International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Many children today spend more time consuming media than they spend attending school, or in any other activity except for sleeping. By “media” we mean any form of mass communication such as → television , → Internet , video and computer games (→ Video Games ), comic books (→ Comics ), and → radio . Violence is a dominant theme in most forms of media. For example, content analyses show that about 60 percent of television programs in the USA contain violence, and so do about 70–90 percent of the top-selling video games. By “violence” we mean an extreme act of physical aggression, such as assaulting another person (→ Violence as Media Content ). For decades researchers have investigated the short- and long-term effects of media violence (→ Media Effects, History of ). These researchers have found evidence for at least two important short-term effects and three important long-term effects. The short-term effects are “priming effect” (→ Priming Theory ), i.e., exposure to media violence immediately stimulates aggressive thoughts and ideas, and “mimicry effect”, i.e., children immediately mimic whatever they see, including violent behaviors they see in the mass media. The long-term effects are the “mean-world effect” (→ Cultivation Effects ), i.e., the more violent media children consume, the more they think the world is a mean and hostile place and the more afraid they are ... log in or subscribe to read full text