our book, Violence and the Media (Carter and
 MEDIA VIOLENCE RESE ARCH IN THE T WENT Y-FIRST CENTURY | 3

Weaver 2003). We suggested that to cut a critically informed path between

the two models requires an intellectual reorientation and a repoliticization
of the entire field of study. This involves more than merely re-theorizing
what we mean by ‘media violence’. It also involves moving the debate about
media violence beyond the argument about whether representations of indi-
vidual acts of violence produce particular responses in individual readers or
viewers. Successfully recasting of this field of enquiry, we argue, will include
focusing on the extent to which everyday representations of violence in the
media contribute to its normalization and legitimization. It also necessitates
examining whose ideological (see ideology) and economic interests media
violence might be serving (see Giroux in this volume). Consequently, we
maintain that researchers ought to examine how media violence is impli-
cated in the structural legitimization of the place and position of influential
groups in society.
The need to reconsider how we theorize and research media representa-
tions of violence has become increasingly pressing in the post-September 11,
2001 era. That day’s tragic attacks on the World Trade Center and the US
Pentagon witnessed an extraordinary merging of the fictional imagining of
violence with the factual obliteration of thousands of people. Indeed, as
Semanti (in this volume) argues, ‘among the most pronounced reactions to
the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States was the degree to
which press and public alike said that the events “looked like a movie” ’. He
goes on to suggest that ‘the images of those airplanes deliberately flying
into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and their subsequent
implosion looked too fantastic to be real. There are, of course, good
reasons why Hollywood images resonate with the horrors of September 11
in the public imagination. New York City has been a favourite disaster site
for Hollywood’. Today there also is a pressing need to consider how factual
media and content formats, such as news, current affairs, reality shows and
documentaries use violence and often highly spectacular imagery in order
to attract and maintain audiences, and why audiences want to read about
and watch that violence. It may be, as Höijer’s research suggests (in this
volume), that factual violence serves to increase our compassion towards
victims of real violence. There is equally the possibility that reporting
about war, terror and conflict may increase compassion while also serving
particular politics ends by soliciting public support for the US- and British-
led invasion of Iraq, for example. We also need to examine how factual
reporting and representations of violence might contribute to a public sense
of inevitability around real violence, and increased tolerance for aggressive
actions in everyday life. In light of these new violent realities, as well as the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the bombings in Bali, Madrid, London,
4 | CRITIC AL RE ADINGS: VIOLENCE AND THE MEDIA

Sharm el-Sheik and elsewhere, media scholars now urgently need to recast
many old assumptions about differences between fictional and factual
media violence.
In order to provide a more detailed appreciation of why the media’s
representation of violence has been a matter of such controversy and
debate, we turn our attention in the next section of this introductory chap-
ter to the question of precisely what types of representations have been
defined as problematic, and by whom. We then offer a brief outline of
research investigating some of the ways in which specific audiences have
responded to violent media content. We end the chapter with a discussion
of how major twenty-first-century events, particularly the attacks on Sep-
tember 11 and the ensuing US declaration of a ‘war on terrorism’, are
forcing a radical rethink in terms of how we debate and analyse media
violence.

Identifying ‘the Problem’ of Media Violence

There have been many attempts to define precisely what constitutes ‘the
object’ of media violence analysis for the purpose of identifying what type
of material ‘counts’ in this debate. A commonly used definition is that a
media representation of violence will contain ‘the overt expression of phys-
ical force (with or without a weapon) against self or other, compelling
action against one’s will on pain of being hurt or killed, or actually hurting
or killing’ (Gerbner et al. 1980). There have been revisions to this definition
to include, for example, violence against animals, inanimate objects, and
verbally threatening behaviour (National Television Violence Study 1997).
Such definitions have enabled the analysis of just how much violence is
portrayed in the media. Yet, defining precisely what counts as a media
representation of violence is perhaps less interesting than examining why
certain types of depiction are deemed problematic. By exploring the debate
from this perspective, interesting patterns in the identification of media
violence as a ‘problem’ emerge.
Both the factual reporting and the fictional portrayal of violent crime
have provided a central rallying point for anxieties about the potential
‘effects’ of media portrayals of violence for well over a century now. In
many nineteenth-century Western countries, penny newspapers (‘dread-
fuls’) became the target of attacks for their detailed coverage of crimes and
disasters, often replete with images of violence. Criticism of this sen-
sational reporting primarily came from the older, self-proclaimed ‘respect-
able press’ catering to middle-class readers (Goldberg 1998). Middle-class
 MEDIA VIOLENCE RESE ARCH IN THE T WENT Y-FIRST CENTURY | 5

social reformers of the time were generally of the view that penny news-
papers encouraged working-class readers to revel in the salacious detail of
certain events – train crashes, steamboat explosions, industrial fires and
violent crime. An additional concern was that others could use the detail in
the reports, in relation to crime reporting, to plan further criminal acts
(Goldberg 1998).
There is little doubt that crime reporting helped to sell newspapers then
as now (Allan 2004). As early as the nineteenth century, explicit accounts
and coloured artist impressions of serial killer Jack the Ripper’s murders
published by London’s weekly penny comic, Illustrated Police News, were
criticized by the middle-class press for exploiting and glamorizing the Rip-
per’s crimes (Frayling 1986). The illustrations featured on large hoardings to
promote the paper were considered especially likely to provoke thoughts
about violent and even murderous behaviour in people of ‘unbalanced
minds’. The claim that the relatively uneducated are intellectually and emo-
tionally ‘vulnerable’, and are therefore more likely to be susceptible to cor-
ruption by media representations of violence remains a principal rationale
behind calls for censorship of media violence to this day. Sometimes
coupled with this assertion are calls for media owners and producers to act
responsibly with regard to the social values that they communicate in and
through depictions of violence.
The widespread distribution of moving pictures from the 1920s onwards
further added to middle-class fears about the influence of the mass media,
and especially on the ‘impressionable minds’ of children and those with
little by way of formal education. However, it is important to understand
these concerns in relation to specific film content that was regarded as
objectionable. In the United States, for example, members of the clergy,
politicians and middle-class social reformers expressed concern about the
fictional characterization of both the perpetrators and the victims of the
violence. Early gangster movies were a particular target for attack (Spring-
hall 1998). For example, Little Caesar portrayed working-class men secur-
ing wealthy lifestyles through crime and violence at the expense of innocent
hard-working citizens, while suggesting, in turn, that members of the police
force and judiciary were corruptible. Such films were thought to undermine
respect for the Protestant work ethic and law enforcement agencies, and as
such became the focus of widespread public concern around their potential
threat to ‘decent’ social moral values (Carter and Weaver 2003; Schaefer
1999; Yaquinto 1998).
Following the rise of the second wave of Western feminism in the 1960s,
many women academics, writers and public commentators began to object
to how both the mainstream media and pornographic representation
6 | CRITIC AL RE ADINGS: VIOLENCE AND THE MEDIA

depicted women as either willing victims of violence, or at least as soliciting

their own victimization (Haskell 1987; Kuhn 1982; Modleski 1988). Since
the very early days of cinema, women have been routinely portrayed as the
victims of male violence, yet such violence is often not represented as being
criminal. Indeed, portrayals of violence against women frequently operate
as a means of representing a male character as particularly virulent (see
Ramasubramanian and Oliver in this volume). For decades, this went
largely unchallenged. However, second-wave feminists have argued that
such representations are far from harmless, and form part of a wider cul-
tural environment that includes actual violence against women, such as
rape, assault and domestic violence (Caputi 1988; Carter and Weaver 2003;
Michelle and Weaver 2003; Weaver, Carter and Stanko 2000). In challenging
taken for granted assumptions about the harmlessness of images of vio-
lence against women, feminist critics have contested what they regard as the
underlying sexism of the mass media. Ironically, feminist calls for media
censorship as part of a response to media violence against women have
sometimes aligned women’s rights groups with moral and religious organ-
izations who are unsupportive of gender equality in their politically con-
servative campaigns to ‘clean up’ media content.

Children and Media Violence

From the 1960s onwards, when ownership of television sets in the West
became widespread, followed by the arrival of video recorders and video
games in the early 1980s, the effects of images of violence on children again
became a major focal point of public concern. Indeed, media represen-
tations of children are now at the centre of debates around the circulation
and availability of media violence in society (Buckingham, and Barker and
Petley in this volume; Davies 2001; Holland 2004). This is primarily the case
for two reasons. Firstly, many adults regard children as less able to dis-
tinguish between fact and fiction. As such, they are considered more likely
than adults are to be disturbed by images of violence. Secondly, models of
child development promoted by social psychologists have tended to suggest
that since children’s moral frameworks are less developed than those of
adults, children may be especially prone to imitating what they see on televi-
sion, video, film and on computer screens (Buckingham 1996; Davies 1996;
Gauntlett 1997). Particularly disturbing crimes, such as the killing of the
British toddler James Bulger by two 10-year-old boys in 1993, and the initial
– though later found to be spurious – linking of the killing with the boys’
viewing of the video Child’s Play III, added considerable strength to such
 MEDIA VIOLENCE RESE ARCH IN THE T WENT Y-FIRST CENTURY | 7

claims during the 1990s (Barker 2001). More recently, examples of children
who allegedly have been directly influenced to copy something they have
seen in the media include:
• a Scottish teenager who, after watching the film Braveheart, attacked an
English schoolboy because of his accent. The teenager copied his idol,
William Wallace, by shouting the battle cry ‘Freedom!’ as he and two
other teens punched and kicked the 15-year-old boy in the head (Daily
Record, 19 August, 1997);
• a 13-year-old boy who poured gasoline on his feet and legs and lit him-
self on fire, imitating a stunt he’d seen on the MTV series Jackass (New
York Daily News, 30 January, 2001);
• a 14-year-old Florida boy, Lionel Tate, was convicted of first-degree
murder and given a life sentence without the possibility of parole for
killing 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick. Tate imitated a wrestling hold he had
seen on TV, bear-hugging the girl, lifting her, dropping her on the floor,
which resulted in her death (New York Times, 26 January, 2001).

The protection of children has become a rallying point for assertions about
the dangers posed by media violence. The market growth in children’s com-
puter games, music videos and CDs containing explicit language, sexual
imagery and graphic violent content has fuelled the fires of public debate,
and provided a whole new focus for ‘effects’ research (Anderson 2004;
Anderson and Dill 2000; Gentile et al. 2004; Hoga and Bar-on 1996). The
rapid development of new technologies and the ever-decreasing cost of
existing ones make it increasingly likely that children will consume media
violence in the private contexts of their bedrooms. Lupton (2000) suggests
that, as a result, many parents are therefore less likely to be aware of, let
alone monitor, the media content with which their children engage (Buck-
ingham in this volume; Funk, Hagan and Schimming 1999; Gentile et al.
2004). An example of the perceived consequences of children’s private
interactions with violent media content came with the 1999 Columbine
High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado, when two teenagers, Dylan
Klebold and Eric Harris, shot and killed 12 of their fellow high school
students and a teacher, and wounded 21 others, before committing suicide.
Some US journalists reporting this event proposed that the killers’ actions
were directly influenced by their fascination with media violence and that
the computer games both teenagers obsessively played may have even
provided them with a means of rehearsing their attack (see Ogle, Eckman
and Amoroso Leslie in this volume).
After the events at Columbine High School, many parents, teachers,
8 | CRITIC AL RE ADINGS: VIOLENCE AND THE MEDIA

politicians and journalists began to express openly concerns about the

potentially negative influence of violent computer games on young people.
A more recent public discussion around media violence is related to public
worries that internet chat rooms and email may facilitate, for example, the
activities of paedophiles, cyberstalkers, racists, and fascists (Adam in this
volume; Attorney General 1999; Glaser, Dixit and Green in this volume;
Spitzberg and Hoobler 2002).
The widespread use of mobile telephones – and with them digital video-
ing and text messaging – has raised a host of new anxieties around the
possible use of digital media to violent ends. For example, bullying by text
messaging has been widely reported among children (NCH 2005; Young-
sters targeted by digital bullies 2002), as has the phenomenon of strangers
photographing naked children in public changing rooms (Dubecki 2003;
McLeod 2003). While the mobile phone photographing of images of the
immediate aftermath of the 7 July 2005 London bombings was heralded as
marking a new form of ‘open source news’, or citizen journalism, words of
concern were quickly voiced by a number of journalists about the possible
abuses of this news technology. Graham Lovelace, a former senior editor
with both the BBC and ITN news, has cautioned that:
The opportunity for individuals to see something awful happen in
front of them and to record it is one thing. But the opportunity is
then also there for the perpetrators of these awful crimes. If we have
learned anything from the internet, it is that for every good, legitimate
use, there is an infinite number of misleading abuses (cited in Smyth
2005).
Following up this point, Scotsman reporter Anna Smyth (2005) offers a
specific example of recent mobile phone abuse in order to point to some of
the possible dangers of unfettered citizen journalism:
We have also seen evidence of a dark side to new technology with the
beheading videos from Iraq which, for now, remain mercifully
restricted to the internet. But with mobile phones establishing them-
selves as the reporting tool of choice, there is disturbing potential for a
wash of repugnant, ready-to-film atrocities.
Just because mobile phone technology may be open to abuse is not suf-
ficient reason to try to restrict the participation of citizens in newsmaking,
since citizen journalism can be a source of empowerment for ordinary
people, particularly those whose views do not typically feature in the main-
stream news media (see ‘Citizen journalism’ 2005). Instead, as Lovelace
suggests, ‘We just need to manage it well, strike the right balance and be
 MEDIA VIOLENCE RESE ARCH IN THE T WENT Y-FIRST CENTURY | 9

sure not to encourage those aspects which could ultimately lead to no good’
(cited in Smyth 2005).
Given the considerable concerns raised about how the media represent
violence, and how those representations might affect individual attitudes
and behaviours, and the well-being of society more broadly, it is not
surprising that these issues have been the subject of extensive academic
research over the years. In the next section, we outline certain approaches
to researching the relationship between media representations of violence
and audiences.

How Has Media Violence Been Researched?

The first detailed studies of the ‘effects’ of engaging with portrayals of film
violence were conducted in the USA in the late 1920s and early 1930s,
through the Payne Fund Studies (Jowett, Jarvie and Fuller 1996; Lowery and
DeFleur 1995). The research was varied in methodological approach,
primarily drawing on content analysis and longitudinal studies that
attempted to correlate viewing violent film content with ‘deviant’
behaviour, and self-reporting by young people on how they understood the
relationship between violence in the movies and their own behaviour.
Researchers found very limited connections between viewing such material
and the development of ‘delinquent’ attitudes and behaviours. However, the
research funders – a group of middle-class social reformers who sought
proof that films contributed to juvenile delinquency – reported the findings
so selectively that there appeared to be a direct correlation between watch-
ing violence and behaving violently or criminally (Jowett, Jarvie and Fuller
1996).
The rapid growth in television ownership from the early 1960s onwards in
the US, alongside numerous examples of what appeared to be ‘copycat’
crimes mimicking scenes from films and television programmes, added to
public demands to investigate possible connections between violent media
content and viewer behaviour. One famous example of what some believed
to be an act that directly imitated fictional media violence was the 1961 San
Francisco knife attack on a boy, which some journalists claimed to closely
resemble a scene from the movie A Rebel without a Cause which had broad-
cast on television the evening prior to the attack. Having already identified
that children were extremely likely to imitate aggressive behaviour they
witnessed from adult role models (Bandura, Ross and Ross 1961), certain
psychologists turned to assess whether watching such aggressive behaviour
on film and television had the same effect. Generally described as
10 | CRITIC AL RE ADINGS: VIOLENCE AND THE MEDIA

behavioural effects research, and underpinned by social learning theory,

this research was conducted in laboratory contexts where children watched
films that portrayed adults behaving aggressively (Bandura, Ross and Ross
in this volume). After children viewed several films, they were then delib-
erately frustrated by adults (by having toys removed from them) to see how
the children responded under stress. The researchers found that children
who had watched the screen-mediated acts of violence were more likely to
respond aggressively than those who had not. However, they did question
the extent to which the behaviour exhibited by the children in the experi-
ments produced genuine aggression. This type of laboratory research is
commonly critiqued on the grounds that the children involved may have felt
safe in acting or playing aggressively as there were no negative consequences
of their doing so – being chastised, or at risk of violent retaliation from
their victim. Nevertheless, Bandura, Ross and Ross’ experimental study has
been replicated in many hundreds of similarly designed studies over the
years (see Paik and Comstock 1994; Wood, Wong and Cachere 1991), and
this research is frequently cited by substantial numbers of psychologists,
paediatricians, mental health care professionals and media watch cam-
paigners as evidence that viewing violent content can influence viewers to
behave similarly.
Cultivation theory has been widely used over the past forty years to
research media violence, producing findings that appear to lend consider-
able support to the ‘effects thesis’. Developed by George Gerbner and col-
leagues at the Annenberg School of Communications, Pennsylvania,
through their ‘Cultural Indicators Project’, cultivation theory rests on the
idea that media violence affects audience conceptions of social reality and
who has power and who does not in that reality. To support this claim,
cultivation researchers have undertaken extensive quantitative content
analyses of US prime-time television programming. The aim of such
research has been to identify how much violence appears, who are the vic-
tims, and who are the perpetrators. For example, Gerbner et al. (1978: 191)
examined which character types are most likely to be portrayed as perpet-
rators or victims of violence and found that ‘of the 20 most victimized
groups . . . all but three are composed of women’. Some researchers further
assert that television’s repeated portrayal of certain groups as victims repre-
sents a symbolic expression of those victim types’ impotence in society
(Gerbner and Gross 1976: 182). In terms of the audience, such symbolic
imagery is theorized as cultivating social conceptions about ‘who are the
aggressors and who are the victims’ where ‘there is a relationship between
the roles of the violent and the victim. Both roles are there to be learned by
viewers’ (Gerbner et al. 1979: 180). The more heavily television is watched,
 MEDIA VIOLENCE RESE ARCH IN THE T WENT Y-FIRST CENTURY | 11

the more vulnerable is the viewer to this learning (Gerbner and Gross 1976).
More recently, Gerbner (1994) developed a thesis to describe what he refers
to as the ‘mean world syndrome’. According to this thesis, heavy users of
television tend to overestimate the occurrence of violence in society. As
Gerbner (1994: 40) elaborates:
[. . .] growing up from infancy with this unprecedented diet of violence
has three consequences, which, in combination, I call the ‘mean world
syndrome.’ What this means is that if you are growing up in a home
where there is more than say three hours of television per day, for all
practical purposes you live in a meaner world – and act accordingly –
than your next-door neighbor who lives in the same world but watches
less television. The programming reinforces the worst fears and
apprehensions and paranoia of people.

As with all media effects theories, cultivation theory has been widely
criticized (see, for example, Gauntlett in this volume). Its conclusions are
indeed problematic given that they are largely based on content analyses of
the media that make no distinction between the types of programmes in
which violence is shown. Violence in children’s cartoons, for example, is
often equated with violence in realist drama and horror movies (Barker
2001; Cumberbatch 1989, 1995). A related concern is that cultivation
research tends to overemphasize individualistic responses to media violence,
thus under-assessing the significance of the ways in which representations
of violence in the media contribute to the (re)production of structural social
inequalities (see Linné and Wartella 1998; von Feilitzen 1998). As such, it
tends to ‘abstract the relationship of message content and individual per-
ceptions from the historical, political, and economic conditions which
influence both’ (White 1983: 288). This clearly suggests a need to examine
how factors outside of the media affect how audiences interpret media
content.
In Europe and Australasia, where critical theory, interpretivist, post-
structuralist and post-modern theories have had a longer history of
academic influence than in the US, some sociologists, media studies and
cultural studies scholars have ridiculed the positivist science methodologies
that claim to establish causal connections between social phenomena
(media content and audience attitudes and behaviour) as fundamentally
flawed (Barker and Petley, and Gauntlett in this volume). Rather than focus-
ing on the question of whether violent media content influences the
behaviour of audiences, researchers informed by these theories ask ques-
tions about how the contexts of media production shape the selection,
12 | CRITIC AL RE ADINGS: VIOLENCE AND THE MEDIA

framing and characterization of both factual and fictional violent media

content. For example, Schlesinger and Tumber (1994) have investigated how
crime reporting represents women and argue that it often stereotypes them
as sexually provocative and failing to take sufficient precautions against
sexual attack. Other researchers have examined the phenomenon of crime
reconstruction and ‘reality’ police programmes, and have argued that they
tend to encourage fears around crime which encourage a discursive identifi-
cation with law and order politics, and that the programmes fail to reflect
how crime and violence are linked causally to structures such as poverty,
racism and sexism (Anderson 1995; Cavender 1998).
Critical and interpretative researchers have also analysed audience recep-
tion of violent media content. Using qualitative research methods such as
individual and focus group interviews, researchers have demonstrated the
complex ways in which audiences interpret portrayals of violence (see Buck-
ingham in this volume; Morrison et al. 1999; Tulloch and Tulloch 1993;
Vares 2002). For example, Schlesinger et al.’s audience studies Women View-
ing Violence (1992) and Men Viewing Violence (1998) both concluded that
sexual, ethnic and class identities are often important variables shaping how
women and men respond to media violence. One key difference between
the two studies, researchers found, is that regardless of cultural back-
ground, most of the women in the first study expressed a concern about
how media violence might affect men or children (see also Höijer in this
volume), while in the second study, few men conveyed any worry about the
ways in which media violence might influence women or children.
Some studies have found that viewers are less disturbed by fictional por-
trayals of violence than factual ones (Docherty 1990). The extremes of
shock and horror that audiences feel when they are viewing fictional media
violence occur in the safe environments of the movie theatre or the living
room. When they are over, viewers return to everyday lives that are far
removed from those implausibly violent worlds portrayed in the media (Hill
1997). Indeed, far from fuelling fears about the potential negative social
and psychological consequences of violent content on audiences, some
researchers argue that media violence may actually provide audiences with a
positive means through which they can experience subjectivities, emotions,
and behaviours considered to be socially inappropriate or which simply
cannot occur in ‘real life’ (Alloway and Gilbert 1998; Labre and Duke in
this volume). For example, Piot (in this volume) argues that many violent
video games empower players by allowing them to experience operating
as half-human, half-machine beings in a post-modern, post-human world
that is unconstrained by national, geographic, temporal and moral
boundaries.
 MEDIA VIOLENCE RESE ARCH IN THE T WENT Y-FIRST CENTURY | 13

While for some these experiences are seen to be a positive force in society
that break down social inequalities, for others there is a concern that new
technologies might be used to promote hostility or advocate violence toward
persons identified by their ethnicity, sexuality, gender, religion or national
origin (Bremer and Rauch 1998; Duffy 2003; Ferreday 2005; Williams and
Skoric 2005; Zickmund 1997). For example, Glaser, Dixit and Green (in this
volume) have researched how internet chat rooms sponsored by white
supremacist groups are used to advocate race hate crimes. While finding
that the internet can operate as a forum through which hate crimes are
encouraged, the authors are nevertheless unable to verify the extent to
which such encouragement has led to the actual perpetration of racist hate
crimes.
When the issue of media violence is debated in public, there is a tendency
for participants to fall into the polemical and fundamentally opposed posi-
tions of those who favour the psychological behavioural science arguments
outlined above or those who advocate sociological, media and cultural stud-
ies approaches. Those who espouse the first position tend to argue that
media violence can directly increase aggressive or violence inclinations, or
even fear of violence, lend support to conservative values, politics and
ideologies and calls for censorship. In contrast, critical research on media
violence tends to suggest that it does not have any causal effects on human
behaviour. Instead, representations and their interpretation by media audi-
ences are intricately entwined in wider cultural discourses of identity and
subjectivity. Advocates of this position on media violence tend to support
liberal values, politics and ideologies that oppose censorship.
However, returning to the argument we made in Violence and the Media,
rather than perpetuating the dualisms of the effects versus no effects debate
on media violence, we believe that it is essential to expend greater research
effort investigating who are the key beneficiaries of the existing system of
production, representation and consumption of media violence. What is
needed is a more nuanced and politically aware understanding of the com-
plex ways in which the growing ‘normalcy’, ‘banality’ and ‘everydayness’ of
media violence influences our relationships with each other in the world.
The need for more critically informed research has become more urgent in
the light of new trends in the mediation of violence in which the boundaries
between factual and fictional media formats have become increasingly
blurred.
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