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Violence, media effects, and criminology.

Nickie D. Phillips Nickie D. Phillips Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, St. Francis College
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.189
Published online: 27 July 2017

Debate surrounding the impact of media representations on violence and crime has raged for decades and shows no sign of abating. Over the years, the targets of concern have shifted from film to comic books to television to video games, but the central questions remain the same. What is the relationship between popular media and audience emotions, attitudes, and behaviors? While media effects research covers a vast range of topics—from the study of its persuasive effects in advertising to its positive impact on emotions and behaviors—of particular interest to criminologists is the relationship between violence in popular media and real-life aggression and violence. Does media violence cause aggression and/or violence?

The study of media effects is informed by a variety of theoretical perspectives and spans many disciplines including communications and media studies, psychology, medicine, sociology, and criminology. Decades of research have amassed on the topic, yet there is no clear agreement about the impact of media or about which methodologies are most appropriate. Instead, there continues to be disagreement about whether media portrayals of violence are a serious problem and, if so, how society should respond.

Conflicting interpretations of research findings inform and shape public debate around media effects. Although there seems to be a consensus among scholars that exposure to media violence impacts aggression, there is less agreement around its potential impact on violence and criminal behavior. While a few criminologists focus on the phenomenon of copycat crimes, most rarely engage with whether media directly causes violence. Instead, they explore broader considerations of the relationship between media, popular culture, and society.

media exposure
criminal behavior
popular culture
media violence
media and crime
copycat crimes

Media Exposure, Violence, and Aggression

On Friday July 22, 2016 , a gunman killed nine people at a mall in Munich, Germany. The 18-year-old shooter was subsequently characterized by the media as being under psychiatric care and harboring at least two obsessions. One, an obsession with mass shootings, including that of Anders Breivik who ultimately killed 77 people in Norway in 2011 , and the other an obsession with video games. A Los Angeles, California, news report stated that the gunman was “an avid player of first-person shooter video games, including ‘Counter-Strike,’” while another headline similarly declared, “Munich gunman, a fan of violent video games, rampage killers, had planned attack for a year”(CNN Wire, 2016 ; Reuters, 2016 ). This high-profile incident was hardly the first to link popular culture to violent crime. Notably, in the aftermath of the 1999 Columbine shooting massacre, for example, media sources implicated and later discredited music, video games, and a gothic aesthetic as causal factors of the crime (Cullen, 2009 ; Yamato, 2016 ). Other, more recent, incidents have echoed similar claims suggesting that popular culture has a nefarious influence on consumers.

Media violence and its impact on audiences are among the most researched and examined topics in communications studies (Hetsroni, 2007 ). Yet, debate over whether media violence causes aggression and violence persists, particularly in response to high-profile criminal incidents. Blaming video games, and other forms of media and popular culture, as contributing to violence is not a new phenomenon. However, interpreting media effects can be difficult because commenters often seem to indicate a grand consensus that understates more contradictory and nuanced interpretations of the data.

In fact, there is a consensus among many media researchers that media violence has an impact on aggression although its impact on violence is less clear. For example, in response to the shooting in Munich, Brad Bushman, professor of communication and psychology, avoided pinning the incident solely on video games, but in the process supported the assertion that video gameplay is linked to aggression. He stated,

While there isn’t complete consensus in any scientific field, a study we conducted showed more than 90% of pediatricians and about two-thirds of media researchers surveyed agreed that violent video games increase aggression in children. (Bushman, 2016 )

Others, too, have reached similar conclusions with regard to other media. In 2008 , psychologist John Murray summarized decades of research stating, “Fifty years of research on the effect of TV violence on children leads to the inescapable conclusion that viewing media violence is related to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behaviors” (Murray, 2008 , p. 1212). Scholars Glenn Sparks and Cheri Sparks similarly declared that,

Despite the fact that controversy still exists about the impact of media violence, the research results reveal a dominant and consistent pattern in favor of the notion that exposure to violent media images does increase the risk of aggressive behavior. (Sparks & Sparks, 2002 , p. 273)

In 2014 , psychologist Wayne Warburton more broadly concluded that the vast majority of studies have found “that exposure to violent media increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior in the short and longterm, increases hostile perceptions and attitudes, and desensitizes individuals to violent content” (Warburton, 2014 , p. 64).

Criminologists, too, are sensitive to the impact of media exposure. For example, Jacqueline Helfgott summarized the research:

There have been over 1000 studies on the effects of TV and film violence over the past 40 years. Research on the influence of TV violence on aggression has consistently shown that TV violence increases aggression and social anxiety, cultivates a “mean view” of the world, and negatively impacts real-world behavior. (Helfgott, 2015 , p. 50)

In his book, Media Coverage of Crime and Criminal Justice , criminologist Matthew Robinson stated, “Studies of the impact of media on violence are crystal clear in their findings and implications for society” (Robinson, 2011 , p. 135). He cited studies on childhood exposure to violent media leading to aggressive behavior as evidence. In his pioneering book Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice , criminologist Ray Surette concurred that media violence is linked to aggression, but offered a nuanced interpretation. He stated,

a small to modest but genuine causal role for media violence regarding viewer aggression has been established for most beyond a reasonable doubt . . . There is certainly a connection between violent media and social aggression, but its strength and configuration is simply not known at this time. (Surette, 2011 , p. 68)

The uncertainties about the strength of the relationship and the lack of evidence linking media violence to real-world violence is often lost in the news media accounts of high-profile violent crimes.

Media Exposure and Copycat Crimes

While many scholars do seem to agree that there is evidence that media violence—whether that of film, TV, or video games—increases aggression, they disagree about its impact on violent or criminal behavior (Ferguson, 2014 ; Gunter, 2008 ; Helfgott, 2015 ; Reiner, 2002 ; Savage, 2008 ). Nonetheless, it is violent incidents that most often prompt speculation that media causes violence. More specifically, violence that appears to mimic portrayals of violent media tends to ignite controversy. For example, the idea that films contribute to violent crime is not a new assertion. Films such as A Clockwork Orange , Menace II Society , Set it Off , and Child’s Play 3 , have been linked to crimes and at least eight murders have been linked to Oliver Stone’s 1994 film Natural Born Killers (Bracci, 2010 ; Brooks, 2002 ; PBS, n.d. ). Nonetheless, pinpointing a direct, causal relationship between media and violent crime remains elusive.

Criminologist Jacqueline Helfgott defined copycat crime as a “crime that is inspired by another crime” (Helfgott, 2015 , p. 51). The idea is that offenders model their behavior on media representations of violence whether real or fictional. One case, in particular, illustrated how popular culture, media, and criminal violence converge. On July 20, 2012 , James Holmes entered the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises , the third film in the massively successful Batman trilogy, in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. He shot and killed 12 people and wounded 70 others. At the time, the New York Times described the incident,

Witnesses told the police that Mr. Holmes said something to the effect of “I am the Joker,” according to a federal law enforcement official, and that his hair had been dyed or he was wearing a wig. Then, as people began to rise from their seats in confusion or anxiety, he began to shoot. The gunman paused at least once, several witnesses said, perhaps to reload, and continued firing. (Frosch & Johnson, 2012 ).

The dyed hair, Holme’s alleged comment, and that the incident occurred at a popular screening led many to speculate that the shooter was influenced by the earlier film in the trilogy and reignited debate around the impact about media violence. The Daily Mail pointed out that Holmes may have been motivated by a 25-year-old Batman comic in which a gunman opens fire in a movie theater—thus further suggesting the iconic villain served as motivation for the attack (Graham & Gallagher, 2012 ). Perceptions of the “Joker connection” fed into the notion that popular media has a direct causal influence on violent behavior even as press reports later indicated that Holmes had not, in fact, made reference to the Joker (Meyer, 2015 ).

A week after the Aurora shooting, the New York Daily News published an article detailing a “possible copycat” crime. A suspect was arrested in his Maryland home after making threatening phone calls to his workplace. The article reported that the suspect stated, “I am a [sic] joker” and “I’m going to load my guns and blow everybody up.” In their search, police found “a lethal arsenal of 25 guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition” in the suspect’s home (McShane, 2012 ).

Though criminologists are generally skeptical that those who commit violent crimes are motivated solely by media violence, there does seem to be some evidence that media may be influential in shaping how some offenders commit crime. In his study of serious and violent juvenile offenders, criminologist Ray Surette found “about one out of three juveniles reports having considered a copycat crime and about one out of four reports actually having attempted one.” He concluded that “those juveniles who are self-reported copycats are significantly more likely to credit the media as both a general and personal influence.” Surette contended that though violent offenses garner the most media attention, copycat criminals are more likely to be career criminals and to commit property crimes rather than violent crimes (Surette, 2002 , pp. 56, 63; Surette 2011 ).

Discerning what crimes may be classified as copycat crimes is a challenge. Jacqueline Helfgott suggested they occur on a “continuum of influence.” On one end, she said, media plays a relatively minor role in being a “component of the modus operandi” of the offender, while on the other end, she said, “personality disordered media junkies” have difficulty distinguishing reality from violent fantasy. According to Helfgott, various factors such as individual characteristics, characteristics of media sources, relationship to media, demographic factors, and cultural factors are influential. Overall, scholars suggest that rather than pushing unsuspecting viewers to commit crimes, media more often influences how , rather than why, someone commits a crime (Helfgott, 2015 ; Marsh & Melville, 2014 ).

Given the public interest, there is relatively little research devoted to exactly what copycat crimes are and how they occur. Part of the problem of studying these types of crimes is the difficulty defining and measuring the concept. In an effort to clarify and empirically measure the phenomenon, Surette offered a scale that included seven indicators of copycat crimes. He used the following factors to identify copycat crimes: time order (media exposure must occur before the crime); time proximity (a five-year cut-off point of exposure); theme consistency (“a pattern of thought, feeling or behavior in the offender which closely parallels the media model”); scene specificity (mimicking a specific scene); repetitive viewing; self-editing (repeated viewing of single scene while “the balance of the film is ignored”); and offender statements and second-party statements indicating the influence of media. Findings demonstrated that cases are often prematurely, if not erroneously, labeled as “copycat.” Surette suggested that use of the scale offers a more precise way for researchers to objectively measure trends and frequency of copycat crimes (Surette, 2016 , p. 8).

Media Exposure and Violent Crimes

Overall, a causal link between media exposure and violent criminal behavior has yet to be validated, and most researchers steer clear of making such causal assumptions. Instead, many emphasize that media does not directly cause aggression and violence so much as operate as a risk factor among other variables (Bushman & Anderson, 2015 ; Warburton, 2014 ). In their review of media effects, Brad Bushman and psychologist Craig Anderson concluded,

In sum, extant research shows that media violence is a causal risk factor not only for mild forms of aggression but also for more serious forms of aggression, including violent criminal behavior. That does not mean that violent media exposure by itself will turn a normal child or adolescent who has few or no other risk factors into a violent criminal or a school shooter. Such extreme violence is rare, and tends to occur only when multiple risk factors converge in time, space, and within an individual. (Bushman & Anderson, 2015 , p. 1817)

Surette, however, argued that there is no clear linkage between media exposure and criminal behavior—violent or otherwise. In other words, a link between media violence and aggression does not necessarily mean that exposure to violent media causes violent (or nonviolent) criminal behavior. Though there are thousands of articles addressing media effects, many of these consist of reviews or commentary about prior research findings rather than original studies (Brown, 2007 ; Murray, 2008 ; Savage, 2008 ; Surette, 2011 ). Fewer, still, are studies that specifically measure media violence and criminal behavior (Gunter, 2008 ; Strasburger & Donnerstein, 2014 ). In their meta-analysis investigating the link between media violence and criminal aggression, scholars Joanne Savage and Christina Yancey did not find support for the assertion. Instead, they concluded,

The study of most consequence for violent crime policy actually found that exposure to media violence was significantly negatively related to violent crime rates at the aggregate level . . . It is plain to us that the relationship between exposure to violent media and serious violence has yet to be established. (Savage & Yancey, 2008 , p. 786)

Researchers continue to measure the impact of media violence among various forms of media and generally stop short of drawing a direct causal link in favor of more indirect effects. For example, one study examined the increase of gun violence in films over the years and concluded that violent scenes provide scripts for youth that justify gun violence that, in turn, may amplify aggression (Bushman, Jamieson, Weitz, & Romer, 2013 ). But others report contradictory findings. Patrick Markey and colleagues studied the relationship between rates of homicide and aggravated assault and gun violence in films from 1960–2012 and found that over the years, violent content in films increased while crime rates declined . After controlling for age shifts, poverty, education, incarceration rates, and economic inequality, the relationships remained statistically non-significant (Markey, French, & Markey, 2015 , p. 165). Psychologist Christopher Ferguson also failed to find a relationship between media violence in films and video games and violence (Ferguson, 2014 ).

Another study, by Gordon Dahl and Stefano DellaVigna, examined violent films from 1995–2004 and found decreases in violent crimes coincided with violent blockbuster movie attendance. Here, it was not the content that was alleged to impact crime rates, but instead what the authors called “voluntary incapacitation,” or the shifting of daily activities from that of potential criminal behavior to movie attendance. The authors concluded, “For each million people watching a strongly or mildly violent movie, respectively, violent crime decreases by 1.9% and 2.1%. Nonviolent movies have no statistically significant impact” (Dahl & DellaVigna, p. 39).

High-profile cases over the last several years have shifted public concern toward the perceived danger of video games, but research demonstrating a link between video games and criminal violence remains scant. The American Psychiatric Association declared that “research demonstrates a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior, aggressive cognitions and aggressive affect, and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy and sensitivity to aggression . . .” but stopped short of claiming that video games impact criminal violence. According to Breuer and colleagues, “While all of the available meta-analyses . . . found a relationship between aggression and the use of (violent) video games, the size and interpretation of this connection differ largely between these studies . . .” (APA, 2015 ; Breuer et al., 2015 ; DeCamp, 2015 ). Further, psychologists Patrick Markey, Charlotte Markey, and Juliana French conducted four time-series analyses investigating the relationship between video game habits and assault and homicide rates. The studies measured rates of violent crime, the annual and monthly video game sales, Internet searches for video game walkthroughs, and rates of violent crime occurring after the release dates of popular games. The results showed that there was no relationship between video game habits and rates of aggravated assault and homicide. Instead, there was some indication of decreases in crime (Markey, Markey, & French, 2015 ).

Another longitudinal study failed to find video games as a predictor of aggression, instead finding support for the “selection hypothesis”—that physically aggressive individuals (aged 14–17) were more likely to choose media content that contained violence than those slightly older, aged 18–21. Additionally, the researchers concluded,

that violent media do not have a substantial impact on aggressive personality or behavior, at least in the phases of late adolescence and early adulthood that we focused on. (Breuer, Vogelgesang, Quandt, & Festl, 2015 , p. 324)

Overall, the lack of a consistent finding demonstrating that media exposure causes violent crime may not be particularly surprising given that studies linking media exposure, aggression, and violence suffer from a host of general criticisms. By way of explanation, social theorist David Gauntlett maintained that researchers frequently employ problematic definitions of aggression and violence, questionable methodologies, rely too much on fictional violence, neglect the social meaning of violence, and assume the third-person effect—that is, assume that other, vulnerable people are impacted by media, but “we” are not (Ferguson & Dyck, 2012 ; Gauntlett, 2001 ).

Others, such as scholars Martin Barker and Julian Petley, flatly reject the notion that violent media exposure is a causal factor for aggression and/or violence. In their book Ill Effects , the authors stated instead that it is simply “stupid” to query about “what are the effects of [media] violence” without taking context into account (p. 2). They counter what they describe as moral campaigners who advance the idea that media violence causes violence. Instead, Barker and Petley argue that audiences interpret media violence in a variety of ways based on their histories, experiences, and knowledge, and as such, it makes little sense to claim media “cause” violence (Barker & Petley, 2001 ).

Given the seemingly inconclusive and contradictory findings regarding media effects research, to say that the debate can, at times, be contentious is an understatement. One article published in European Psychologist queried “Does Doing Media Violence Research Make One Aggressive?” and lamented that the debate had devolved into an ideological one (Elson & Ferguson, 2013 ). Another academic journal published a special issue devoted to video games and youth and included a transcript of exchanges between two scholars to demonstrate that a “peaceful debate” was, in fact, possible (Ferguson & Konijn, 2015 ).

Nonetheless, in this debate, the stakes are high and the policy consequences profound. After examining over 900 published articles, publication patterns, prominent authors and coauthors, and disciplinary interest in the topic, scholar James Anderson argued that prominent media effects scholars, whom he deems the “causationists,” had developed a cottage industry dependent on funding by agencies focused primarily on the negative effects of media on children. Anderson argued that such a focus presents media as a threat to family values and ultimately operates as a zero-sum game. As a result, attention and resources are diverted toward media and away from other priorities that are essential to understanding aggression such as social disadvantage, substance abuse, and parental conflict (Anderson, 2008 , p. 1276).

Theoretical Perspectives on Media Effects

Understanding how media may impact attitudes and behavior has been the focus of media and communications studies for decades. Numerous theoretical perspectives offer insight into how and to what extent the media impacts the audience. As scholar Jenny Kitzinger documented in 2004 , there are generally two ways to approach the study of media effects. One is to foreground the power of media. That is, to suggest that the media holds powerful sway over viewers. Another perspective is to foreground the power and heterogeneity of the audience and to recognize that it is comprised of active agents (Kitzinger, 2004 ).

The notion of an all-powerful media can be traced to the influence of scholars affiliated with the Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School, in the 1930–1940s and proponents of the mass society theory. The institute was originally founded in Germany but later moved to the United States. Criminologist Yvonne Jewkes outlined how mass society theory assumed that members of the public were susceptible to media messages. This, theorists argued, was a result of rapidly changing social conditions and industrialization that produced isolated, impressionable individuals “cut adrift from kinship and organic ties and lacking moral cohesion” (Jewkes, 2015 , p. 13). In this historical context, in the era of World War II, the impact of Nazi propaganda was particularly resonant. Here, the media was believed to exhibit a unidirectional flow, operating as a powerful force influencing the masses. The most useful metaphor for this perspective described the media as a “hypodermic syringe” that could “‘inject’ values, ideas and information directly into the passive receiver producing direct and unmediated ‘effects’” (Jewkes, 2015 , pp. 16, 34). Though the hypodermic syringe model seems simplistic today, the idea that the media is all-powerful continues to inform contemporary public discourse around media and violence.

Concern of the power of media captured the attention of researchers interested in its purported negative impact on children. In one of the earliest series of studies in the United States during the late 1920s–1930s, researchers attempted to quantitatively measure media effects with the Payne Fund Studies. For example, they investigated how film, a relatively new medium, impacted children’s attitudes and behaviors, including antisocial and violent behavior. At the time, the Payne Fund Studies’ findings fueled the notion that children were indeed negatively influenced by films. This prompted the film industry to adopt a self-imposed code regulating content (Sparks & Sparks, 2002 ; Surette, 2011 ). Not everyone agreed with the approach. In fact, the methodologies employed in the studies received much criticism, and ultimately, the movement was branded as a moral crusade to regulate film content. Scholars Garth Jowett, Ian Jarvie, and Kathryn Fuller wrote about the significance of the studies,

We have seen this same policy battle fought and refought over radio, television, rock and roll, music videos and video games. Their researchers looked to see if intuitive concerns could be given concrete, measurable expression in research. While they had partial success, as have all subsequent efforts, they also ran into intractable problems . . . Since that day, no way has yet been found to resolve the dilemma of cause and effect: do crime movies create more crime, or do the criminally inclined enjoy and perhaps imitate crime movies? (Jowett, Jarvie, & Fuller, 1996 , p. 12)

As the debate continued, more sophisticated theoretical perspectives emerged. Efforts to empirically measure the impact of media on aggression and violence continued, albeit with equivocal results. In the 1950s and 1960s, psychological behaviorism, or understanding psychological motivations through observable behavior, became a prominent lens through which to view the causal impact of media violence. This type of research was exemplified by Albert Bandura’s Bobo Doll studies demonstrating that children exposed to aggressive behavior, either observed in real life or on film, behaved more aggressively than those in control groups who were not exposed to the behavior. The assumption derived was that children learn through exposure and imitate behavior (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963 ). Though influential, the Bandura experiments were nevertheless heavily criticized. Some argued the laboratory conditions under which children were exposed to media were not generalizable to real-life conditions. Others challenged the assumption that children absorb media content in an unsophisticated manner without being able to distinguish between fantasy and reality. In fact, later studies did find children to be more discerning consumers of media than popularly believed (Gauntlett, 2001 ).

Hugely influential in our understandings of human behavior, the concept of social learning has been at the core of more contemporary understandings of media effects. For example, scholar Christopher Ferguson noted that the General Aggression Model (GAM), rooted in social learning and cognitive theory, has for decades been a dominant model for understanding how media impacts aggression and violence. GAM is described as the idea that “aggression is learned by the activation and repetition of cognitive scripts coupled with the desensitization of emotional responses due to repeated exposure.” However, Ferguson noted that its usefulness has been debated and advocated for a paradigm shift (Ferguson, 2013 , pp. 65, 27; Krahé, 2014 ).

Though the methodologies of the Payne Fund Studies and Bandura studies were heavily criticized, concern over media effects continued to be tied to larger moral debates including the fear of moral decline and concern over the welfare of children. Most notably, in the 1950s, psychiatrist Frederic Wertham warned of the dangers of comic books, a hugely popular medium at the time, and their impact on juveniles. Based on anecdotes and his clinical experience with children, Wertham argued that images of graphic violence and sexual debauchery in comic books were linked to juvenile delinquency. Though he was far from the only critic of comic book content, his criticisms reached the masses and gained further notoriety with the publication of his 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent . Wertham described the comic book content thusly,

The stories have a lot of crime and gunplay and, in addition, alluring advertisements of guns, some of them full-page and in bright colors, with four guns of various sizes and descriptions on a page . . . Here is the repetition of violence and sexiness which no Freud, Krafft-Ebing or Havelock Ellis ever dreamed could be offered to children, and in such profusion . . . I have come to the conclusion that this chronic stimulation, temptation and seduction by comic books, both their content and their alluring advertisements of knives and guns, are contributing factors to many children’s maladjustment. (Wertham, 1954 , p. 39)

Wertham’s work was instrumental in shaping public opinion and policies about the dangers of comic books. Concern about the impact of comics reached its apex in 1954 with the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. Wertham testified before the committee, arguing that comics were a leading cause of juvenile delinquency. Ultimately, the protest of graphic content in comic books by various interest groups contributed to implementation of the publishers’ self-censorship code, the Comics Code Authority, which essentially designated select books that were deemed “safe” for children (Nyberg, 1998 ). The code remained in place for decades, though it was eventually relaxed and decades later phased out by the two most dominant publishers, DC and Marvel.

Wertham’s work, however influential in impacting the comic industry, was ultimately panned by academics. Although scholar Bart Beaty characterized Wertham’s position as more nuanced, if not progressive, than the mythology that followed him, Wertham was broadly dismissed as a moral reactionary (Beaty, 2005 ; Phillips & Strobl, 2013 ). The most damning criticism of Wertham’s work came decades later, from Carol Tilley’s examination of Wertham’s files. She concluded that in Seduction of the Innocent ,

Wertham manipulated, overstated, compromised, and fabricated evidence—especially that evidence he attributed to personal clinical research with young people—for rhetorical gain. (Tilley, 2012 , p. 386)

Tilley linked Wertham’s approach to that of the Frankfurt theorists who deemed popular culture a social threat and contended that Wertham was most interested in “cultural correction” rather than scientific inquiry (Tilley, 2012 , p. 404).

Over the decades, concern about the moral impact of media remained while theoretical and methodological approaches to media effects studies continued to evolve (Rich, Bickham, & Wartella, 2015 ). In what many consider a sophisticated development, theorists began to view the audience as more active and multifaceted than the mass society perspective allowed (Kitzinger, 2004 ). One perspective, based on a “uses and gratifications” model, assumes that rather than a passive audience being injected with values and information, a more active audience selects and “uses” media as a response to their needs and desires. Studies of uses and gratifications take into account how choice of media is influenced by one’s psychological and social circumstances. In this context, media provides a variety of functions for consumers who may engage with it for the purposes of gathering information, reducing boredom, seeking enjoyment, or facilitating communication (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1973 ; Rubin, 2002 ). This approach differs from earlier views in that it privileges the perspective and agency of the audience.

Another approach, the cultivation theory, gained momentum among researchers in the 1970s and has been of particular interest to criminologists. It focuses on how television television viewing impacts viewers’ attitudes toward social reality. The theory was first introduced by communications scholar George Gerbner, who argued the importance of understanding messages that long-term viewers absorb. Rather than examine the effect of specific content within any given programming, cultivation theory,

looks at exposure to massive flows of messages over long periods of time. The cultivation process takes place in the interaction of the viewer with the message; neither the message nor the viewer are all-powerful. (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, Singnorielli, & Shanahan, 2002 , p. 48)

In other words, he argued, television viewers are, over time, exposed to messages about the way the world works. As Gerbner and colleagues stated, “continued exposure to its messages is likely to reiterate, confirm, and nourish—that is, cultivate—its own values and perspectives” (p. 49).

One of the most well-known consequences of heavy media exposure is what Gerbner termed the “mean world” syndrome. He coined it based on studies that found that long-term exposure to media violence among heavy television viewers, “tends to cultivate the image of a relatively mean and dangerous world” (p. 52). Inherent in Gerbner’s view was that media representations are separate and distinct entities from “real life.” That is, it is the distorted representations of crime and violence that cultivate the notion that the world is a dangerous place. In this context, Gerbner found that heavy television viewers are more likely to be fearful of crime and to overestimate their chances of being a victim of violence (Gerbner, 1994 ).

Though there is evidence in support of cultivation theory, the strength of the relationship between media exposure and fear of crime is inconclusive. This is in part due to the recognition that audience members are not homogenous. Instead, researchers have found that there are many factors that impact the cultivating process. This includes, but is not limited to, “class, race, gender, place of residence, and actual experience of crime” (Reiner, 2002 ; Sparks, 1992 ). Or, as Ted Chiricos and colleagues remarked in their study of crime news and fear of crime, “The issue is not whether media accounts of crime increase fear, but which audiences, with which experiences and interests, construct which meanings from the messages received” (Chiricos, Eschholz, & Gertz, p. 354).

Other researchers found that exposure to media violence creates a desensitizing effect, that is, that as viewers consume more violent media, they become less empathetic as well as psychologically and emotionally numb when confronted with actual violence (Bartholow, Bushman, & Sestir, 2006 ; Carnagey, Anderson, & Bushman, 2007 ; Cline, Croft, & Courrier, 1973 ; Fanti, Vanman, Henrich, & Avraamides, 2009 ; Krahé et al., 2011 ). Other scholars such as Henry Giroux, however, point out that our contemporary culture is awash in violence and “everyone is infected.” From this perspective, the focus is not on certain individuals whose exposure to violent media leads to a desensitization of real-life violence, but rather on the notion that violence so permeates society that it has become normalized in ways that are divorced from ethical and moral implications. Giroux wrote,

While it would be wrong to suggest that the violence that saturates popular culture directly causes violence in the larger society, it is arguable that such violence serves not only to produce an insensitivity to real life violence but also functions to normalize violence as both a source of pleasure and as a practice for addressing social issues. When young people and others begin to believe that a world of extreme violence, vengeance, lawlessness, and revenge is the only world they inhabit, the culture and practice of real-life violence is more difficult to scrutinize, resist, and transform . . . (Giroux, 2015 )

For Giroux, the danger is that the normalization of violence has become a threat to democracy itself. In our culture of mass consumption shaped by neoliberal logics, depoliticized narratives of violence have become desired forms of entertainment and are presented in ways that express tolerance for some forms of violence while delegitimizing other forms of violence. In their book, Disposable Futures , Brad Evans and Henry Giroux argued that as the spectacle of violence perpetuates fear of inevitable catastrophe, it reinforces expansion of police powers, increased militarization and other forms of social control, and ultimately renders marginalized members of the populace disposable (Evans & Giroux, 2015 , p. 81).

Criminology and the “Media/Crime Nexus”

Most criminologists and sociologists who focus on media and crime are generally either dismissive of the notion that media violence directly causes violence or conclude that findings are more complex than traditional media effects models allow, preferring to focus attention on the impact of media violence on society rather than individual behavior (Carrabine, 2008 ; Ferrell, Hayward, & Young, 2015 ; Jewkes, 2015 ; Kitzinger, 2004 ; Marsh & Melville, 2014 ; Rafter, 2006 ; Sternheimer, 2003 ; Sternheimer 2013 ; Surette, 2011 ). Sociologist Karen Sternheimer forcefully declared “media culture is not the root cause of American social problems, not the Big Bad Wolf, as our ongoing public discussion would suggest” (Sternheimer, 2003 , p. 3). Sternheimer rejected the idea that media causes violence and argued that a false connection has been forged between media, popular culture, and violence. Like others critical of a singular focus on media, Sternheimer posited that overemphasis on the perceived dangers of media violence serves as a red herring that directs attention away from the actual causes of violence rooted in factors such as poverty, family violence, abuse, and economic inequalities (Sternheimer, 2003 , 2013 ). Similarly, in her Media and Crime text, Yvonne Jewkes stated that U.K. scholars tend to reject findings of a causal link because the studies are too reductionist; criminal behavior cannot be reduced to a single causal factor such as media consumption. Echoing Gauntlett’s critiques of media effects research, Jewkes stated that simplistic causal assumptions ignore “the wider context of a lifetime of meaning-making” (Jewkes, 2015 , p. 17).

Although they most often reject a “violent media cause violence” relationship, criminologists do not dismiss the notion of media as influential. To the contrary, over the decades much criminological interest has focused on the construction of social problems, the ideological implications of media, and media’s potential impact on crime policies and social control. Eamonn Carrabine noted that the focus of concern is not whether media directly causes violence but on “how the media promote damaging stereotypes of social groups, especially the young, to uphold the status quo” (Carrabine, 2008 , p. 34). Theoretically, these foci have been traced to the influence of cultural and Marxist studies. For example, criminologists frequently focus on how social anxieties and class inequalities impact our understandings of the relationship between media violence and attitudes, values, and behaviors. Influential works in the 1970s, such as Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order by Stuart Hall et al. and Stanley Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics , shifted criminological critique toward understanding media as a hegemonic force that reinforces state power and social control (Brown, 2011 ; Carrabine, 2008 ; Cohen, 2005 ; Garland, 2008 ; Hall et al., 2013 /1973, 2013/1973 ). Since that time, moral panic has become a common framework applied to public discourse around a variety of social issues including road rage, child abuse, popular music, sex panics, and drug abuse among others.

Into the 21st century , advances in technology, including increased use of social media, shifted the ways that criminologists approach the study of media effects. Scholar Sheila Brown traced how research in criminology evolved from a focus on “media and crime” to what she calls the “media/crime nexus” that recognizes that “media experience is real experience” (Brown, 2011 , p. 413). In other words, many criminologists began to reject as fallacy what social media theorist Nathan Jurgenson deemed “digital dualism,” or the notion that we have an “online” existence that is separate and distinct from our “off-line” existence. Instead, we exist simultaneously both online and offline, an

augmented reality that exists at the intersection of materiality and information, physicality and digitality, bodies and technology, atoms and bits, the off and the online. It is wrong to say “IRL” [in real life] to mean offline: Facebook is real life. (Jurgenson, 2012 )

The changing media landscape has been of particular interest to cultural criminologists. Michelle Brown recognized the omnipresence of media as significant in terms of methodological preferences and urged a move away from a focus on causality and predictability toward a more fluid approach that embraces the complex, contemporary media-saturated social reality characterized by uncertainty and instability (Brown, 2007 ).

Cultural criminologists have indeed rejected direct, causal relationships in favor of the recognition that social meanings of aggression and violence are constantly in transition, flowing through the media landscape, where “bits of information reverberate and bend back on themselves, creating a fluid porosity of meaning that defines late-modern life, and the nature of crime and media within it.” In other words, there is no linear relationship between crime and its representation. Instead, crime is viewed as inseparable from the culture in which our everyday lives are constantly re-created in loops and spirals that “amplify, distort, and define the experience of crime and criminality itself” (Ferrell, Hayward, & Young, 2015 , pp. 154–155). As an example of this shift in understanding media effects, criminologist Majid Yar proposed that we consider how the transition from being primarily consumers to primarily producers of content may serve as a motivating mechanism for criminal behavior. Here, Yar is suggesting that the proliferation of user-generated content via media technologies such as social media (i.e., the desire “to be seen” and to manage self-presentation) has a criminogenic component worthy of criminological inquiry (Yar, 2012 ). Shifting attention toward the media/crime nexus and away from traditional media effects analyses opens possibilities for a deeper understanding of the ways that media remains an integral part of our everyday lives and inseparable from our understandings of and engagement with crime and violence.

Over the years, from films to comic books to television to video games to social media, concerns over media effects have shifted along with changing technologies. While there seems to be some consensus that exposure to violent media impacts aggression, there is little evidence showing its impact on violent or criminal behavior. Nonetheless, high-profile violent crimes continue to reignite public interest in media effects, particularly with regard to copycat crimes.

At times, academic debate around media effects remains contentious and one’s academic discipline informs the study and interpretation of media effects. Criminologists and sociologists are generally reluctant to attribute violence and criminal behavior directly to exposure to violence media. They are, however, not dismissive of the impact of media on attitudes, social policies, and social control as evidenced by the myriad of studies on moral panics and other research that addresses the relationship between media, social anxieties, gender, race, and class inequalities. Scholars who study media effects are also sensitive to the historical context of the debates and ways that moral concerns shape public policies. The self-regulating codes of the film industry and the comic book industry have led scholars to be wary of hyperbole and policy overreach in response to claims of media effects. Future research will continue to explore ways that changing technologies, including increasing use of social media, will impact our understandings and perceptions of crime as well as criminal behavior.

The Impact of Electronic Media Violence: Scientific Theory and Research

L. rowell huesmann.

The University of Michigan

Since the early 1960s research evidence has been accumulating that suggests that exposure to violence in television, movies, video games, cell phones, and on the internet increases the risk of violent behavior on the viewer’s part just as growing up in an environment filled with real violence increases the risk of them behaving violently. In the current review this research evidence is critically assessed, and the psychological theory that explains why exposure to violence has detrimental effects for both the short run and long run is elaborated. Finally, the size of the “media violence effect” is compared with some other well known threats to society to estimate how important a threat it should be considered.

One of the notable changes in our social environment in the 20 th and 21st centuries has been the saturation of our culture and daily lives by the mass media. In this new environment radio, television, movies, videos, video games, cell phones, and computer networks have assumed central roles in our children’s daily lives. For better or worse the mass media are having an enormous impact on our children’s values, beliefs, and behaviors. Unfortunately, the consequences of one particular common element of the electronic mass media has a particularly detrimental effect on children’s well being. Research evidence has accumulated over the past half-century that exposure to violence on television, movies, and most recently in video games increases the risk of violent behavior on the viewer’s part just as growing up in an environment filled with real violence increases the risk of violent behavior. Correspondingly, the recent increase in the use of mobile phones, text messaging, e-mail, and chat rooms by our youth have opened new venues for social interaction in which aggression can occur and youth can be victimized – new venues that break the old boundaries of family, neighborhood, and community that might have protected our youth to some extent in the past. These globe spanning electronic communication media have not really introduced new psychological threats to our children, but they have made it much harder to protect youth from the threats and have exposed many more of them to threats that only a few might have experienced before. It is now not just kids in bad neighborhoods or with bad friends who are likely to be exposed to bad things when they go out on the street. A ‘virtual’ bad street is easily available to most youth now. However, our response should not be to panic and keep our children “indoors” because the “streets” out there are dangerous. The streets also provide wonderful experiences and help youth become the kinds of adults we desire. Rather our response should be to understand the dangers on the streets, to help our children understand and avoid the dangers, to avoid exaggerating the dangers which will destroy our credibility, and also to try to control exposure to the extent we can.

Background for the Review

Different people may have quite different things in mind when they think of media violence. Similarly, among the public there may be little consensus on what constitutes aggressive and violent behavior . Most researchers, however, have clear conceptions of what they mean by media violence and aggressive behavior.

Most researchers define media violence as visual portrayals of acts of physical aggression by one human or human-like character against another. This definition has evolved as theories about the effects of media violence have evolved and represents an attempt to describe the kind of violent media presentation that is most likely to teach the viewer to be more violent. Movies depicting violence of this type were frequent 75 years ago and are even more frequent today, e.g., M, The Maltese Falcon, Shane, Dirty Harry, Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, Kill Bill . Violent TV programs became common shortly after TV became common in American homes about 55 years ago and are common today, e.g., Gunsmoke, Miami Vice, CSI, and 24. More recently, video games, internet displays, and cell phone displays have become part of most children’s growing-up, and violent displays have become common on them, e.g., Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil, Warrior .

To most researchers, aggressive behavior refers to an act that is intended to injure or irritate another person. Laymen may call assertive salesmen “aggressive,” but researchers do not because there is no intent to harm. Aggression can be physical or non-physical. It includes many kinds of behavior that do not seem to fit the commonly understood meaning of “violence.” Insults and spreading harmful rumors fit the definition. Of course, the aggressive behaviors of greatest concern clearly involve physical aggression ranging in severity from pushing or shoving, to fighting, to serious assaults and homicide. In this review he term violent behavior is used to describe these more serious forms of physical aggression that have a significant risk of seriously injuring the victim.

Violent or aggressive actions seldom result from a single cause; rather, multiple factors converging over time contribute to such behavior. Accordingly, the influence of the violent mass media is best viewed as one of the many potential factors that influence the risk for violence and aggression. No reputable researcher is suggesting that media violence is “the” cause of violent behavior. Furthermore, a developmental perspective is essential for an adequate understanding of how media violence affects youthful conduct and in order to formulate a coherent response to this problem. Most youth who are aggressive and engage in some forms of antisocial behavior do not go on to become violent teens and adults [ 1 ]. Still, research has shown that a significant proportion of aggressive children are likely to grow up to be aggressive adults, and that seriously violent adolescents and adults often were highly aggressive and even violent as children [ 2 ]. The best single predictor of violent behavior in older adolescents, young adults, and even middle aged adults is aggressive behavior when they were younger. Thus, anything that promotes aggressive behavior in young children statistically is a risk factor for violent behavior in adults as well.

Theoretical Explanations for Media Violence Effects

In order to understand the empirical research implicating violence in electronic media as a threat to society, an understanding of why and how violent media cause aggression is vital. In fact, psychological theories that explain why media violence is such a threat are now well established. Furthermore, these theories also explain why the observation of violence in the real world – among the family, among peers, and within the community – also stimulates aggressive behavior in the observer.

Somewhat different processes seem to cause short term effects of violent content and long term effects of violent content, and that both of these processes are distinct from the time displacement effects that engagement in media may have on children. Time displacement effects refer to the role of the mass media (including video games) in displacing other activities in which the child might engage which might change the risk for certain kinds of behavior, e.g. replacing reading, athletics, etc. This essay is focusing on the effects of violent media content, and displacement effects will not be reviewed though they may well have important consequences.

Short-term Effects

Most theorists would now agree that the short term effects of exposure to media violence are mostly due to 1) priming processes, 2) arousal processes, and 3) the immediate mimicking of specific behaviors [ 3 , 4 ].

Priming is the process through which spreading activation in the brain’s neural network from the locus representing an external observed stimulus excites another brain node representing a cognition, emotion, or behavior. The external stimulus can be inherently linked to a cognition, e.g., the sight of a gun is inherently linked to the concept of aggression [ 5 ], or the external stimulus can be something inherently neutral like a particular ethnic group (e.g., African-American) that has become linked in the past to certain beliefs or behaviors (e.g., welfare). The primed concepts make behaviors linked to them more likely. When media violence primes aggressive concepts, aggression is more likely.

To the extent that mass media presentations arouse the observer, aggressive behavior may also become more likely in the short run for two possible reasons -- excitation transfer [ 6 ] and general arousal [ 7 ]. First, a subsequent stimulus that arouses an emotion (e.g. a provocation arousing anger) may be perceived as more severe than it is because some of the emotional response stimulated by the media presentation is miss-attributed as due to the provocation transfer. For example, immediately following an exciting media presentation, such excitation transfer could cause more aggressive responses to provocation. Alternatively, the increased general arousal stimulated by the media presentation may simply reach such a peak that inhibition of inappropriate responses is diminished, and dominant learned responses are displayed in social problem solving, e.g. direct instrumental aggression.

The third short term process, imitation of specific behaviors, can be viewed as a special case of the more general long-term process of observational learning [ 8 ]. In recent years evidence has accumulated that human and primate young have an innate tendency to mimic whomever they observe [ 9 ]. Observation of specific social behaviors around them increases the likelihood of children behaving exactly that way. Specifically, as children observe violent behavior, they are prone to mimic it. The neurological process through which this happens is not completely understood, but it seems likely that “mirror neurons,” which fire when either a behavior is observed or when the same behavior is acted out, play an important role [ 10 , 4 ].

Long-term Effects

Long term content effects, on the other hand, seem to be due to 1) more lasting observational learning of cognitions and behaviors (i.e., imitation of behaviors), and 2) activation and desensitization of emotional processes.

Observational learning

According to widely accepted social cognitive models, a person’s social behavior is controlled to a great extent by the interplay of the current situation with the person’s emotional state, their schemas about the world, their normative beliefs about what is appropriate, and the scripts for social behavior that they have learned [ 11 ]. During early, middle, and late childhood children encode in memory social scripts to guide behavior though observation of family, peers, community, and mass media. Consequently observed behaviors are imitated long after they are observed [ 10 ]. During this period, children’s social cognitive schemas about the world around them also are elaborated. For example, extensive observation of violence has been shown to bias children’s world schemas toward attributing hostility to others’ actions. Such attributions in turn increase the likelihood of children behaving aggressively [ 12 ]. As children mature further, normative beliefs about what social behaviors are appropriate become crystallized and begin to act as filters to limit inappropriate social behaviors [ 13 ]. These normative beliefs are influenced in part by children’s observation of the behaviors of those around them including those observed in the mass media.

Desensitization

Long-term socialization effects of the mass media are also quite likely increased by the way the mass media and video games affect emotions. Repeated exposures to emotionally activating media or video games can lead to habituation of certain natural emotional reactions. This process is called “desensitization.” Negative emotions experienced automatically by viewers in response to a particular violent or gory scene decline in intensity after many exposures [ 4 ]. For example, increased heart rates, perspiration, and self-reports of discomfort often accompany exposure to blood and gore. However, with repeated exposures, this negative emotional response habituates, and the child becomes “desensitized.” The child can then think about and plan proactive aggressive acts without experiencing negative affect [ 4 ].

Enactive learning

One more theoretical point is important. Observational learning and desensitization do not occur independently of other learning processes. Children are constantly being conditioned and reinforced to behave in certain ways, and this learning may occur during media interactions. For example, because players of violent video games are not just observers but also “active” participants in violent actions, and are generally reinforced for using violence to gain desired goals, the effects on stimulating long-term increases in violent behavior should be even greater for video games than for TV, movies, or internet displays of violence. At the same time, because some video games are played together by social groups (e.g., multi-person games) and because individual games may often be played together by peers, more complex social conditioning processes may be involved that have not yet been empirically examined. These effects, including effects of selection and involvement, need to be explored.

The Key Empirical Studies

Given this theoretical back ground, let us now examine the empirical research that indicates that childhood exposure to media violence has both short term and long term effects in stimulating aggression and violence in the viewer. Most of this research is on TV, movies, and video games, but from the theory above one can see that the same effects should occur for violence portrayed on various internet sites (e.g., multi-person game sites, video posting sites, chat rooms) and on handheld cell phones or computers.

Violence in Television, Films, and Video Games

The fact that most research on the impact of media violence on aggressive behavior has focused on violence in fictional television and film and video games is not surprising given the prominence of violent content in these media and the prominence of these media in children’s lives.

Children in the United States spend an average of between three and four hours per day viewing television [ 14 ], and the best studies have shown that over 60% of programs contain some violence, and about 40% of those contain heavy violence [ 15 ]. Children are also spending an increasingly large amount of time playing video games, most of which contain violence. Video game units are now present in 83% of homes with children [ 16 ]. In 2004, children spent 49 minutes per day playing video, and on any given day, 52% of children ages 8–18 years play a video game games [ 16 ]. Video game use peaks during middle childhood with an average of 65 minutes per day for 8–10 year-olds, and declines to 33 minutes per day for 15–18 year-olds [ 16 ]. And most of these games are violent; 94% of games rated (by the video game industry) as appropriate for teens are described as containing violence, and ratings by independent researchers suggest that the real percentage may be even higher [ 17 ]. No published study has quantified the violence in games rated ‘M’ for mature—presumably, these are even more likely to be violent.

Meta-analyses that average the effects observed in many studies provide the best overall estimates of the effects of media violence. Two particularly notable meta-analyses are those of Paik and Comstock [ 18 ] and Anderson and Bushman [ 19 ]. The Paik and Comstock meta-analysis focused on violent TV and films while the Anderson and Bushman meta-analysis focused on violent video games.

Paik and Comstock [ 18 ] examined effect sizes from 217 studies published between 1957 and 1990. For the randomized experiments they reviewed, Paik and Comstock found an average effect size ( r =.38, N=432 independent tests of hypotheses) which is moderate to large compared to other public health effects. When the analysis was limited to experiments on physical violence against a person, the average r was still .32 (N=71 independent tests). This meta-analysis also examined cross-sectional and longitudinal field surveys published between 1957 and 1990. For these studies the authors found an average r of .19 (N=410 independent tests). When only studies were used for which the dependent measure was actual physical aggression against another person (N=200), the effect size remained unchanged. Finally, the average correlation of media violence exposure with engaging in criminal violence was .13.

Anderson and Bushman [ 19 ] conducted the key meta-analyses on the effects of violent video games. Their meta-analyses revealed effect sizes for violent video games ranging from .15 to .30. Specifically, playing violent video games was related to increases in aggressive behavior ( r = .27), aggressive affect ( r =.19), aggressive cognitions (i.e., aggressive thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes), ( r =.27), and physiological arousal ( r = .22) and was related to decreases in prosocial (helping) behavior ( r = −.27). Furthermore, when studies were coded for the quality of their methodology, the best studies yielded larger effect sizes than the “not-best” studies.

One criticism sometimes leveled at meta-analyses is based on the “file drawer effect.” This refers to the fact that studies with “non-significant” results are less likely to be published and to appear in meta-analyses. However, one can correct for this problem by estimating how many “null-effect” studies it would take to change the results of the meta-analysis. This has been done with the above meta-analyses, and the numbers are very large. For example, Paik and Comstock [ 18 ] show that over 500,000 cases of null effects would have to exist in file drawers to change their overall conclusion of a significant positive relation between exposure to media violence and aggression.

While meta-analyses are good of obtaining a summary view of what the research shows, a better understanding of the research can be obtained by examining a few key specific studies in more detail.

Experiments

Generally, experiments have demonstrated that exposing people, especially children and youth, to violent behavior on film and TV increases the likelihood that they will behave aggressively immediately afterwards. In the typical paradigm, randomly selected individuals are shown either a violent or non-violent short film or TV program or play a violent or non-violent video game and are then observed as they have the opportunity to aggress. For children, this generally means playing with other children in situations that might stimulate conflict; for adults, it generally means participating in a competitive activity in which winning seems to involve inflicting pain on another person.

Children in such experiments who see the violent film clip or play the violent game typically behave more aggressively immediately afterwards than those viewing or playing nonviolence (20, 21, 22). For example, Josephson (22) randomly assigned 396 seven- to nine-year-old boys to watch either a violent or a nonviolent film before they played a game of floor hockey in school. Observers who did not know what movie any boy had seen recorded the number of times each boy physically attacked another boy during the game. Physical attack was defined to include hitting, elbowing, or shoving another player to the floor, as well as tripping, kneeing, and other assaultive behaviors that would be penalized in hockey. For some children, the referees carried a walkie-talkie, a specific cue that had appeared in the violent film that was expected to remind the boys of the movie they had seen earlier. For boys rated by their teacher as frequently aggressive, the combination of seeing a violent film and seeing the movie-associated cue stimulated significantly more assaultive behavior than any other combination of film and cue. Parallel results have been found in randomized experiments for preschoolers who physically attack each other more often after watching violent videos [ 21 ] and for older delinquent adolescents who get into more fights on days they see more violent films [ 23 ].

In a randomized experiment with violent video games, Irwin & Gross [ 24 ] assessed physical aggression (e.g., hitting, shoving, pinching, kicking) between boys who had just played either a violent or a nonviolent video game. Those who had played the violent video game were more physically aggressive toward peers. Other randomized experiments have measured college students’ propensity to be physically aggressive after they had played (or not played) a violent video game. For example, Bartholow &Anderson [ 25 ] found that male and female college students who had played a violent game subsequently delivered more than two and a half times as many high-intensity punishments to a peer as those who played a nonviolent video game. Other experiments have shown that it is the violence in video games, not the excitement that playing them provokes, that produces the increase in aggression [ 26 ].

In summary, experiments unambiguously show that viewing violent videos, films, cartoons, or TV dramas or playing violent video games “cause” the risk to go up that the observing child will behave seriously aggressively toward others immediately afterwards. This is true of preschoolers, elementary school children, high school children, college students, and adults. Those who watch the violent clips tend to behave more aggressively than those who view non-violent clips, and they adopt beliefs that are more “accepting” of violence [ 27 ].

One more quasi-experiment frequently cited by game manufacturers should be mentioned here. Williams and Skoric [ 28 ] have published the results of a dissertation study of cooperative online game playing by adults in which they report no significant long-term effects of playing a violent game on the adult’s behavior. However, the low statistical power of the study, the numerous methodological flaws (self-selection of a biased sample, lack of an adequate control group, the lack of adequate behavioral measures) make the validity of the study highly questionable. Furthermore, the participants were adults for whom there would be little theoretical reason to expect long-term effects.

Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies

Empirical cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of youth behaving and watching or playing violent media in their natural environments do not test causation as well as experiments do, but they provide strong evidence that the causal processes demonstrated in experiments generalize to violence observed in the real world and have significant effects on real world violent behavior. As reported in the discussion of meta-analyses above, the great majority of competently done one-shot survey studies have shown that children who watch more media violence day in and day out behave more aggressively day in and day out [ 18 ]. The relationship is less strong than that observed in laboratory experiments, but it is nonetheless large enough to be socially significant; the correlations obtained are usually are between .15 and .30. Moreover, the relation is highly replicable even across researchers who disagree about the reasons for the relationship [e.g., 29 ] and across countries [ 30 , 31 ].

Complementing these one-time survey studies are the longitudinal real-world studies that have shown correlations over time from childhood viewing of media violence to later adolescent and adult aggressive behavior [ 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ]; for reviews see [ 4 , 27 , 33 ]. This studies have shown that early habitual exposure to media violence in middle-childhood predicts increased aggressiveness 1 year, 3 years, 10 years, 15 years, and 22 years later in adulthood, even controlling for early aggressiveness. On the other hand, behaving aggressively in childhood is a much weaker predictor of higher subsequent viewing of violence when initial violence viewing is controlled, making it implausible that the correlation between aggression and violent media use was primarily due to aggressive children turning to watching more violence [ 31 , 32 , 33 ]. As discussed below the pattern of results suggests that the strongest contribution to the correlation is the stimulation of aggression from exposure to media violence but that those behaving aggressively may also have a tendency to turn to watching more violence, leading to a downward spiral effect [ 13 ].

An example is illustrative. In a study of children interviewed each year for three years as they moved through middle childhood, Huesmann et al. [ 31 ] found increasing rates of aggression for both boys and girls who watched more television violence even with controls for initial aggressiveness and many other background factors. Children who identified with the portrayed aggressor and those who perceived the violence as realistic were especially likely to show these observational learning effects. A 15-year follow-up of these children [ 33 ] demonstrated that those who habitually watched more TV violence in their middle-childhood years grew up to be more aggressive young adults. For example, among children who were in the upper quartile on violence viewing in middle childhood, 11% of the males had been convicted of a crime (compared with 3% for other males), 42% had “pushed, grabbed, or shoved their spouse” in the past year (compared with 22% of other males), and 69% had “shoved a person” when made angry in the past year (compared with 50% of other males). For females, 39% of the high-violence-viewers had “thrown something at their spouse” in the past year (compared with 17% of the other females), and 17% had “punched, beaten, or choked” another adult when angry in the past year (compared with 4% of the other females). These effects were not attributable to any of a large set of child and parent characteristics including demographic factors, intelligence, parenting practices. Overall, for both males and females the effect of middle-childhood violence viewing on young adult aggression was significant even when controlling for their initial aggression. In contrast, the effect of middle-childhood aggression on adult violence viewing when controlling for initial violence viewing was not-significant, though it was positive.

Moderators of Media Violence Effects

Obviously, not all observers of violence are affected equally by what they observe at all times. Research has shown that the effects of media violence on children are moderated by situational characteristics of the presentation including how well it attracts and sustains attention, personal characteristics of the viewer including their aggressive predispositions, and characteristics of the physical and human context in which the children are exposed to violence.

In terms of plot characteristics, portraying violence as justified and showing rewards (or at least not showing punishments) for violence increase the effects that media violence has in stimulating aggression, particularly in the long run [ 27 , 36 , 37 ]. As for viewer characteristics that depend on perceptions of the plot, those viewers who perceive the violence as telling about life more like it really is and who identify more with the perpetrator of the violence are also stimulated more toward violent behavior in the long run [ 27 , 30 , 33 , 38 ]. Taken together these facts mean that violent acts by charismatic heroes, that appear justified and are rewarded, are the violent acts most likely to increase viewer’s aggression.

A number of researchers have suggested that, independently of the plot, viewers or game players who are already aggressive should be the only one’s affected. This is certainly not true. While the already aggressive child who watches or plays a lot of violent media may become the most aggressive young adult, the research shows that even initially unaggressive children are made more aggressive by viewing media violence [ 27 , 32 , 33 ]. Long term effects due appear to be stronger for younger children [ 3 , 14 ], but short term affects appear, if anything, stronger for older children [ 3 ] perhaps because one needs to have already learned aggressive scripts to have them primed by violent displays. While the effects appeared weaker for female 40 years ago [ 32 ], they appear equally strong today [ 33 ]. Finally, having a high IQ does not seem to protect a child against being influenced [ 27 ].

Mediators of Media Violence Effects

Most researchers believe that the long term effects of media violence depend on social cognitions that control social behavior being changed for the long run. More research needs to completed to identify all the mediators, but it seems clear that they include normative beliefs about what kinds of social behaviors are OK [ 4 , 13 , 27 ], world schemas that lead to hostile or non-hostile attributions about others intentions [ 4 , 12 , 27 ], and social scripts that automatically control social behavior once they are well learned [ 4 , 11 , 27 ].

This review marshals evidence that compelling points to the conclusion that media violence increases the risk significantly that a viewer or game player will behave more violently in the short run and in the long run. Randomized experiments demonstrate conclusively that exposure to media violence immediately increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior for children and adults in the short run. The most important underlying process for this effect is probably priming though mimicry and increased arousal also play important roles. The evidence from longitudinal field studies is also compelling that children’s exposure to violent electronic media including violent games leads to long-term increases in their risk for behaving aggressively and violently. These long-term effects are a consequence of the powerful observational learning and desensitization processes that neuroscientists and psychologists now understand occur automatically in the human child. Children automatically acquire scripts for the behaviors they observe around them in real life or in the media along with emotional reactions and social cognitions that support those behaviors. Social comparison processes also lead children to seek out others who behave similarly aggressively in the media or in real life leading to a downward spiral process that increases risk for violent behavior.

One valid remaining question is whether the size of this effect is large enough that one should consider it to be a public health threat. The answer seems to be “yes.” Two calculations support this conclusion. First, according to the best meta-analyses [ 18 , 19 ] the long term size of the effect of exposure to media violence in childhood on later aggressive or violent behavior is about equivalent to a correlation of .20 to .30. While some might argue that this explains only 4% to 9% of the individual variation in aggressive behavior, as several scholars have pointed out [ 39 , 40 ], percent variance explained is not a good statistic to use when predicting low probability events with high social costs. For example, a correlation of 0.3 with aggression translates into a change in the odds of aggression from 50/50 to 65/35 -- not a trivial change when one is dealing with life threatening behavior[ 40 ].

Secondly, the effect size of media violence is the same or larger than the effect size of many other recognized threats to public health. In Figure 1 from Bushman and Huesmann [ 41 ], the effect sizes for many common threats to public health are compared with the effect that media violence has on aggression. The only effect slightly larger than the effect of media violence on aggression is that of cigarette smoking on lung cancer.

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The Relative Strength of Known Public Health Threats.

In summary, exposure to electronic media violence increases the risk of children and adults behaving aggressively in the short-run and of children behaving aggressively in the long-run. It increases the risk significantly, and it increases it as much as many other factors that are considered public health threats. As with many other public health threats, not every child who is exposed to this threat will acquire the affliction of violent behavior, and many will acquire the affliction who are not exposed to the threat. However, that does not diminish the need to address the threat.

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Violent media and real-world behavior: Historical data and recent trends

2015 study from Stetson University published in Journal of Communications that explores violence in movies and video games and rates of societal violence over the same period.

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by Devon Maylie, The Journalist's Resource February 18, 2015

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The relationship between violent media and real-world violence has been the subject of extensive debate and considerable academic research , yet the core question is far from answered. Do violent games and movies encourage more violence, less, or is there no effect? Complicating matters is what seems like a simultaneous rise in onscreen mayhem and the number of bloody events in our streets — according to a 2014 report from the FBI, between 2007 and 2013 there were an average of 16.4 active-shooter incidents in the U.S. every year, more than 150% higher than the annual rate between 2000 and 2006.

But as has long been observed, any correlation is not necessarily causation . While Adam Lanza and James Holmes — respectively, the perpetrators of the Newtown and Aurora mass shootings — both played violent video games , so do millions of law-abiding Americans. A 2014 study in Psychology of Popular Media Culture found no evidence of an association between violent crime and video game sales and the release dates of popular violent video games. “Unexpectedly, many of the results were suggestive of a decrease in violent crime in response to violent video games,” write the researchers, based at Villanova and Rutgers. A 2015 study from the University of Toledo showed that playing violent video games could desensitize children and youth to violence, but didn’t establish a definitive connection with real-world behavior, positive or negative.

A 2014 study in Journal of Communication , “Does Media Violence Predict Societal Violence? It Depends on What You Look at and When,” builds on prior research to look closer at media portrayals of violence and rates of violent behavior. The research, by Christopher J. Ferguson of Stetson University, had two parts: The first measured the frequency and graphicness of violence in movies between 1920 and 2005 and compared it to homicide rates, median household income, policing, population density, youth population and GDP over the same period. The second part looked at the correlation between the consumption of violent video games and youth behavior from 1996 to 2011.

The study’s findings include:

Overall, no evidence was found to support the conclusion that media violence and societal violence are meaningfully correlated.
Across the 20th century the frequency of movie violence followed a rough U-pattern: It was common in the 1920s, then declined before rising again in the latter part of the 20th century. This appears to correspond to the period of the Motion Picture Production Code (known as the Hays Code), in force from 1930 to the late 1960s.

Movie violence and homicide rates (C.J. Ferguson)

The frequency of movie violence and murder rates were correlated in the mid-20th century, but not earlier or later in the period studied. “By the latter 20th century … movie violence [was] associated with reduced societal violence in the form of homicides. Further, the correlation between movie and societal violence was reduced when policing or real GDP were controlled.”
The graphicness of movie violence shows an increasing pattern across the 20th century, particularly beginning in the 1950s, but did not correlate with societal violence.
The second part of the study found that for the years 1996 to 2011, the consumption of violent video games was inversely related to youth violence.
Youth violence decreased during the 15-year study period despite high levels of media violence in society. However, the study period is relatively short, the researcher cautioned, and therefore results could be imperfect.

“Results from the two studies suggest that socialization models of media violence may be inadequate to our understanding of the interaction between media and consumer behavior at least in regard to serious violence,” Ferguson concludes. “Adoption of a limited-effects model in which user motivations rather than content drive media experiences may help us understand how media can have influences, yet those influences result in only limited aggregate net impact in society.” Given that effects on individual users may differ widely, Ferguson suggests that policy discussion should be more focused on “more pressing” issues that influence violence in society such as poverty or mental health.

Related research: A 2015 research roundup, “The Contested Field of Violent Video Games,” gives an overview of recent scholarship on video games and societal violence, including ones that support a link and others that refute it. Also of interest is a 2014 research roundup, “Mass Murder, Shooting Sprees and Rampage Violence.”

Keywords: video games, violence, aggression, desensitization, empathy, technology, youth, cognition, guns, crime, entertainment

About The Author

Devon Maylie

Essay on Media and Violence

Introduction

Research studies indicate that media causes violence and plays a role in desensitization, aggressive behavior, fear of harm, and nightmares. Examples of media platforms include movies, video games, television, and music. Violence in media has also been associated with health concerns. The youth have been the most common victims of media exposure and thus stand higher chances of exposure to violence (Anderson, 2016). In the contemporary world, violence in media platforms has been growing, reaching heightened levels, which is dangerous for society. When you turn on the television, there is violence, social media platforms; there is violence when you go to the movies; there is violence. Studies indicate that an average person in the United States watches videos for nearly five hours in a day. In addition, three-quarters of television content contain some form of violence, and the games being played today have elements of violence. This paper intends to evaluate the concept of media messages and their influence on violent and deviant behaviors. Television networks and video games will be considered.

The Netflix effect involves the behavior of staying home all day, ordering food, and relaxing the couch to watch Netflix programs (McDonald & Smith-Rowsey, 2016). Netflix and binge-watching have become popular among the younger generation and thus are exposed to different kinds of content being aired. Studies indicate that continuous exposure to violent materials has a negative effect on the aggressive behavior of individuals. Netflix is a global platform in the entertainment industry (Lobato, 2019). Although, the company does not have the rights to air in major countries such as China, India, and Japan, it has wide audience. One of the reasons for sanctions is the issues of content being aired by the platform, which may influence the behaviors of the young generation. The primary goal of Netflix is entertainment; it’s only the viewers who have developed specific effects that affect their violent behaviors through imitation of the content.

Television Networks

Television networks focus on feeding viewers with the latest updates on different happenings across the globe. In other instances, they focus on bringing up advertisements and entertainment programs. There is little room for violent messages and content in the networks unless they are airing movie programs, which also are intended for entertainment. However, there has been evidence in the violence effect witnessed in television networks. Studies called the “Marilyn Monroe effect” established that following the airing of many suicidal cases, there has been a growth in suicides among the population (Anderson, Bushman, Donnerstein, Hummer, & Warburton, 2015). Actual suicide cases increased by 2.5%, which is linked to news coverage regarding suicide. Additionally, some coverages are filled with violence descriptions, and their aftermath with may necessitate violent behaviors in the society. For instance, if televisions are covering mass demonstrations where several people have been killed, the news may trigger other protests in other parts of the country.

Communications scholars, however, dispute these effects and link the violent behaviors to the individuals’ perception. They argue that the proportion of witnessing violent content in television networks is minimal. Some acts of violence are associated with what the individual perceives and other psychological factors that are classified into social and non-social instigators (Anderson et al., 2015). Social instigators consist of social rejection, provocation, and unjust treatment. Nonsocial instigators are physical objects present, which include weapons or guns. Also, there are environmental factors that include loud noises, overcrowding, and heat. Therefore, there is more explanation of the causes of aggressive behaviors that are not initiated by television networks but rather a combination of biological and environmental factors.

Video games

Researchers have paid more attention to television networks and less on video games. Children spend more time playing video games. According to research, more than 52% of children play video games and spend about 49 minutes per day playing. Some of the games contain violent behaviors. Playing violent games among youth can cause aggressive behaviors. The acts of kicking, hitting, and pinching in the games have influenced physical aggression. However, communication scholars argue that there is no association between aggression and video games (Krahé & Busching, 2015). Researchers have used tools such as “Competition Reaction Time Test,” and “Hot Sauce Paradigm” to assess the aggression level. The “Hot Sauce Paradigm” participants were required to make hot sauce tor tasting. They were required to taste tester must finish the cup of the hot sauce in which the tester detests spicy products. It was concluded that the more the hot sauce testers added in the cup, the more aggressive they were deemed to be.

The “Competition Reaction Time Test” required individuals to compete with another in the next room. It was required to press a button fast as soon as the flashlight appeared. Whoever won was to discipline the opponent with loud noises. They could turn up the volume as high as they wanted. However, in reality, there was no person in the room; the game was to let individuals win half of the test. Researchers intended to test how far individuals would hold the dial. In theory, individuals who punish their opponents in cruel ways are perceived to be more aggressive. Another way to test violent behaviors for gamer was done by letting participants finish some words. For instance, “M_ _ _ ER,” if an individual completes the word as “Murder” rather than “Mother,” the character was considered to possess violent behavior (Allen & Anderson, 2017). In this regard, video games have been termed as entertainment ideologies, and the determination of the players is to win, no matter how brutal the game might be.

In this paper, fixed assumptions were used to correlate violent behaviors and media objects. But that was not the case with regards to the findings. A fixed model may not be appropriate in the examination of time-sensitive causes of dependent variables. Although the model is applicable for assessing specific entities in a given industry, the results may not be precise.

Conclusion .

Based on the findings of the paper, there is no relationship between violent behaviors and media. Netflix effect does not influence the behavior of individuals. The perceptions of the viewers and players is what matters, and how they understand the message being conveyed. Individuals usually play video games and watch televisions for entertainment purposes. The same case applies to the use of social media platforms and sports competitions. Even though there is violent content, individuals focus on the primary objective of their needs.

Analysis of sources

The sources have been thoroughly researched, and they provide essential information regarding the relationship between violent behaviors and media messages. Studies conducted by various authors like Krahé & Busching did not establish any relationship between the two variables. Allen & Anderson (2017) argue that the models for testing the two variables are unreliable and invalid. The fixed assumptions effect model was utilized, and its limitations have been discussed above. Therefore, the authors of these references have not been able to conclude whether there is a connection between violence and media messages.

Allen, J. J., & Anderson, C. A. (2017). General aggression model. The International Encyclopedia of Media Effects , 1-15.

Anderson, C. A. (2016). Media violence effects on children, adolescents and young adults. Health Progress , 97 (4), 59-62.

Anderson, C. A., Bushman, B. J., Donnerstein, E., Hummer, T. A., & Warburton, W. (2015). SPSSI research summary on media violence. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy , 15 (1), 4-19.

Krahé, B., & Busching, R. (2015). Breaking the vicious cycle of media violence use and aggression: A test of intervention effects over 30 months. Psychology of Violence , 5 (2), 217.

Lobato, R. (2019). Netflix nations: the geography of digital distribution . NYU Press.

McDonald, K., & Smith-Rowsey, D. (Eds.). (2016). The Netflix effect: Technology and entertainment in the 21st century . Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

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The Facts on Media Violence

By Vanessa Schipani

Posted on March 8, 2018

In the wake of the Florida school shooting, politicians have raised concern over the influence of violent video games and films on young people, with the president claiming they’re “shaping young people’s thoughts.” Scientists still debate the issue, but the majority of studies show that extensive exposure to media violence is a risk factor for aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

The link between media violence and mass shootings is yet more tenuous. Compared with acts of aggression and violence, mass shootings are relatively rare events, which makes conducting conclusive research on them difficult.

President Donald Trump first raised the issue during a meeting on school safety with local and state officials, which took place a week after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The shooter, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, reportedly obsessively played violent video games.

Trump, Feb. 22: We have to look at the Internet because a lot of bad things are happening to young kids and young minds, and their minds are being formed. And we have to do something about maybe what they’re seeing and how they’re seeing it. And also video games. I’m hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts. And then you go the further step, and that’s the movies. You see these movies, they’re so violent.

Trump discussed the issue again with members of Congress on Feb. 28 during another meeting on school safety. During that discussion, Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn claimed mothers have told her they’re “very concerned” that “exposure” to entertainment media has “desensitized” children to violence.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley also said during the meeting: “[Y]ou see all these films about everybody being blown up. Well, just think of the impact that makes on young people.”

The points Trump and members of Congress raise aren’t unfounded, but the research on the subject is complex. Scientists who study the effect of media violence have taken issue with how the popular press has portrayed their work, arguing that the nuance of their research is often left out.

In a 2015 review of the scientific literature on video game violence, the American Psychological Association elaborates on this point.

APA, 2015: News commentators often turn to violent video game use as a potential causal contributor to acts of mass homicide. The media point to perpetrators’ gaming habits as either a reason they have chosen to commit their crimes or as a method of training. This practice extends at least as far back as the Columbine massacre (1999). … As with most areas of science, the picture presented by this research is more complex than is usually depicted in news coverage and other information prepared for the general public.

Here, we break down the facts — nuance included — on the effect of media violence on young people.

Is Media Violence a Risk Factor for Aggression?

The 2015 report by the APA on video games is a good place to start. After systematically going through the scientific literature, the report’s authors “concluded that violent video game use has an effect on aggression.”

In particular, the authors explain that this effect manifests as an increase in aggressive behaviors, thoughts and feelings and a decrease in helping others, empathy and sensitivity to aggression. Though limited, evidence also suggests that “higher amounts of exposure” to video games is linked to “higher levels of aggression,” the report said.

The report emphasized that “aggression is a complex behavior” caused by multiple factors, each of which increases the likelihood that an individual will be aggressive. “Children who experience multiple risk factors are more likely to engage in aggression,” the report said.

The authors came to their conclusions because researchers have consistently found the effect across three different kinds of studies: cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies and laboratory experiments. “One method’s limits are offset by another method’s strengths,” the APA report explains, so only together can they be used to infer a causal relationship.

Cross-sectional studies find correlations between different phenomena at one point in time. They’re relatively easy to conduct, but they can’t provide causal evidence because correlations can be spurious . For example, an increase in video game sales might correlate with a decrease in violent crime, but that doesn’t necessarily mean video games prevent violent crime. Other unknown factors might also be at play.

Longitudinal panel studies collect data on the same group over time, sometimes for decades. They’re used to investigate long-term effects, such as whether playing video games as a child might correlate with aggression as an adult. These studies also measure other risk factors for aggression, such as harsh discipline from parents, with the aim of singling out the effect of media violence. For this reason, these studies provide better evidence for causality than cross-sectional studies, but they are more difficult to conduct.

Laboratory experiments manipulate one phenomenon — in this case, exposure to media violence — and keep all others constant. Because of their controlled environment, experiments provide strong evidence for a causal effect. But for the same reason, laboratory studies may not accurately reflect how people act in the real world.

This brings us to why debate still exists among scientists studying media violence. Some researchers have found that the experimental evidence backing the causal relationship between playing video games and aggression might not be as solid as it seems.

Last July, Joseph Hilgard , an assistant professor of psychology at Illinois State University, and others published a study in the journal Psychological Bulletin that found that laboratory experiments on the topic may be subject to publication bias. This means that studies that show the effect may be more likely to be published than those that don’t, skewing the body of evidence.

After Hilgard corrected for this bias, the effect of violent video games on aggressive behavior and emotions did still exist, but it was reduced, perhaps even to near zero. However, the effect on aggressive thoughts remained relatively unaffected by this publication bias. The researchers also found that cross-sectional studies weren’t subject to publication bias. They didn’t examine longitudinal studies, which have shown that youth who play more violent video games are more likely to report aggressive behavior over time.

Hilgard looked at a 2010 literature review by Craig A. Anderson , the director of the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University, and others. Published in Psychological Bulletin, this review influenced the APA’s report.

In response, Anderson took a second look at his review and found that the effect of violent video games on aggression was smaller than he originally thought, but not as small as Hilgard found. For this reason, he argued the effect was still a “societal concern.”

To be clear, Hilgard is arguing that there’s more uncertainty in the field than originally thought, not that video games have no effect on aggression. He’s also not the first to find that research on video games may be suffering from publication bias.

But what about movies and television? Reviews of the literature on these forms of media tend to be less recent, Kenneth A. Dodge , a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, told us by email.

Dodge, also one of the authors of the 2015 APA study, pointed us to one 1994 review of the literature on television published in the journal Communication Research that concluded that television violence also “increases aggressiveness and antisocial behavior.” Dodge told us he’s “confident” the effect this analysis and others found “would hold again today.”

Dodge also pointed us to a 2006 study that reviewed the literature on violent video games, films, television and other media together. “Most contemporary studies start with the premise that children are exposed [to violence] through so many diverse media that they start to group them together,” said Dodge.

Published in JAMA Pediatrics , the review found that exposure to violent media increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior, thoughts and feelings. The review also found media decreases the likelihood of helping behavior. All of these effects were “modest,” the researchers concluded.

Overall, most of the research suggests media violence is a risk factor for aggression, but some experts in the field still question whether there’s enough evidence to conclusively say there’s a link.

Is Violent Media a Risk Factor for Violence?

There’s even less evidence to suggest media violence is a risk factor for criminal violence.

“In psychological research, aggression is usually conceptualized as behavior that is intended to harm another,” while, “[v]iolence can be defined as an extreme form of physical aggression,” the 2015 APA report explains . “Thus, all violence is aggression, but not all aggression is violence.”

The APA report said studies have been conducted on media violence’s relationship with “criminal violence,” but the authors “did not find enough evidence of sufficient utility to evaluate whether” there’s a solid link to violent video game use.

This lack of evidence is due, in part, to the fact that there are ethical limitations to conducting experiments on violence in the laboratory, especially when it comes to children and teens, the report explains. That leaves only evidence from cross-sectional studies and longitudinal studies. So what do those studies say?

One longitudinal study , published in the journal Developmental Psychology in 2003, found that, out of 153 males, those who watched the most violent television as children were more likely 15 years later “to have pushed, grabbed, or shoved their spouses, to have responded to an insult by shoving a person” or to have been “to have been convicted of a crime” during the previous year. Girls who watched the most violent television were also more likely to commit similar acts as young women. These effects persisted after controlling for other risk factors for aggression, such as parental aggression and intellectual ability.

A 2012 cross-sectional study that Anderson, at Iowa State, and others published in the journal Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice did find that the amount of violent video games juvenile delinquents played correlated with how many violent acts they had committed over the past year. The violent acts included gang fighting, hitting a teacher, hitting a parent, hitting other students and attacking another person.

However, a 2008 review of the literature published in the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior concluded that “ the effects of exposure to media violence on criminally violent behavior have not been established.” But the authors clarify: “Saying that the effect has not been established is not the same as saying that the effect does not exist.”

In contrast to the APA report, Anderson and a colleague argue in a 2015 article published in American Behavioral Scientist that “research shows that media violence is a causal risk factor not only for mild forms of aggression but also for more serious forms of aggression, including violent criminal behavior.”

Why did Anderson and his colleagues come to different conclusions than the APA? He told us that the APA “did not include the research literature on TV violence,” and excluded “several important studies on video game effects on violent behavior published since 2013.”

In their 2015 article, Anderson and his colleague clarify that, even if there is a link, it “does not mean that violent media exposure by itself will turn a normal child or adolescent who has few or no other risk factors into a violent criminal or a school shooter.” They add, “Such extreme violence is rare, and tends to occur only when multiple risk factors converge in time, space, and within an individual.”

Multiple experts we spoke with did point to one factor unique to the United States that they argue increases the risk of mass shootings and lethality of violence in general — access to guns.

For example, Anderson told us by email: “There is a pretty strong consensus among violence researchers in psychology and criminology that the main reason that U.S. homicide rates are so much higher than in most Western democracies is our easy access to guns.”

Dodge, at Duke, echoed Anderson’s point.”The single most obvious and probably largest difference between a country like the US that has many mass shootings and other developed countries is the easy access to guns,” he said.

So while scientists disagree about how much evidence is enough to sufficiently support a causal link between media violence and real world violence, Trump and other politicians’ concerns aren’t unfounded.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is also based at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. Hilgard, now at Illinois State, was a post doctoral fellow at the APPC.

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Desensitization to media violence: Links with habitual media violence exposure, aggressive cognitions, and aggressive behavior

2011, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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How Violent Media Can Impact Your Mental Health

Cynthia Vinney, PhD is an expert in media psychology and a published scholar whose work has been published in peer-reviewed psychology journals.

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One of the most studied—and most controversial—topics in media psychology is the impact of violent media on consumers, especially children. Violence in is movies, on television, in video games, and on the internet. It's also included in content aimed at kids, tweens, and teens, and therefore, it's no surprise that psychologists, parents, and media consumers, in general, are concerned about the impact it has on people.

As a result, ever since the advent of television decades ago, psychologists have investigated the possibility of a link between the consumption of violent media and increases in real-life aggression.

This article will explore the research on this topic including arguments for and against an association. In addition, this article will examine newer research that has found a relationship between exposure to violent content, especially via news media, and mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety .

Does Consuming Violent Content Lead to Increased Aggression?

Studies have consistently shown that media violence has an impact on real-life aggression . These studies use a diverse set of methods and participants, leading many experts on the impact of media violence to agree that aggression increases as a result of media violence consumption.

However, that doesn't mean exposure to media violence drives consumers to murder or other particularly violent acts. These studies explore different kinds of aggression, making the association the research has established between violent media and aggression more nuanced than it initially appears.

Evidence for a Link Between Violent Content and Aggression

Many experiments in labs have provided evidence that demonstrates that short-term exposure to violent media increases aggression in children, teenagers, and young adults. However, aggression doesn't always mean physical aggression. It can also mean verbal aggression , such as yelling insults, as well as thinking aggressive thoughts or having aggressive emotions.

There Varying Degrees of Aggression

Moreover, even physical aggression exists on a continuum from a light shove to something far more dangerous. As a result, people may become more aggressive immediately following exposure to media violence but that aggression manifests itself in a variety of different ways, a majority of which wouldn't be considered particularly dangerous.

Consuming Violent Media During Childhood May Result in Adult Aggression

More disturbing are the few longitudinal studies that have followed people over decades and have shown that frequent exposure to media violence in childhood results in adult aggression even if people no longer consume violent media as adults.

For example, one study found that frequent exposure to violent television at age 8 predicted aggressive behavior at ages 19 and 30 for male, but not female, participants. This effect held even after controlling for variables like social class, IQ , and initial aggressiveness.

Similarly, another study that surveyed 329 participants between the ages of 6 and 9 found that 15 years later the exposure of both males and females to television violence in childhood predicted increased aggression in adulthood. In particular, the 25% of study participants who viewed the most media violence in childhood were the most likely to be much more aggressive in adulthood.

These individuals exhibited a range of behaviors including:

Shoving their spouses
Beating people up
Committing crimes

This was especially true if they identified with aggressive characters and felt that television violence was realistic when they were children.

These findings suggest that frequent early exposure to television violence can have a powerful impact on individuals over time and well into their adult lives.

Why Is This Topic So Controversial?

So if there's so much research evidence for a link between media violence and real-world aggression, why is the debate over this topic ongoing? Part of the issue is one of definition.

Studies often define violence and aggression in very different ways and they use different measures to test the association, making it hard to replicate the results. Moreover, many researchers edit together media for lab experiments , creating a situation where participants must watch and react to media that bears minimal resemblance to anything they'd actually consume via TV, movies, or the internet.

As a result, even when these experiments find media violence causes aggression, the extent to which it can be generalized to the population as a whole is limited.

Of course, it would be naïve to think that consuming media violence has no impact on people, but it appears it may not be the most powerful influence. The effect of media violence is likely to vary based on other factors including personality traits, developmental stage, social and environmental influences, and the context in which the violence is presented.

It's also important to recognize that not all aggression is negative or socially unacceptable. One study found that a relationship between exposure to television violence and an increase in positive aggression, or aggression that isn't intended to cause harm, in the form of participation in extreme or contact sports.

Does Consuming Violent Media Lead to Mental Health Issues?

While psychologists have been studying the association between the consumption of violent media and increased aggression for well over 50 years, more recently, some have turned their attention to the impact of media violence on mental health concerns.

Consumption of Violent Media May Lead to Anxiety

Studies have demonstrated that there's a correlation between exposure to media violence and increased anxiety and the belief that the world is a scary place. For instance, an experimental investigation found that late adolescents who were exposed to a violent movie clip were more anxious than those who watched a nonviolent clip.

These findings suggest that the regular consumption of violent media could lead to anxiety in the long-term .

Constant Exposure to Violent Media Via Technology May Lead to Poorer Mental Health

Today, the violence shown on the news media may especially impact people's mental health. New technology means that violent events, including terrorist attacks, school shootings , and natural disasters, can be filmed and reported on immediately, and media consumers all over the world will be exposed to these events almost instantly via social media or news alerts on their smartphones and other devices.

Moreover, this exposure is likely to be intense and repeated due to the need to fill a 24-hour news cycle. Studies have shown that this kind of exposure, especially to acts of terrorism, has the potential to lead to depression , anxiety, stress reactions, substance use, and even post-traumatic stress (PTSD).

Plus, those who take in more images of a disaster tend to be more likely to experience negative mental health consequences. For example, in a study conducted shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, people who viewed more television news reports about what happened in the seven days after the event had more symptoms of PTSD than those who had viewed less television news coverage.

How to Cope With the Impact of Media Violence

Violence will continue to be depicted in the media and, for most adults, there's nothing wrong with watching a violent horror or action movie or playing a violent video game, as long as it doesn't impair your mental health or daily functioning.

However, if you feel you're being negatively impacted by the violence depicted in the media, especially after a disaster that's getting constant coverage on the news, the first solution is to stop engaging with devices that could lead to further exposure.

This means turning off the TV, and for anyone who frequently looks at the news on their computers or mobile devices, adjusting any settings that could lead you to see more images of a violent event.

How You Can Help Your Child

For parents concerned about children's exposure to violent media, the solution isn't to attempt to prevent children from consuming violence altogether, although limiting their exposure is valuable.

Instead, parents should co-view violent media with their children and then talk about what they see. This helps children become discerning media consumers who can think critically about the content they read, watch, and play.

Similarly, when a disturbing event like a school shooting happens it's valuable to discuss it with children so they can express their emotions and parents can put the incident in the context of its overall likelihood.

If a parent notices their child seems depressed or anxious after frequent exposure to media violence or an adult notices their mental health is suffering due to regular consumption of violent media, it may be valuable to seek the help of a mental health professional .

Anderson CA, Berkowitz L, Donnerstein E et al. The Influence of Media Violence on Youth . Psychological Science in the Public Interest . 2003;4(3):81-110. doi:10.1111/j.1529-1006.2003.pspi_1433.x

Huesmann LR, Eron LD. Television And The Aggressive Child: A Cross-National Comparison . Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.; 1986.

Huesmann LR, Moise-Titus J, Podolski C-L, Eron LD. Longitudinal relations between children's exposure to TV violence and their aggressive and violent behavior in young adulthood: 1977-1992 . Dev Psychol . 2003;39(2):201-221. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.39.2.201

Giles D. Psychology Of The Media . London: Palgrave Macmillan; 2010.

Giles D. Media Psychology . Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers; 2003.

Slotsve T, del Carmen A, Sarver M, Villareal-Watkins RJ. Television Violence and Aggression: A Retrospective Study. Southwest Journal of Criminal Justice . 2008;5(1):22-49.

Madan A, Mrug S, Wright RA. The Effects of Media Violence on Anxiety in Late Adolescence . J Youth Adolesc . 2013;43(1):116-126. doi:10.1007/s10964-013-0017-3

Pfefferbaum B, Newman E, Nelson SD, Nitiéma P, Pfefferbaum RL, Rahman A. Disaster Media Coverage and Psychological Outcomes: Descriptive Findings in the Extant Research . Curr Psychiatry Rep . 2014;16(9). doi:10.1007/s11920-014-0464-x

Ahern J, Galea S, Resnick H, Vlahov D. Television Images and Probable Posttraumatic Stress Disorder After September 11: The Role of Background Characteristics, Event Exposures, and Perievent Panic . Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease . 2004;192(3):217-226. doi:10.1097/01.nmd.0000116465.99830.ca

The Conversation. Here's How Witnessing Violence Harms Children's Mental House .

By Cynthia Vinney, PhD Cynthia Vinney, PhD is an expert in media psychology and a published scholar whose work has been published in peer-reviewed psychology journals.

The portrayal of violence in the media: impacts and implications for policy

Numerous research studies identify an association between exposure to violence in entertainment and violent behaviour, but do not prove that exposure causes violent behaviour. Rather, there is a risk that exposure to media violence will increase the likelihood of subsequent aggressive behaviour. This risk can be increased or decreased by a large number of other factors. Appropriate policy responses fall into three general areas: policies that relate to the nature of material that is publicly available, classification issues, scheduling and regulatory enforcement; policies that focus on adult community education and early childhood education that sharpen consumers' ability to discriminate between fantasy and reality, and to become informed and empowered consumers; and policies which focus on health promotion and primary health care, and which treat violence as a public health issue. This Trends and Issues paper seeks to inform the necessary policy debate.

Researchers and professionals have argued for decades about whether or not the portrayal of violence in the various media causes violence in society. Laboratory experiments, field research and correlational studies have all been used as investigative tools. Some studies have suggested that there is a direct causal relationship between violence in entertainment and violent behaviour, and others have concluded that there is no association whatsoever. Most studies have shown that there is some sort of relationship or association.

Most of these studies have focused on television violence and have concluded that there are some negative effects related to watching violent or aggressive behaviour on TV. They do not necessarily indicate a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Rather, they suggest that exposure to media depictions of violence enhances the risk that the viewer will engage in subsequent aggressive behaviour. The effects of exposure to violence in the media are by no means inevitable and may be amplified or reduced by a variety of other factors (Australia 1990). Research into the effects of pornography and violent video/computer games, while less voluminous than television research, has begun to draw similar conclusions.

The relationship between media depictions of violence and subsequent violent behaviour is extremely complex. There are a number of interacting variables which play an important role in determining who will be affected, by what material, and in what way. The context in which the violence is portrayed and age of the viewer/player are the most important variables for determining the potential impact of violence. Also significant is the participant's ability to differentiate between fantasy and reality, and justified or unjustified use of force.

This paper explores the complexities of this problem in the context of the different forms of visual entertainment, and proposes a number of policy options for addressing the issue.

The impact of on-screen violence

The main research findings are:

watching violence on screen is related to increased aggression, desensitisation to violence and increased fear of crime;
violence in the media may contribute to violent crime, but is not a single cause, because there are many other variables which contribute to violent behaviour;
some people may imitate what they see on television and video (and many do not);
violence on screen may reinforce the behaviour of already aggressive people;
the relationship between viewing violent screen images and exhibiting aggressive behaviour, appears to be bi-directional. That is, aggressive people are more likely to watch violence, and people who watch violence are more likely to be aggressive;
the context in which violence is portrayed plays a critically important role in relation to its effects;
the effects from on-screen violence can be short or long term;
children are most at risk from these effects, and young adults may also be at risk;
males appear to be slightly more at risk than females;
the general public is concerned about the effects of on-screen violence;
parents have an important role to play in supervising their children's viewing, teaching children about the differences between television or film violence and real-life situations, and encouraging critical evaluation of on-screen images;
despite the potential influence of violent entertainment on violence in society, it is not clear whether the impact is significant in comparison to the impact of other environmental variables such as family circumstances, violence or abuse in the home, parental influence, poverty, health, education, racism, cultural disintegration, and substance abuse.

There has been criticism of the research linking exposure to media violence and subsequent aggressive behaviour. Freedman (1994) has examined most of the studies (all studies up to 1994) which have been undertaken on this subject and he asserts that there is no evidence in the research to suggest that watching violent TV causes aggression. His argument is largely based on examining the research methods and experimental conditions, recognising that many intervening variables are not taken into consideration or cannot be easily controlled. (Similar criticisms have been made about research which examines the effects of pornography and video/computer games.)

Despite recognising the shortcomings of some types of research, Paik and Comstock (1994) concluded from their meta-analysis of 217 studies, that there was sufficient evidence to suggest an association between watching violence (and erotica) on television and subsequent aggressive behaviour.

Of course it is not contended that television violence is the only cause of aggression and violence in society today. Aggression is a multiply determined behaviour. It is the product of a number of interacting factors-genetic, perinatal, physiological, neurological, environmental. It is only when there is a convergence of factors that violent behaviour occurs.

Prof. Leonard Eron (1995, p. 85)

The importance of context

The effects of watching violence are influenced by the ability of individuals to discriminate between fantasy and reality, between justified and unjustified violence, and the capacity to critically evaluate the portrayal of violence within a social and moral framework.

Research has shown that there are a number of ways that on-screen violence can be portrayed which might influence viewers ( see Comstock & Paik 1991; Murray 1994). These include:

perpetrators of violent acts who are rewarded or remain unpunished for their actions. To the vulnerable viewer, whether it be a child learning about the world or an already aggressive person, this could be interpreted to mean that violent behaviour is acceptable or even desirable;
the aggressive action is seen by the viewer to be justified;
there are few or no consequences portrayed, such as remorse, real emotional and physical pain, or legal consequences. The vulnerable viewer who is presented with a false impression of the reality of violence may be more likely to engage in violent behaviour, being unaware of the real consequences;
the viewer identifies strongly with the perpetrator, or associates the cues for the violent behaviour with real-life cues, hence the violence appears to be more real. This can reinforce or justify the viewer's own behaviour;
the viewer is predisposed to aggression. The violent images can act as a trigger to release these existing feelings;
the violence leaves the viewer feeling aroused;
something or someone causes the viewer to be frustrated after watching violence;
the on-screen violence actually pleases the viewer;
the perpetrator's motivation is to cause harm or injury;
there is a lack of critical commentary or non-violent balancing events.

Most of the research in this area has examined the effects of television violence. Television is a unique form of entertainment in that almost every home in the "western" world has at least one television. Australians on average watch around 21 hours per week. Because television is a large part of everyday life for many people, images of violence could potentially affect a large proportion of the population, compared to videos and computer games which, while they are increasing in popularity, are watched or played by a smaller proportion of the population. Television programming aims to satisfy the viewing requirements of all age-groups and all types of people and therefore broadcasts a wide range of material, whereas videos and computer games are individually classified and generally chosen according to that classification.

The size of the relation [between TV violence and aggression] is about the same as that between smoking and lung cancer. Not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer and not everyone who has lung cancer smoked. But no one outside the tobacco industry would deny that smoking causes lung cancer. Similarly, not everyone who watches violent TV becomes aggressive and not everyone who is aggressive watched television. But that doesn't mean TV violence is not a cause of aggression.

Prof. Leonard Eron of the American Psychological Association in testimony to the US Senate (1995)

News reporting

As with other forms of violence on television, there is concern that the reporting of suicides, homicides and violent and criminal events on the news, will result in imitation or "Copy Cat" action by some individuals. For example, some studies show that the number of suicide deaths recorded have increased after news reports of suicide (Hassan 1996), particularly where the reports detailed the method used by the victim. Many aspects of the mass murder in Hungerford in England in 1987 were remarkably similar to the Clifton Hill massacre in Australia, and it is thought that the reporting of the Australian tragedy may have triggered the events which took place in Hungerford ten days later (Cantor & Sheehan in press). Similar "Copy Cat" hypotheses have been proposed linking the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania with the mass murder in Dunblane in Scotland just weeks before.

Videos pose a greater problem than television due to the more explicit, violent material that they can contain within the regulatory guidelines and the fact that such material can be relatively easily accessed. Videos are available almost 24 hours per day and their content ranges from wholesome "feel-good" stories for the whole family, to "X" and "R" rated, violent and sexually explicit. Despite the classification system used, these films are readily available to persons in almost any age-group at any time.

The "Copy Cat" phenomenon as it applies to videos has been used by some people to explain such horrific events as, for example, the killing of a toddler in England by two ten-year-olds, who had apparently watched the movie Child's Play . Although such films might have an influence on the behaviour of some people, it must be emphasised that other factors also contribute to violent behaviour, and not all people who watch violent images exhibit violent behaviour as a result. Most children have seen films intended for age-groups older than their own, and they want to see them because they are naturally curious. Children and adolescents are often unsupervised in their own homes or in friends' homes and can get access to these films. Research has found that the children of parents who watch violent videos are more likely than other children to watch violent videos. It is difficult for parents or legislators to regulate access to videos, but parents in particular must be made aware of the possibility that their children may have access to this material.

Pornography

Research findings suggest that pornographic films, especially those containing violence, can contribute to callous sexual behaviour and violence towards women (Donnerstein & Linz 1994). This can be due to the manner in which women are portrayed in these films often either as promiscuous or submissive. The images portrayed of women as objects to be used by men for sex, are potentially damaging in the social messages which they present. In their meta-analysis of the available data, Paik and Comstock (1994) found that erotica had a potentially negative effect on the attitude of men towards women, even without incorporating violence. However, as with other research findings about the effect of viewing violent or erotic material, it is important to remember that there are other variables which influence the behaviour of any particular viewer. The context in which this material is portrayed is important, as is the psychological state of the viewer and whether or not they are predisposed to behaving aggressively. The same complex issues which surround the debate about the effects of violence also apply to the effects of pornography.

Video/computer games and beyond

Australian research is currently being undertaken by the Office of Film and Literature Classification into both players' and non-players' perceptions of the portrayal of violence in video/computer games. Many video/ computer games contain some level of violence (although most of these contain "low level" violence), often requiring the player to fight other characters in some sort of battle, injuring or killing them in order to proceed to the next level of the game. Some of the more explicit games have sexual themes, and some have sexually violent themes. The concern expressed about such games is due to the level of interactivity involved. It is as if the player is actively participating in the violence.

As with television or video violence, there is increasing concern that players will become more aggressive as a result of violent games, or will become desensitised to the violence. There is, as yet, little evidence to suggest that a direct causal relationship exists between playing violent video/computer games and becoming violent in real-life. A Senate Select Committee on Community Standards (1993) reported the views of teenage users of these games, who believed that although younger children might be affected by the games, there was less effect as people got older because they could then differentiate between reality and fantasy, and the games were found to be boring after a while.

From 1994 to 1996, the Office of Film and Literature Classification classified 19 per cent of video/computer games as being suitable only for those over the age of 15 years, 1 per cent were refused classification and the remaining 80 per cent were classified as suitable for those under 15 years (29 per cent over 8 years of age, 51 per cent any age).

Although there is now a classification system for these games, the real concern with this type of electronic entertainment is that this material can be easily accessed and downloaded through the Internet. As the Internet cannot be effectively regulated at present, this is extremely difficult if not impossible to avoid, and therefore causes a great deal of concern for parents. There is some software (for example, "Net Nanny") which can be used to limit access to some parts of the Internet but some parents may find this difficult, particularly as the children may be more multimedia information-technology literate than they are. As the pace of technological development increases, the potential for future games is that they will be extremely realistic, as virtual reality has already demonstrated. These games may give players the sensation of actually injuring or killing people. It remains to be seen whether this would lead to an increase or decrease in violent behaviour or homicide rates.

Children in Canada and the United States watch virtually the same television. Yet, the murder rate in Canada, and the rate of violence in general, is much lower than in the United States. Children in Japan watch probably the most violent, the most lurid and graphic television in the world, and the rate of violent crime there is minuscule compared to Canada and the United States.

Jonathan Freedman (1994, p. 854)

Public opinion

Recent thinking by a number of commentators, is that the focus in this debate should be diverted from the question of causality to the question of public opinion. The public is beginning to recognise the potential risk that the portrayal of violence in the media poses, especially for children. The shift appears as psychologists, media industry professionals and other researchers argue about causality, while policy makers search for some evidence which will form the basis for sound policy decisions. The consideration then for policy formulators would be how much to reflect public opinion, the wishes, unscientific commonsense and moral views expressed by ordinary people in society.

Notwithstanding the market for violence in the entertainment media, Gerbner (1994) tells us that in the United States, the ten highest rating shows on television are generally non-violent, and in a study of over 200 shows, half of which were violent and half non-violent, the non-violent shows have had the higher ratings for the past five years. He also tells us that up to 85 per cent of respondents in public opinion polls say there is too much violence on television (Gerbner 1994).

In a recent Morgan poll in Australia, 85 per cent of respondents thought that the media concentrated too much on sensationalist reporting of sex and violence, while 80 per cent thought that the media did not care about people's feelings and rights to privacy. Forty-two per cent thought that television ought to be censored in some way (Murphy 1996).

A study conducted by the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) (1990), into TV violence in Australia, documents countless submissions received from the public and worried parents about television news coverage (in particular), and the effect that it might have on children. A number of submissions suggested that the news be broadcast at 9 pm or later (as it is in Britain), instead of the earlier prime-time slot that it currently occupies. The study also found that 60 per cent of adults thought there was too much violence on television, and 72 per cent thought that TV violence would have an effect on children (ABT 1990).

There is some evidence to suggest that the level of violence in television programs, films, newscasts and crime programs may have led to an increase in fear that society is more dangerous than is actually the case. The viewer who identifies strongly with the victim can have increased fear about being attacked, which reinforces the view that society is dangerous for that person (ABT 1990; Sege & Dietz 1994).

Nobody is going to argue about research any more. We in the television industry have acknowledged that we have an influence. We have an impact. We have not said we are blameless in this.

Beth Bressan (1994, p. 859)

Policy implications

Acknowledging the potential impact that watching violent scenes on television or video has on individuals and society, yet noting that different people will respond differently to similar stimuli, the policy challenge is twofold: first, to enhance media violence awareness and responsibility amongst the public; and second, to avoid mechanisms which could trigger unacceptable behaviour in susceptible individuals.

This is best achieved by inter-sectional collaboration, balancing censorship and regulation which have limitations in the extent to which they can control what people see and do; by new technology which can empower individuals to control what information is received or accessed in their own homes; by public health and health promotion campaigns which inform people of the potential harmful effects; and by education campaigns to teach children (and adults) the discriminatory skills necessary for healthy use of the entertainment and information media.

Censorship is generally not a satisfactory option when it involves limiting access to information which a substantial proportion of the public claims it has a right to access. Censorship may also lead to the "forbidden fruit" phenomenon and the development of black markets.

Regulation of broadcasters has similar limitations but self-regulation in response to public demand and opinion, could go some way towards reducing the potential effects, if it can be practised in a truly effective manner. Australian classification and advisory systems are already informing viewers about the nature of program content, and together with responsible scheduling, can help lessen the impact of on-screen violence. One positive action which broadcasters should consider is to ensure that there is a balance of "pro-social" programs showing healthy cooperative behaviour, counteracting the harmful, anti-social messages of violent, aggressive images.

Most of the committees which have investigated this issue have recommended that public health education campaigns, directed particularly at parents, are necessary in order to inform people about the potential detrimental impact that television and video violence can have, especially on children. It is well known that parental influence can be a major factor in reducing the impact that TV/video violence will have on children.

Adult Community Education in Australia reaches over one million people, and crime prevention and violence prevention material could be developed as materials for study circles, to form the basis of awareness discussions. Study circles exist right across the country, and by using them, material could be brought to the attention of many people who would not normally be exposed to crime prevention programs.

Media literacy education for children in all primary and secondary schools is necessary in order to teach children how to critically evaluate the images which are presented to them on an everyday basis, in all forms of electronic entertainment, including video and computer games and the Internet. This could take a similar format to traditional literature classes, or drug and sex education classes, as it is another part of modern life which can be potentially damaging if approached with a lack of relevant knowledge. Education such as this is already occurring in Canada, and the lesson plans are even available on the Internet (YTV Canada Inc. 1994).

The new technologies, which are developing rapidly, are constantly stretching the limits of our imagination and the types of material which we can access. Technological advances such as the "v-chip" (violence chip) can be programmed to block out unwanted programs from television broadcasts. Blocking and filtering software such as "Net Nanny" and "Surf Watch" can similarly be used to limit Internet access. It remains to be determined whether such blocking mechanisms are used responsibly. As with censorship, new technology relies on parental involvement. It requires parents to be aware of what their children are watching or gaining access to.

Six years on, the recommendations made by the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal in 1990 are still relevant, and if fully implemented could have a substantial impact on the effects of media violence. The recommendations highlighted the necessity of an industry-wide code on the treatment of violence on television, with particular care in regard to the child audience, the depiction of suicide and the depiction of violence out of context. It was recommended that the code pay attention to the portrayal of violence, suicide and private grief in news and current affairs programs, and that there be a prohibition on the use of violent acts or scenes in advertising. Also recommended was an awareness campaign to inform the public about violence on television, a nationwide education program to enable parents and schools to help children to deal with violence in television programs, and the Australian Education Council should consider introducing television studies into all primary and secondary schools (Australian Broadcasting Tribunal 1990, vol.1, pp.xxi-xxii).

The policy options outlined above are unlikely to produce results in the short term. More research in a similar vein to that already conducted is not required, but monitoring programs (like the Australian Institute of Criminology Homicide Monitoring Program and its Violence Against Women Indicators Project) could examine the feasibility of including data on the violent viewing habits of offenders.

Australia. National Committee on Violence 1990, Violence: Directions for Australia , Australian Institute of Criminology, Canberra.
Bressan, B. 1994, "Television networks: Taking affirmative action", Hofstra Law Review , vol. 22, pp. 857-62.
Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) 1990, TV Violence in Australia , Report to the Minister for Transport and Communications, ABT, Sydney.
Cantor, C. & Sheehan, P. (in press), "Violence and media reports: A connection with Hungerford?", Archives of Suicide Research .
Comstock, G. & Paik, H. 1991, Television and the American Child , Academic Press, San Diego.
Donnerstein, E. & Linz, D. 1994, "Sexual violence in the mass media", in Violence and the Law eds. M. Costanzo & S. Oskamp, Sage, United States.
Eron, L. 1995, "Media violence", Pediatric Annals , vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 84-7.
Freedman, J. 1994, "Viewing television violence does not make people more aggressive", Hofstra Law Review , vol. 22, pp. 833-54.
Gerbner, G. 1994, "There is no free market in television", Hofstra Law Review , vol. 22, pp. 879-84.
Hassan, R. 1996, Social Factors in Suicide in Australia , Trends and Issues No. 52, Australian Institute of Criminology, Canberra.
Murphy, D. 1996, "Facts and friction", The Bulletin , 28 May, p.14.
Murray, J. 1994, "The impact of televised violence", Hofstra Law Review , vol. 22, pp. 809-25.
Paik, H. & Comstock, G. 1994, "The effects of television violence on antisocial behavior: A meta-analysis", Communication Research , vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 516-46.
Sege, R. & Dietz, W. 1994, "Television viewing and violence in children: The pediatrician as agent for change", Pediatrics , vol. 94, no. 4, pp. 600-7.
Senate Select Committee on Community Standards Relevant to the Supply of Services Utilising Electronic Technologies 1993, Report on Video and Computer Games and Classification Issues , Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra.
YTV Canada Inc. 1994, "Television and Violence Lesson Plan"

Acknowledgment

The Australian Institute of Criminology acknowledges the assistance provided in the preparation of this paper by Professor Peter Sheehan, Professor of Psychology, University of Queensland.

Essay on Media Influence On Violence

Students are often asked to write an essay on Media Influence On Violence in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Media Influence On Violence

Introduction to media and violence.

Media, like TV and video games, often shows a lot of action and fighting. Some people worry that seeing too much of this can make others think it’s okay to act violently. It’s important to know if watching these things really does make people more likely to be violent.

Studies on Media Effects

Researchers have done many studies to find out if there’s a link between media and violence. Some studies say yes, there is a connection. They suggest that when we see lots of violence on screens, some may start to think it’s normal and act that way too.

Age Matters

Young minds are still growing and learning what’s right and wrong. When kids see a lot of violent acts on TV or in games, they might not understand it’s not real. This can confuse them and possibly lead them to act out what they see.

Parents’ Role

Parents have a big job to make sure their kids understand what they see on screens isn’t real. They can talk to their kids about the difference between right and wrong actions. This can help kids not to copy the violence they see in the media.

In conclusion, media can have an impact on how we view violence. It’s especially important for young people, who might copy what they see. Everyone, especially parents, needs to help kids understand that violence in media is not real and not okay in real life.

250 Words Essay on Media Influence On Violence

Media like TV, movies, and video games show a lot of violent scenes. People often argue about whether watching these scenes makes real people act violently. This essay talks about how media can affect the way we think about violence.

Seeing Violence on Screens

When we see a lot of fighting or hurting on screens, it can change the way we see the world. For young people, especially, seeing violent acts in movies or games might make them think it’s okay to act that way in real life. It’s like when someone watches a lot of cooking shows and then wants to cook more; watching violence can make some people feel like it’s normal.

Copycat Actions

There’s a thing called “copycat” behavior. This is when someone sees something in a movie or game and then does the same thing in real life. For example, if a kid sees a superhero fighting bad guys, they might play-fight with their friends. But sometimes, they might not understand the difference between play-fighting and real fighting, which can lead to real harm.

The Role of Parents and Teachers

Parents and teachers play a big role in teaching kids what’s right and wrong. They can help by watching what kids see on screens and talking to them about the difference between real life and what they see in media. It’s also important for them to teach kids to be kind and solve problems without violence.

In conclusion, media can influence how we think about violence. It’s important for everyone to understand that what we see on screens is not always good to do in real life. By talking about these things and teaching kindness, we can help stop violence from spreading.

500 Words Essay on Media Influence On Violence

When we turn on the TV, browse the internet, or play video games, we often see scenes of fighting, shooting, and other kinds of harm. This is called violence, and it’s a common sight in many forms of media. Media includes things like television shows, movies, video games, and websites. Some people worry that seeing too much violence in media can make people, especially young ones, think that hurting others is okay.

What the Studies Say

Many researchers have tried to find out if media violence really leads to people becoming more violent. They have found that after watching or playing violent media, some people may act more aggressively. This does not mean they will go out and harm someone, but they might feel more okay with the idea of violence. It’s like planting a small seed in their mind that could grow over time.

Sometimes, when a person watches a lot of violence in movies or TV shows, they might copy what they see. This is more likely to happen if the person thinks the violent character is cool or gets away with their actions. Young people, who are still learning about the world, might not always understand that what works in a fictional story doesn’t work the same way in real life.

Video Games and Aggression

Video games are a special kind of media because they let players act out the story. When the game has a lot of violence, it means players are often the ones doing the fighting or shooting. Some studies suggest that this can make players more likely to show aggression because they’re not just watching violence, they’re taking part in it.

Desensitization to Violence

Desensitization is a big word that means getting used to something so much that it doesn’t bother you anymore. If someone sees a lot of violence in media, they might start to think it’s not a big deal. This can be dangerous because it might make them less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others in real life.

Parental Guidance and Education

Parents can play a big role in helping their kids understand media violence. They can watch shows with their children and talk about what they see. This helps kids learn that what happens in media is not real and that violence is not a good way to solve problems. Schools can also teach students about the effects of media violence and how to handle it.

In conclusion, media can influence how we think and feel about violence. While it doesn’t make everyone violent, it can affect some people’s thoughts and actions. It’s important for everyone, especially young people, to learn the difference between the stories in media and real life. By talking about what we see and play, we can better understand the impact of media violence and choose to act kindly and peacefully in our own lives.

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The ripple effects of violent crimes: What is the role of the media in preventing copycat attacks

Milad Haghani and Ramón Spaaij

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In a rare surge of violence, Australian cities have been affected recently by multiple knife attacks. The most devastating occurred on 13 April at a shopping centre at Bondi Junction in Sydney . A lone assailant’s rampage left six dead, including himself, and many others injured. Just two days later, another horrific episode unfolded at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley, escalating fears as it was declared a terror attack . Since these incidents, reports of knife-related violence seem to have spiked in Australian media . Is this merely coincidental, or are we witnessing a pattern similar to those observed in other parts of the world following mass violent attacks?

While knife attacks are not as extensively studied as other violent crimes like gun violence and mass shootings , or other forms of terrorism , the lessons that emerge from them can be universally poignant and instructive, regardless of the method of violence.

Contagion effects

The potential for mass violence to spawn copycat or contagion effects is a significant concern among researchers who study these events. In this context, contagion refers to a phenomenon where individuals or groups prone to violence replicate methods of political or ideological violence that have gained attention through mass media. Supporting this, research on suicide terrorism has demonstrated that such acts of violence tend to spread through non-random patterns, exhibiting waves, clusters, and frequencies that suggest a contagion effect. Specifically, this refers to the erratic pattern of a few closely spaced violent events occurring after a relative period of inactivity.

Concepts such as clusters , waves , and copycats are often discussed in relation to mimetic and social contagion theories. The influence of mass media in fostering contagion and mimetic behaviour can be considerable, but it involves an interplay of various inspirations — including social media, blogs, chatrooms, the broader social milieu, and the geopolitical conflicts of the time — before an individual replicates an act like terrorism.

Research on mass shootings indicates that social contagion can indeed lead to copycat mass crimes, where the occurrence of one mass shooting, for example, significantly increases the likelihood of subsequent shootings in the near future. This pattern suggests that each incident potentially serves as a trigger for another, propagating a cycle of violence through imitation and media exposure. More specifically, after a mass shooting another is more likely to occur within an average of 13 days . Copycat mass shooters often replicate high-profile incidents that result in a significant number of fatalities, usually more than four .

School shootings in the United States often reflect the perpetrator’s desire for media attention and notoriety. Research indicates that, due to the intense regional and national media coverage they receive, there is a high likelihood of subsequent copycat attacks. An investigation into the US state-level school shooting data from 1990 to 2017 revealed that the risk of additional school shootings in the same or neighbouring states increases following a prominent attack.

A heavily investigated example and case study is the Columbine massacre , which has been shown to have served as a “model” for perpetrators in 30 US states across 74 sophisticated plots . These individuals attempted to replicate the Columbine attack, often aiming to cause even greater fatalities.

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Another telling example is what researchers have called “the Christchurch cluster”. On 15 March 2019, Brenton Tarrant shot and killed 51 people and wounded another 40 at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Before his attack, Tarrant published a manifesto in which he justified his actions, citing Anders Breivik, perpetrator of the 2011 attacks in Norway, as his “true inspiration”. The Christchurch attack would directly inspire several other attacks in 2019 that followed the same cultural script — including the Poway synagogue shooting in California, the Walmart shooting in El Paso , Texas, the Al-Noor mosque shooting in Norway, and the Halle synagogue shooting in Germany. Those attacks were all shootings in which the perpetrator, explicitly inspired by Tarrant’s actions, aimed to inflict mass casualties against a specific ethnic or religious group using one or more firearms. This copycat or inspiration effect is anything but new; indeed, it has been demonstrated in approximately one-third of all lone-actor terrorism cases.

Analyses of vehicle-ramming attacks between 2015 and 2017 have also highlighted how the publicity surrounding such acts can influence and potentially increase the likelihood of similar incidents. This suggests that the very act of violence, when widely reported and discussed, may serve as a model for imitation by others predisposed to such behaviours.

Social contagion theory has been employed to understand how media could contribute to the spread of violence, and even suicide . Celebrity suicides , for example, have been shown to be followed by a sudden spike of suicides among the general population. This is why the mass media in the United States agreed to cease reporting names and some details of suicides since 1994.

The social contagion of violence

These theoretical principles are equally applicable to terrorism . The social contagion of terrorism represents a complex and contentious issue. While a consensus has yet to be established, there is substantial support for the role of mimetic theory in the proliferation of violent behaviours. This suggests that acts of violence may be replicated in a manner similar to other forms of violence, influenced by media portrayal and public attention.

Much like the way pathogens spread in germ theory, violent tendencies can transmit from one individual or community to another through close social contact (including online communities), unless there are preventative measures in place. This form of social contagion requires “immunities” to effectively resist the spread. Examples of such immunities include access to quality education, increased political participation, reduced experiences and perceptions of unfairness and injustice , higher socio-economic status, and enhanced access to both resources and economic and political power.

The World Health Organisation recognises the portrayal of violence in the media as a significant public health threat . As such, they have developed recommendations for responsible reporting — particularly concerning suicide and homicide. These guidelines aim to mitigate the potential harmful effects of such media coverage, acknowledging the powerful role it plays in shaping public perceptions and behaviours.

The influence of mass media on violent behaviour, particularly in the context of terrorism and mass killings, can be conceptualised through the lens of “imitation” and ripple effects . Most individuals who commit these acts do not replicate personally witnessed events — rather, they imitate behaviours and scenarios presented through various media channels. These sources, including traditional mass media, play a pivotal role by providing detailed coverage that may include the attacker’s identity, motives, and background. Such extensive and often sensationalised reporting can grant notoriety to perpetrators, potentially encouraging imitation by those who seek similar recognition. For example, after scrutinising the media coverage of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing, “London Nail Bomber” David Copeland realised that mass violence would help him “be famous” and “to get on the news as the top story”.

While mass shootings represent a small fraction of total gun deaths in the United States , the sensationalised coverage tends to overlook the more frequent instances of other forms of gun violence — like suicides and domestic violence.

Moreover, sensationalised reporting can also perpetuate negative stereotypes about mental illness, increasing public stigma and misunderstanding. Biased media coverage of mental illness can increase negative attitudes toward those with mental health conditions, leading to greater social avoidance. For instance, in Germany , public distance from individuals with schizophrenia measurably widened following extensive media coverage of two mass shootings. Similarly, a national survey in the United States found that over half of Americans view people with mental illness as more dangerous than those without, despite the fact that individuals with mental health issues are more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators of violence.

The reducing the negative consequences of media reporting

The most effective approach to mitigating the negative effects of media reporting on terrorism and mass violence would be for media organisations to adopt responsible reporting guidelines developed by experts in terrorism and journalism. These guidelines should include training for editors and journalists to understand the potential effects their reporting can have.

To combat the media contagion effect associated with mass violence, several organisations have, in fact, collaborated to produce guidelines for the media. These guidelines emphasise responsible reporting to minimise the likelihood of inspiring copycat incidents. Key aspects include:

avoiding glorification of the perpetrator;
not showing photos of victims alongside perpetrators;
and reducing the sensationalism of the events.

The guidelines also promote “helpful reporting”, which involves educating the public on recognising and responding to concerning behaviours. Recommendations aim to enhance public knowledge without stigmatising mental illness or inadvertently glorifying violent acts, focusing instead on community resilience and sensitive coverage of survivors and their families.

It’s also important to note that, while these guidelines address traditional media, the contagion effect often extends into less regulated spaces like social media and extremist forums, which are beyond these guidelines’ reach. The persistent issue in less regulated spaces like social media and extremist forums highlights the urgent need for social media and tech companies to assume greater accountability.

Initiatives like Australia’s establishment of the eSafety Commissioner and the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism are promising steps towards addressing these challenges.

Milad Haghani is a Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, specialising in disaster risk and public safety.

Ramón Spaaij is Professor of Sociology at Victoria University, specialising in violence, social inclusion, and social change.

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How the media’s sensational reporting of crises is detrimental to promoting safety culture

Social media’s role in the rise of youth violence

Stephanie Sy Stephanie Sy

Madison Staten Madison Staten

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Violent crime has been on a downward trend across the country since the pandemic-era spike. But today, several cities are reporting a new rise in violent crimes involving youth. In many of these cases, police say social media played a central role. Stephanie Sy reports on the challenges of addressing teen violence.

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Geoff Bennett:

Violent crime is on a downward trend across the country since a pandemic era spike.

But, today, a number of cities are reporting a new rise in violent crime among youth. In many cases, law enforcement says social media played a central role.

Stephanie Sy reports from Maricopa County, Arizona, about the challenges of addressing teen violence.

Stephanie Sy:

A little over a year ago, Connor Jarnagan's typical suburban teen life took a dark turn.

Connor Jarnagan, Teenager:

Until that moment, I did not think people had such an evil in their heart to do something like that to somebody.

While waiting in the parking lot of an In-N-Out, Connor said he was confronted by about a dozen teen boys. The leader demanded $20 and Connor resisted.

Connor Jarnagan:

I worked for this money. You are not going to just take it from me. So, I said no until he punched me with brass knuckles.

The whole time, there was blood just gushing down my head. I was shaking and crying, because I did not know what was going to happen to me. I did not know if I was going to live. It was really scary for me.

The suburb where it happened, outside Phoenix, is what his mom, Stephanie, described as a bubble, billing itself in recent years as one of the safest cities in America.

Stephanie Jarnagan, Mother or Connor Jarnagan: We live in Gilbert, Arizona. It is a bedroom community. I never thought that that would happen to my son. Letting him go have a burger with friends at dinnertime, like, I did not think that that would be unsafe.

It turns out the teen who assaulted Connor was part of a group who called itself The Gilbert Goons.

There's videos of him fighting people all over the Internet.

The group members were known for posting videos of each other flashing guns, ganging up on teens, and street racing.

Examples of teen violence span social media and the country, from Missouri where a 15-year-old girl attacked another teen, landing her in the ICU, to Stockton, California, where a group of teens filmed the beating and robbing of an 8-year-old.

The violence by The Gilbert Goons, which, although recorded, went unchecked by law enforcement for the better part of a year, culminated in the death of 16-year-old Preston Lord last October. While a group of attackers pummeled him, some teens called 911, while others stood by, recording on their phones.

Chuck Bongiovanni, Gilbert, Arizona, Councilman:

Why do you have 40 kids with a camera recording violence? I saw a five-second video of Preston before they did CPR. And I don't ever want to see a video like that again in Gilbert.

As community grief turned to outrage over the death of Lord, Gilbert town Councilmember Chuck Bongiovanni helped set up a subcommittee to address teen violence. At a recent meeting, half the attendants were area high school students.

Christine Njuguna, Gilbert Mayor’s Youth Advisory Committee:

Just one thing I would say would be a big deal while going to these schools is just also teaching children accountability. You will be accountable, not only with police and everything, but just like general morals.

While moral accountability is called for by some, many others are calling for stronger law enforcement and curfews.

Chuck Bongiovanni:

Now, with social media, it is creating personas these kids usually really wouldn't be if they did not have social media.

A 30-minute drive from Gilbert, Commander Gabe Lopez says the number of teens murdered in his city last year rose significantly from the year before, as did the number of teens charged with homicides.

Lopez is head of the Phoenix Police Department's Violent Crimes Bureau. He points out the scene of a shooting late last year during a particularly violent stretch.

Cmdr. Gabe Lopez, Phoenix Police Department:

I think a total of nine victims are what these two individuals were charged with. So, of the four people in the car, two were charged with the homicide.

And they were juveniles?

Cmdr. Gabe Lopez:

They were juveniles. And, again, the victim was 15, the suspects were 17, and then you had a 10-year-old shot.

Federal statistics show, in 2020, homicides committed by juveniles were the highest they'd been in two decades.

The fear that I have, and I think it's shared by others in law enforcement, is people are doing or committing crimes so that they can capture it, so they can post it on their social media feed, so they can get street cred, or so that they can get likes.

James Garbarino, Psychologist:

Youth culture has moved in the direction of celebrity is the number one value.

Psychologist James Garbarino has spent decades researching adolescent violent behavior.

James Garbarino:

The cultural immersion in violent imagery is so powerful in the United States and, of course, social media, the rise of social media as a context in which those expressions can be offered, it's certainly it's not just limited to 2020 and onward, but it has escalated as well.

Commander Lopez says social media has also changed the landscape of gang violence.

Traditionally, it had always been really focused on the neighborhood that you were from, a group of friends that you typically grew up with. Nowadays, they meet online, they communicate via social media. It's a hybrid mix of different races, different areas of the city. It's complicated as far as trying to police that.

Before Olga Lopez moved to the Phoenix suburbs from California two years ago, she made sure it was a safe town where her son Jeremiah could play on a competitive high school football team.

But, last may, Jeremiah was shot and killed at a fellow student's home in Mesa. He was 18, weeks away from graduating high school.

Olga Lopez, Mother of Shooting Victim: The teammate who lives in the house along with the young man that lives across the street, were pointing guns at Jeremiah multiple times and recording it and posting it to Snapchat.

In the video described to her, Lopez says the laser from the guns pointed at Jeremiah shone red dots on his face.

Olga Lopez:

One time, Jeremiah says: "Hey, chill." Another time, Jeremiah is trying to make light of the situation. A little under 30 minutes later, my son is fatally shot in the back of the head.

I vowed that I would show up with the same grit and determination that he did.

Olga got the devastating news on May 7.

It isn't something that you get over. It definitely isn't something that time heals. And every day is like the first week.

She pours herself into running a nonprofit foundation she set up with her oldest son in Jeremiah's name.

While social media may have played a role in both Jeremiah's death and the attack on Connor Jarnagan in Gilbert, it was also what helped pin down the suspects in their cases. Jarnagan helped lead police to his attacker.

They got into his phone, and they looked at his chats and there it was: "I hit this guy and he gave me $20."

Connor says a lot of teens have been afraid to report on their peers, for fear of retaliation.

Teens need to come forward and stop being in the shadows, stop recording these fights. Instead, do something about it and make our communities a safer place.

He's doing his part by calling for Arizona state lawmakers to ban brass knuckles for minors. That action is tabled for now.

I'm hoping both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats alike, can come together on this issue.

Connor continues to heal. And part of that, he says, has meant forgiving the teen who attacked him.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy in Maricopa County, Arizona.

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Stephanie Sy is a PBS NewsHour correspondent and serves as anchor of PBS NewsHour West. Throughout her career, she served in anchor and correspondent capacities for ABC News, Al Jazeera America, CBSN, CNN International, and PBS NewsHour Weekend. Prior to joining NewsHour, she was with Yahoo News where she anchored coverage of the 2018 Midterm Elections and reported from Donald Trump’s victory party on Election Day 2016.

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Exposure to Media Violence on Behavior Essay

Jonathan freedman’s argument, nancy signoriell’s argument, pro-side of the argument, con-side of the argument, author credibility, personal opinion, contemporary research, reference list.

The debate on whether exposure to media violence plays a role in influencing aggressive or violent behavior is a critical one. There are those who argue that exposure to media violence encourages violent behavior while others oppose the notion.

Those who support the idea like Nancy Signorielli argue that exposure to media violence prompts people to have a notion that the world is a violent place. This desensitizes them so that they begin adapting unacceptable behavioral traits.

The pro side of the argument clearly brings out the fact that media violence has a long time effect on the people especially the children. They are desensitized and tend to become aggressive or fearful.

The argument against the connection has however been clearly brought out the fact that media violence has significantly increased in the resent past yet cases of real-life violence have significantly reduced.

The argument for the existence of a connection between the two proposes that people exposed to media violence are more likely develop aggressive behavior than those who are not. It is stated that the media does not clearly bring out the fact that crime is bad and people in the long run tend to ape aggressive behavior from the same.

Those arguing against it on the other hand insist that studies show no connection between the two. They are of the opinion that exposure of media violence to the children at an early age has no effect whatsoever to the change of the children’s behavior to that associated with violence.

It is argued that the violence in the media is purely entertainment and that there is no message intended to convince the viewers that violence is good.

Those who are against the notion like, Jonathan Freedman, argue that scientific evidence shows no connection between media violence and the actual aggressive behavior in people. They argue that the violence in the media just causes arousal and existent among the people but not necessarily aggressive behavior.

According to this argument, there has been a significant increase in media violence in the resent past yet the real cases of violence have significantly reduced (Potter, 2003).

According to Signoriell’s argument, children who are exposed to violence at an early age tend to develop antisocial behavioral traits that are associated with violence later in life. Some of them indulge in fights, abuse of their spouses as well as other criminal activities.

It is believed that most of the violence shown in the media does not clearly bring out the fact that crime never pays. In some cases, those who indulge in criminal activities go unpunished and children get the wrong signal that indulging in crime is not immoral and hence tend to adopt criminal behavior.

The argument is based on several studies and statistical data which have proved that children exposed to media violence are more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior than those who are not. Several experiments have been carried out to the same effect.

Studies have proved that the children exposed to pro-social media messages are likely to develop positive behavior traits while those exposed to media violence tend to copy the same. Exposure to media violence increases the rates of gender stereotyping especially among the children.

People tend to use the media while confirming their attitudes as well as beliefs for instance while approving violence. Some of these arguments are however biased in a way given that some of the studies have been done in highly repressed societies like South Africa during the colonial era (Freedman, 2002).

The other weakness of this argument is that violent or aggressive behavior among people could be due to the fact that people come from families that witness frequent incidences of violence.

The media might in such cases not be the cause of aggressive behavior in such people. There have also been an increase in the media violence in the resent past yet the cases of real violence in society have significantly reduced instead of increasing. This shows weakness in the argument.

Going by the con side of the issue, desensitization has its own positive side. It has for instance been found out that children with problems of fear are likely to be less fearful after being exposed to desensitizing films or media programs, particularly those that are horrifying. It is therefore a remedy to those children with social problems.

The weakness of the con side is that exposing people to media violence desensitizes them and they in the long run tend to approve of such violence and show less concern or pity for the victims of the violence.

The violence and scary images are likely to instill fear in the children who watch such programs either on the short or long-term basis. Some of them might even have nightmares in which they might scream while sleeping. People exposed to more of the violent media tend to believe that the world is a scary place and they become cautious of many people or things.

They tend to believe that they are out to protect themselves. Studies carried out have proved that people exposed to media violence are more likely develop aggressive behavior than those who are not. This evidence shows weakness on this side of the argument (Phillip, 1979).

The arguments are credible given that the authors have cited the appropriate sources and studies that support their arguments. Those who argue that there exists no connection between media violence and aggression have for instance based their arguments on other scholars who have written concerning the same issue like Fowles : (Fowles 1999).

Some of the studies quoted include that done by Ronald Milavsky with others which was a longitudinal study that was carried out in three years from 1970 t0 1973. These are accompanied by statistical evidences and figures.

In this case for instance, a study was carried out on 2400 school children at the elementary level while 800 teenagers were sampled in the study. The argument for the existence of the connection between the two has also been based on other scholarly material like; (Singer 1988) as well as (Potter 2003). The two arguments are both coupled with evidence from other sources.

The author who holds a substantive argument is the one who argues that media violence affects people’s behavior driving them towards aggressive or violent behavior. This is because the argument is couple with enough evidence to justify the same.

Television for instance tends to shape people’s opinions as well as perceptions towards life issues. When it is stuffed with violence and crime people tend to appreciate the fact that crime and violence are not bad, given that some of the offenders go without being punished. People therefore tend to adopt violent and aggressive behavior as a result.

The description, analysis as well as evaluation of the argument has been done in a comprehensive and clear way coupled with evidences derived from different studies or sources. It has been clearly brought out that exposure to violent programs to children as well as adults tends to drive them towards behaving aggressively as compared to those who are not exposed to them (Signorielli, 2002).

Contemporary research supports the side which argues that a connection exists between aggressive behavior and exposure to violent media programs.

Different studies have been carried out to the same effect and they have proved that children who are exposed to violent media at an early age tend to have their future lives characterized by acts of violence like spouse abuse as well as fighting.

Studies have also been carried out whereby children have been separated into two groups; one group is exposed to violent media and the other not.

The evidence revealed that those children that were exposed to violent media exhibited change in their behavior as well as speech as they tended to be more aggressive than their counterparts who were not exposed to the same.

It has also been proved that those who are exposed to violent media programs tended to be desensitized in the sense that they tended to sympathize less with the victims of violence as compared to those who were not exposed to the same.

Fowles, J. (1999). Teaching the Post modern. The Enigma, 50-60.

Freedman, J. (2002). Media Vilence and its Effects on Aggression: Assessing The Scientific Evidence. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Phillip, D. (1979). Suicide, the motovehicle facilities and the mass media: Evidence towards a theory of suggestion. American Journal of Sociology , 560-568.

Potter, J. (2003). The eleven myths of media violence. Califonia: Sage Publications.

Signorielli, N. (2002). Violence in the Media. A Reference Handbook , 25-268.

Singer, R. (1988). Strategies and metastrategies in learning and performing self-paced athletic skills . The Sports Psychologist , 49-68.

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The Media and Sexual Violence Among Adolescents: Findings from a Qualitative Study of Educators Across Vietnam

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Published: 10 May 2024

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Katherine M. Anderson ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9675-3653 1 ,
Alicia Macler 1 ,
Irina Bergenfeld ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2601-2854 2 ,
Quach Thu Trang 3 &
Kathryn M. Yount ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1917-1574 2 , 4

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Growing access to technology and media has presented new avenues of influence on youth attitudes and norms regarding sexuality and sexual violence, as well as new technological pathways through which to perpetrate sexual violence. The aim of this research was to understand contextual influences on and needs for scale-up of sexual violence prevention programming in the media-violence context of Vietnam. We conducted 45 interviews with high school teachers ( n = 15), university lecturers ( n = 15), and affiliates from youth-focused community service organizations ( n = 15) from across Vietnam. Additionally, we conducted four sector-specific focus groups with a sub-sample of interview participants ( k = 4, n = 22). Media and technology were brought up consistently in relation to sexual violence prevention and sexual health information. Key informants noted that, in Vietnam, generational differences in acceptability of sex and lack of comprehensive sexuality education intersect with new technological opportunities for exposure to sexual information and media. This creates a complex landscape that can promote sexual violence through priming processes, instigate mimicry of violent media, and presents new opportunities for the perpetration of sexual violence though technology. Development of comprehensive sexual education, including violence prevention education, is imperative, with consideration of age-specific needs for Vietnamese youth.

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Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

Prevalence of sexual violence globally in asia/pacific and in vietnam.

Sexual violence, defined as a sexual act committed or attempted in the absence of freely given consent, is a worldwide public health challenge (Basile et al., 2014 ). Sexual violence includes contact-based acts, such as non-consensual sexual intercourse, and non-contact-based acts, such as sexual harassment, unwanted exposure to sexual situations, and non-consensual filming and/or dissemination of explicit photographs (Basile et al., 2014 ). Globally, at least 35.6 percent of all women ages 15 years or older have reported experiencing sexual violence (World Health Organization (WHO), 2021 ). Men also may experience sexual violence; however, the global prevalence of exposure to sexual violence for men is much lower than for women (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation [IHME], 2017 ). Moreover, men are shown to perpetrate the majority of instances of sexual violence (James-Hawkins et al., 2019 ). Survivors of sexual violence are at heightened risk of experiencing immediate and long-term negative physical and mental health outcomes, as well as adverse social outcomes, such as diminished academic achievement (Amar & Gennaro, 2005 ; Fielding-Miller et al., 2021 ; Gonzales et al., 2005 ).

Southeast Asia has a high lifetime prevalence of physical or sexual violence by a partner or sexual violence by a non-partner; over 34% of women ages 15 to 49 in Southeast Asia report at least one of these experiences (WHO, 2021 ). In select countries of the Asia–Pacific region, 24.3% of men reported ever perpetrating sexual partner violence, and 10.9% of men had perpetrated non-partner rape in their lifetime (Fulu et al., 2013 ). Of men who reported non-partner rape, 57.6% reported perpetrating rape more than one time (Fulu et al., 2013 ). In Vietnam, sexual violence remains understudied and likely under-reported, though the available data suggest that sexual violence victimization is widespread (Pham, 2015 ; Winzer et al., 2019 ). According to the 2019 Vietnam survey of violence against women, 13.3% of women reported ever experiencing sexual violence by a husband or partner, and 9.0% reported ever experiencing sexual violence by a non-partner (MOLISA & UNFPA, 2020 ). However, other estimates gauge sexual violence victimization as more pervasive, with almost 20% of women 20 to 24 years reporting sexual violence victimization since the age of 15 (Le et al., 2019 ). Across age groups, adolescent women 15–19 years and young women 20–24 years are reported to experience the highest and second highest rates of non-partner sexual violence since age 15, at 24% and 17%, respectively (MOLISA & UNFPA, 2020 ).

Theories of Media and Violence

Several theories exist to explain how media influences cognition and behavior (Valkenburg et al., 2016 ), with variation by context, modality of the media, and predisposing personal factors. These include routine activity theory, which posits that individuals can be motivated to enact violence or another crime when an available victim, an offender, and the absence of a protective force or guardian for the potential victim converge (Aizenkot, 2022 ; Kumar et al., 2021 ; Madero-Hernandez & Fisher, 2012 ; Räsänen et al., 2016 ; Van Ouytsel et al., 2018 ) and social ecology theory, which emphasizes the role of the social environment (Lou et al., 2012 ; Stokols, 1992 ).

For purposes of the current analysis, we are informed by a combination of theories that conceptually overlap and build upon each other, including mimicry, sexual script theory, social cognitive theory, and cultivation theory. In the immediate aftermath of media exposure to violence, enacted violence is thought to operate through priming processes, arousal processes, and mimicking behaviors (Huesmann, 2007 ). The third of these, mimicry, is the imitation of behaviors seen in media (Huesmann, 2007 ), and is a common theme in theories of violence. Sexual script theory embraces the concept of mimicry by asserting that individuals model their sexual expectations, norms, desires, and decisions after portrayals of sex in their culture, such as in media (Wiederman, 2015 ), while social cognitive theory and social learning theory employ the similar concept of observational learning (Bandura, 2001 ; Bandura & Walters, 1977 ). Both social cognitive theory and social learning theory have been applied to the context of media, sexual activity, and violence (Brem et al., 2021 ; Hedrick, 2021 ; Hust et al., 2019 ; Marshall et al., 2021 ; Sun et al., 2016 ; Walker, 2021 ). Youth employ observational learning regularly as part of development (Fryling et al., 2011 ), including in cases of observed violence (Flannery et al., 2007 ). Observational learning typically occurs over time (Bandura, 2008 ), with replication of observed behaviors lasting well beyond the observed event (Fryling et al., 2011 ). According to cultivation theory, which also has been applied to media-violence research (Hedrick, 2021 ; Moorman, 2022 ), greater and repeated use of media is associated with greater acceptance of the norms and beliefs conveyed by that media (Morgan et al., 2014 ). Compounding this, repeated observation of arousing content can, in turn, cause desensitization, in which negative reactions to events like violence can become dampened over time, allowing viewing or participation in violence without negative affect (Huesmann, 2007 ). Notably, these theories lack significant consideration of youth as critical thinkers, with the assumption that they absorb witnessed behaviors with limited processing prior to reenactment. Literature supports more complex processes, such as emotion regulation and rumination (Brimmel et al., 2023 ; Felix et al., 2022 ; McComb & Mills, 2021 ), which we acknowledge and consider in our theoretical approach.

Pathways to Sexual Knowledge and Violence: Media Exposure and Use

Paradoxically, the global rise of technological connectivity has created new pathways to access sexual information and to execute sexual violence, the impacts of which may not be fully captured by existing data. Technology increasingly is used to access mass media sources, including informational media, such as news and informational websites, social media, such as social networking sites, or entertainment media, such as films. Most adolescents and young adults use the internet for health information-seeking (Buhi et al., 2009 ; Santor et al., 2007 ), with sexual health searched more often than any other health topic (Buhi et al., 2009 ). For many, the internet is the primary source of information, even with recognition that schools and medical professions may be better sources of information (Shih et al., 2015 ).

In Southeast Asia, an estimated 17% of individuals have used media to learn about sex (Gesselman et al., 2020 ). This gathering of information may lead to positive, neutral, or negative information about sex, to the extent that informational media and entertainment media may contribute indirectly to sexually violent behaviors, wherein content may reinforce harmful normative beliefs about sexual violence and may normalize or even promote contact- and non-contact forms of sexually violent behavior. This is aligned with theory of priming processes, wherein associations made in media are impressed upon viewers. Mobile sex-tech is technology used to enhance sexuality through information and connections with other people, such as through dating apps, among other activities (Gesselman et al., 2020 ). Sex-tech can be used for finding dating or sexual partners, and sending sexual images, videos, or message to others, known as sexting. In one study, an estimated 28.3% of individuals in Southeast Asia reported ever using sex-tech to find a sexual partner, and 60.1% had engaged in sexting, with approximately 45% having sent images and 28% having send videos (Gesselman et al., 2020 ). The anonymity of some of these platforms, as well as the independence with which they can be accessed by youth may lead to circumstances described by routine action theory, in which a lack of authority represents an opportunity for unhealthy action.

The rapid proliferation of internet and phone access also has vastly increased access to media that may contain biased framing of sexual violence, or sexually explicitly material (SEM), media demonstrating sexual acts, but not necessarily violent sexual acts (Owens et al., 2012 ; Peter & Valkenburg, 2016 ). An analysis of representation of sexual violence in German online news media found the perpetuation of rape myths and the portrayal of victims as weak and passive women (Schwark, 2017 ). In a study of English-language news articles from Pakistan, India, and the UK, it was found that gender-based violence messaging focused on rape, rather than sexual violence more broadly (Manzoor et al., 2023 ). Both studies demonstrate how prevailing ideologies normalizing sexual violence and minimizing different types of sexual violence may be perpetuated. While estimates of adolescent exposure to SEM vary globally (Peter & Valkenburg, 2016 ), studies in urban Vietnam confirm that large majorities of adolescents and emerging adults access SEM. A recent national study found that 84% of adolescents 15–18 years had ever been exposed to SEM (Nguyen et al., 2021 ), and a study of first-year male University students in Hanoi found that 41% had been exposed to media-based violent SEM in the prior 6 months (Bergenfeld et al., 2022a ). Direct viewing of this content may provoke mimicry of violence by viewers, in alignment with sexual script theory. Notably, exposure to SEM may occur through passive intake or through active seeking of explicit materials. A 2011 analysis demonstrated that 83% of the top 20 Nielsen-rated adolescent television shows contained SEM (Neilsen Company, 2011 ), while a more recent content analysis of popular Western television shows watched by teens and young adults reached similar conclusions about the common nature of sexual violence and sexual abuse (Kinsler et al., 2019 ). Other avenues for passive exposure to SEM include video games, music, music videos, and films (Peter & Valkenburg, 2016 ). In studies of pornography, which is inherently explicit and often actively sought out, 88% of videos included physical aggression or violence towards women (Bridges et al., 2010 ; Foubert et al., 2011 ). These represent additional opportunities for priming of the association of sex with violence, with cultivation theory suggesting that repeated use increases the likelihood of adopting the beliefs presented in media.

Some of these paths of exposure to media on sexual violence also are tools for sexually violent behavior. Initially consensual sexting may quickly transition to unwanted exposure to sexual images or videos if one party does not seek consent. Informational and social media forums to share comments can become a vehicle for written sexual harassment of an individual. Images or videos shared consensually with a partner can be harnessed for blackmail or nonconsensual sharing via media. These direct, non-contact forms of sexually violent behavior are known as Technology Facilitated Sexual Violence (TFSV). They may include the distribution of explicit photographs and videos without consent, the sharing of unsolicited explicit content, and the use of online platforms for sexual harassment (Powell & Henry, 2019 ). In some western countries, lifetime TFSV exposure may be as high as 17% (Patel & Roesch, 2022 ), with higher prevalence among youth (Gámez-Guadix et al., 2015 ; Powell & Henry, 2019 ). Moreover, social media provides opportunities to facilitate in-person contact and non-contact sexual violence. Conversations on social media, both anonymous and not, may become an opportunity to convince someone to have an in-person meeting, either consensually or through manipulation of power dynamics; one party may have the intent of perpetrating sexual violence, physically, through nonconsensual documentation of sexual behavior, or through other means.

Harms of Media/Technology on Violent Attitudes and Behavior

A growing body of evidence supports the harmful outcomes related to sexual material in media/technology, including the perpetuation of inequitable gender roles, rape mythology, negative self-worth, and sexually violent behavior. Several harmful outcomes also are associated with TFSV victimization, including technology use related to sex generally, such as sexting. In a Hong Kong-based study, individuals who took part in sexting had higher levels of body surveillance and shame than those who did not (Liong & Cheng, 2019 ); in some settings, youth may frame TFSV in dating relationships, such as demands to engage in sexting, as requests for “proof of love” (Fernet et al., 2023 ). Sexting itself has been associated with risky sexual behavior, substance use, depression (Gesselman et al., 2020 ) and self-harm among adolescents (Wachs et al., 2021 ).

In Western countries, exposure to SEM and especially violent SEM has been associated with more accepting attitudes about sexual violence and with sexually violent behavior (Rodenhizer & Edwards, 2019 ). In the global West and Asia, such exposure is associated with permissive sexual attitudes and gender-stereotypical sexual beliefs among adolescents (Peter & Valkenburg, 2016 ). Across studies, male study participants’ attitudes and behaviors regarding sexual and domestic violence were more strongly affected by exposure than females’ (Rodenhizer & Edwards, 2019 ). A recent meta-analysis found that greater overall media consumption was associated with higher rape myth acceptance (Hedrick, 2021 ), with general pornography, violent pornography, and sports media accounting for most of this association. In a recent longitudinal study in Vietnam, a dose–response relationship was observed between the frequency of exposure to violent SEM with non-contact and contact sexually violent (Bergenfeld et al., 2022a ).

Benefits of Media/Technology for Violence Prevention

Conversely, access and exposure to information on safe sexual behavior and the prevention of sexual violence can lead to positive outcomes among adolescents. Qualitative studies of women in the USA, Canada, and India have suggested that women who access non-violent sexual content associated this exposure with positive sexual exploration and development of sexual identity, opportunities for sex-positive education and exploration of readiness for sex, improved sexual connectedness in relationships, normalization of sexual desires, and improved acceptance of their bodies and sexualities (Arrington-Sanders et al., 2015 ; Attwood et al., 2018 ; Chowkhani, 2016 ; McKeown et al., 2018 ). Two qualitative studies conducted in urban Thailand and Vietnam found that adolescent girls use social media to develop their sexuality, express desires, and exercise sexual agency in settings where female expressions of sexuality are restricted and access to accurate sexual information is limited (Boonmongkon et al., 2013 ; Fongkaew & Fongkaew, 2016 ; Ngo et al., 2008 ). In a Hong Kong-based study, individuals who had participated in sexting had more comfort with nudity (Fernet et al., 2023 ), and sexting generally may contribute to increased emotional connection and satisfaction in relationships as well as freedom of sexual expression (Gesselman et al., 2020 ).

Social media also may provide a space for people to share sexual experiences and to seek support. In Hong Kong, “confessional” social media pages have enabled users to ask questions, seek advice around sex from peers, and receive peer support (Yeo & Chu, 2017 ). Social support, in turn, may indirectly reduce the risk of sexual violence victimization (Ybarra et al., 2015 ). In recent years, social media has been used strategically to disclose experiences of sexual violence and to provide social support to survivors (Alaggia & Wang, 2020 ), though some studies find that survivors of sexual violence do not reap the same benefits of public sharing of experiences as much as individuals who experienced less stigmatized trauma, such as a natural disaster (Delker et al., 2020 ). Also, the survivors of sexual violence may interpret and identify their experiences differently based on prevalence of sexual violence cases in the media (Newins et al., 2021 ).

Various forms of media have served as a tool to disseminate widely accurate and relevant information about sex and sexual violence to teen audiences (Todaro et al., 2018 ). Young people have cited increased comfort accessing information about sex online compared to other mediums (Lim et al., 2014 ), and reduced embarrassment for adolescents who are uncomfortable discussing sex with their parents (Lou et al., 2012 ). Qualitative research in Vietnam has found that parents would like accessible information about sex on the internet (Do et al., 2017 ). Numerous technology-based interventions relating to sexual violence exist, however, only a portion include content relating to violence prevention, rather than identification or survivor support, and those that do are largely focused on North America (Huang et al., 2022 ). In one systematic review of mobile sex-tech, which included 15 articles of technology-related interventions with sexual violence information, only 27% contained content on sexual violence prevention, and none contained information on the impacts of sexual violence (Huang et al., 2016 ). Nevertheless, two systematic reviews of tech-based interventions for intimate partner violence (IPV) found that IPV prevention in combination with access to telehealth services showed promise to reduce the risk of violence victimization (Anderson et al., 2021 ; El Morr & Layal, 2020 ), while a third did not identify any significant effects (Linde et al., 2020 ). Notably, the reviewed studies focused on interventions with women as potential victims, rather than men as potential perpetrators (Huang et al., 2022 ). While careful development is essential to prevent unintended consequences, such as increasing adherence to rape myths (Nicolla & Lazard, 2023 ), online programming in the U.S. and Vietnam have been successful in decreasing sexually violent behavior among university men (Yount et al., 2023b ; Salazar et al., 2014 ; Yount et al., 2020 ). In a randomized controlled trial of an “edutainment” program to reduce sexual violence, program participants had increased knowledge of the illegality of sexual violence and increased victim empathy (Yount et al., 2022 ), through which Vietnamese men had lower odds of past-year sexually violence behavior after program participation (Yount et al., 2023b ; Yount et al., 2020 ). This may demonstrate a pathway to reduced sexually violent behavior through the effective use of media with young people.

The aim of this paper is to elucidate the state of media usage relating to sexual violence among Vietnamese youth, according to educational and programmatic partners across Vietnam, using the research question “What is the perceived influence of social media on sexual violence among youth according to educators in Vietnam?” Further, we seek to describe the implications of media usage relating to sex and sexual violence, both positive and negative, and identify lessons and pathways to improve sexual health and sexual violence programming for Vietnamese youth. While literature is available on media, sex, and sexual violence globally and broadly in Southeast Asia, little of this research focuses on Vietnam specifically, and little from the perspective and framing of implementation of sexual violence prevention. This information may allow for effective, targeted programming and/or engagement in media to reduce sexual violence and promote gender equitable attitudes among youth.

Vietnam, located in Southeast Asia, is home to 96 million people, and 13.70% of the population are aged 15 to 24 years (General Statistical Office [GSO] of Vietnam, 2020 ). Fifty-four recognized ethnic groups are represented within the population of Vietnam, with 85% of individuals self-identifying as Kinh (Hiwasaki & Minh, 2022 ). Currently classified as a lower middle-income country, Vietnam’s population typically still resides in rural areas (70%) (World Bank, 2022 ); however, Vietnam has seen steady economic growth and diversification over the past 20 years, alongside declines in poverty (Do et al., 2021 ; Nguyen et al., 2020 ). Literacy is almost universal, and the gender gap in number of years of schooling is relatively narrow (United Nations Development Program [UNDP], 2022 ) though women less often participate in the workforce than men (69% v. 79%), and working women earn substantially less than their male counterparts (United Nations Development Program [UNDP]), 2022 ).

Nearly all individuals in urban and rural settings have access to electricity, and most (70%) of the Vietnamese population has access to the internet (Mobile Marketing Association, 2019 ). In 2019, there were 141 phone subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, and nearly all internet users are estimated to own a smartphone, such that over 80% of the population over age 15 is connected to online content (Mobile Marketing Association, 2019 ). Approximately 68% of the rural population own a smartphone, and as of 2019, was connected to the internet an average of 3 hours per day; of which 40% was spent on messaging apps in communication with others (Mobile Marketing Association, 2019 ).

As of 2019, 90% of young adults (18–29 years old) in Vietnam were using smartphones (Silver et al., 2019 ), while 72 million people (accounting for 73.7% of the population) use social media in Vietnam. Between January 2020 and January 2021 alone, the number of Vietnam’s social media users increased approximately by 10.8% (2021). Approximately 65% of Vietnamese youth (aged 16–30, N = 1200) use the internet daily; a study of social media use among Vietnamese youth engage with social media for an average of 4.3 hours a day and primarily use it to talk with friends and receive updated news (Doan et al., 2022 ). Commonly used applications include Facebook, YouTube, and Zalo, with interactivity on YouTube and Zalo being highest with news and entertainment accounts (Doan et al., 2022 ; Hanns Seidel Foundation, 2021 ).

Social media in Vietnam is currently regulated under the Law on Cyber Security (National Assembly of Vietnam, 2018 ), and the Decision 874/QD-BTTTT (2021) on the Code of Conduct on social media, to protect “the national security,” relating to “moral values, culture, and traditions of Vietnamese people” (Ministry of Information & Communications, 2021 ; My, 2022 ) While no specific definition of these terms is provided, Decree 15/2020/ND-CP outlines financial punishment of 10 million VND to 20 million VND ($500—$1,000) for violation of regulations on use of social media, including “promoting bad customs, superstition, lustful materials which are not suitable for the nation’s fine customs and traditions.” In sum, access to smartphones, online media, and networking apps are widespread in Vietnam, particularly among youth, and laws regulating access to online content are nascent.

Participants

Recruitment strategies are described elsewhere (Yount et al., 2023a ). In brief, a multi-pronged approach was used to identify key informants from universities, high schools, and civil society organizations (CSOs) who conduct programs related to sexual and reproductive health and rights. Once initial potential participants were contacted, the research team employed snowball sampling to diversify the participant pool, with consideration to institutional setting (university, high school, CSO), region of Vietnam in which the institution was located (North, Central, South), and gender.

Participants were invited via email to complete interviews until a total sample of 45 was achieved, with an even distribution of 15 participants each from university, high school, and CSO settings. Of 45 interviewed participants, 32 were invited to participate in focus groups, based on their knowledge of sexual violence programming. A total of 22 individuals agreed to participate in focus group discussions, resulting in four focus groups: one with high school teachers ( n = 7), two with university lecturers ( n = 6 and n = 3), and one with key informants from CSOs ( n = 6).

Measures and Procedure

We conducted a qualitative study of key informants from high schools, universities, and civil society organizations (CSOs) across all regions of Vietnam, which included in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, a mixed-methods approach which is useful for research that has multiple objectives (Hennink et al., 2020 ). Overarching findings from the parent study are presented elsewhere (Yount et al., 2023a ). This analysis focuses on narrative segments related to the media, which was identified as a highly salient theme worthy of a separate, in-depth analysis.

In the parent qualitative study, the binational research team developed three guides for data collection. A semi-structured key informant interview guide contained open-ended questions about sexual violence among youth populations; gender and sexual norms among youth populations; causes, effects, and strategies to prevent sexual violence among youth; and factors influencing sexual violence prevention programming. Interviews were chosen to reduce social desirability bias, as recommended when discussing sensitive topics (Hennink et al., 2020 ). Two guides were developed for use in focus group discussions. Focus groups were selected for this objective as they allow for the identification of a range of perspectives and facilitate the justification of ideas (Hennink et al., 2020 ). First, a viewing guide elicited opinions and responses to the web-based sexual violence prevention program, GlobalConsent (Yount et al., 2022 ). The guide asked participants to rate on a five-point scale the feasibility and acceptability of program elements, and to elaborate upon their reasoning for the rating. The focus group facilitator collected the completed guides and used them in combination with a focus group guide to prompt discussion during the focus groups. The focus group guide aligned with the domains of the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) (Damschroder et al., 2009 ). Questions were open-ended and assessed facilitators and barriers to sexual violence prevention programming, with prompts drawn from feedback in the viewing guide. This method was used to ascertain consensus, when possible. Of note, none of the data collection guides contained direct questions about social media, internet use, or technology-based sexual violence information dissemination other than reference to GlobalConsent. When participants raised these topics, facilitators asked follow-up questions to elucidate their opinions and experiences. All data collection forms have been previously published and are publicly available (Yount et al., 2023a ).

All data were collected using audio calls through the Zoom videoconferencing system. Two research staff members trained in qualitative research methods from the Center for Creative Initiatives in Health and Population completed data collection. At the beginning of each interview or focus group, the staff members explained the purpose of the study and reminded participants that they would not be asking for any private or potentially sensitive personal information. All interviews and focus groups were recorded using the Zoom videoconference platform. Interviews lasted 45–90 min, and focus groups lasted 120–150 min. Upon completion of data collection, interview participants were compensated with $20 USD. Focus group participants were compensated $30 USD for viewing GlobalConsent and completing the viewing guide materials, and $20 USD for participating in the focus group discussion.

Data Analysis

Data collectors saved digital recordings on a password-protected cloud-based research drive, and a professional transcription service transcribed all recordings verbatim. The research team verified random sections of the Vietnamese transcriptions against the original recordings. Verified Vietnamese transcripts then were translated into English, and a research team member proficient in the Vietnamese and English languages and cultures checked random segments of the English transcripts against the Vietnamese transcripts for accuracy of the translation and its meaning as intended in the original Vietnamese. Audio recordings were destroyed following quality checks of the written transcripts and translations.

Study team members analyzed the English transcripts using deductive and inductive techniques to identify initial themes and media-related sub-themes. Two doctoral-level study team members developed a codebook based on the interview guides and CFIR domains, inclusive of definitions, and revised it iteratively following repeated readings by other study team members. Team-based coding was used to code each transcript in MaxQDA.

All content related to media originally was coded using a single broad inductive code in the first round of coding. For this analysis, all coded segments related to media then were extracted and saved in a single document. Two graduate-level trained researchers independently reviewed this document to identify inductive sub-themes applicable to the data. The researchers then met to discuss the inductive sub-themes, reconcile discrepancies through inter-coder agreement, and to review the need for further theme identification. This latter step ultimately was not taken due to the high level of concurrence between the initially identified inductive subthemes. Inter-coder reliability was not calculated to avoid implied objectivity or undue precision (O’Connor & Joffe, 2020 ).

Finally, the coders created a salience matrix to visualize the presence or absence of each theme within each transcript, in order to qualitatively and quantitatively represent the salience of each them across all transcripts. Representative quotes for each sub-theme were identified to contextualize the findings with sector and gender of interview participants, and sector only for focus group participants, as statements were not individually identifiable in the focus groups. Participant characteristics are reported in Table 1 .

Accessibility and Quality of Information about Sex and Sexual Relationships

Many community partners, including more than half of participants employed as university lecturers or CSO affiliates, noted that media is highly accessible to young people in Vietnam, particularly through the internet, such that information about sex and sexual relationships can be easily found. Further, according to many participants, students seek out information independently, rather than rely upon schools to provide information. According to one participant, “Young people now have access to information easily, so they can learn things themselves. When we …distribute free condoms to advocate for safe sex, it comes to my surprise that students actually know about condoms” (University Lecturer, Woman). Another participant clarified that easy access to information about sex was generally a benefit of media access, specifically for young women, “ … nowadays, I think with the age of technology development, it would be easy for [young people] to look for information to help protect themselves [from unwanted pregnancy]” (University Lecturer, Woman).

A few participants described this high general access to information about sex as empowering for young people in Vietnam. One participant stated, for example, that “When they [the youth] need information, they are very proactive and find it very quickly themselves” (University Lecturer, Woman). However, several participants, and particularly participants affiliated with CSOs, expressed concern that the quality of available information on sex and sexual relationships is variable, and some “unregulated” available content may be inaccurate and may lack the comprehensiveness that adolescents need. One participant shared, “In recent years, access to the internet makes it easy for people to retrieve a lot of information, including unregulated ones, especially for adolescents and youth. People are not fully informed” (CSO Affiliate, Woman). Elaborating on this potential for youth to gain incomplete knowledge through internet sources, another participant noted, “…I can see that the young generation has learnt on their own via the internet … even though the young have somewhat an understanding about safer sex, their source of information is not adequate and they still lack orientation” (University Lecturer, Woman). This lack of orientation was seen as an important barrier to the practice of safe and consensual sex.

A few participants expressed additional concern about the volume and appropriateness of information available online, given the lack of formal sex/sexuality education, and given the willingness of students to actively see information themselves: “…sometimes the information is too much for them. …there really isn't anyone to teach them the skills to say no. So really they mostly depend on their instinct or information that they find out on their own rather than having orientation” (University Lecturer, Woman). When the information availabe online is “too much,” according to some participants, students may experience potentially harmful outcomes. Participants discussed how the abundance of ostensibly tempting, unregulated, and confusing information could overwhelm youth seeking information, with one participant explaining, “[online] we also receive many opinions, different kinds of feedback, even some pages, organizations, and activists …. I think it [creates] a rather chaotic environment …[Youth] can feel confused since they don't know which side to take, they are not sure which side is the right one” (CSO Affiliate, Woman).

About one third of participants from high school and university settings attributed this confusion to the lack of up-to-date “official” information, with one lecturer noting, “they have too much information and couldn’t find any official information,” calling the available official sources of information “extremely limited and old school” (University Lecturer, Woman). Many paricipants believed such official information was vital to provide young people with accurate information about sex. A CSO-affiliated participant shared,

Now it's easy, everyone has a smartphone. Google does not charge, so just google it. ... However, [youth] are not sure which document is official and standard. What they need the most is the most up-to-date materials with information and knowledge constantly updated. The source of information must be official and in accordance with the standards. (CSO Affiliate, Woman )

Despite substantial agreement across participants that youth needed more access to “official” information about sex, the meaning of “official” in the context of information on sex in the media varied. One participant distinguished information from medical sources and that from the government and schools, with the latter sources being indicated as preferrable, while medical sources, such as hospitals, may contribute to the potentially overwhelming, “unregulated” information online: “There are also many video clips or guideline on other social networks… Some hospitals also post these contents, both foreign and Vietnamese. [It’s] available, but maybe there’re too many, with no sources from the Government or schools.” (CSO Affiliate, Woman)

Other participants echoed the idea of “official” sources originating with the government, with one stating, “…online, I have not seen much. Besides, I think there is no official training program [on this topic] by the Ministry of Education yet” (CSO Affiliate, Woman). The absence of an official training program complicated the role of schools and universities, who were noted as potentially playing a significant role in the dissemination of information, but only once it exists: “And when the information is official, it will be shared by the school, the university, or the student community. It is also considered an official channel” (CSO Affiliate, Woman). Only one participant discussed non-governmental organizations as a source for “official” information: “If we talk about official sources of information, it is definitely the type of absolutely official sources like UNWOMEN or …multinational organizations working on gender. They provide much more credible information” (CSO Affiliate, Woman).

Media Depictions of Sexual Activity and Normalization of Sexual Violence

Some participants noted the lack of official information regarding sex and sexual relationships as intersecting meaningfully with narrow, sensational depictions of sexual violence and the normalization of sexual coercion, non-consent, and sugar-daddy relationships in the media. These depictions were described as occurring in the news media, television, and in online media content, including but not limited to pornography. One participant shared that the news media was not adept at conveying the complex nuances of sexual consent, arguing that this source of information was “unable to distinguish at a more delicate level, that things may start out as consensual, but could become non-consensual later” (University Lecturer, Woman). Only extreme cases of sexual violence were cited as worth covering by news media, masking other forms of sexual violence. As a focus-group discussion participant explained, “[the news media] only care about the major events … if there is a case where the students …make a girl to drink and it leads to a rape, and that spreads among students… [the media] will immediately jump in to investigate and interview” (University Lecturer). Further, according to another participant, the news media’s presentation of information on cases of sexual violence often ignore the voices and experiences of women and experts in the field.

Some participants also described the silencing of women’s experiences relating to sex and sexual violence as common in the movies. Some participants described movies from Southeast Asia as reinforcing rigid gender stereotypes, including women’s passivity and submission to masculine coercion, as well as the normalization of non-consent. A CSO affiliate shared, “…for example, in Chinese and Korean dramas, we may see scenes where the female character doesn't like it, but the male keeps kissing, and then, in the end, those two have a sweet night. I feel such things are injected into girls’ heads” (CSO Affiliate, Woman). One high-school teacher corroborated the above depiction of sex in Southeast Asian movies in this way:

…in Korean/Chinese movies or love novels that the young usually read and watch, the main characters typically force their partner into having unwanted sex or physical contacts, such as hugs or kisses. Consequently, the readers form a notion that it is okay for the male to force such activities, and the female does like it. (High School Teacher, Woman)

Reinforcing the normalization of sexual violence and non-consent in mainstream movies available to Vietnamese youth, some participants, particularly university lecturers, discussed how pornography contains harmful depictions of sexual activity that they believe drives a desire among men to imitate, including violent behaviors or behaviors that would make female partners uncomfortable. As demonstrated by the experiences of one university lecturer, exposure to pornographic material was expansive, and occurred from a young age:

…men from old to young have seen this type of [sexually explicit] film and are influenced by the erotic and sadistic elements in the film. These factors often stimulate the curiosity of men and make them want to try more. Young people are especially curious about this issue. I once did a project to provide computers for elementary schools …after 6 months of operation, when I accessed the search history, there were many pornographic websites in it. The 5th graders at that school watched sex movies. Even though they did not type the right words, they still watched and even discussed the contents of the movies. (University Lecturer, Man)

Some participants believed that youth generally were not aware that violent actions portrayed in such movies would be considered sexual violence, but rather normal sexual encounters that should be used as a guide. One university lecturer stated, “…young people think that if they do the same thing [as pornography], they will be professional, and this mindset causes young people to commit acts of sexual violence that they themselves do not know,” (University Lecturer, Woman). Several participants emphasized that the risk of imitating sexually explicit material, and at times violent sexually explicit material, was heightened because official information about healthy sexual relationships was lacking and so could not counter adolescents’ interpretations of SEM as normal forms of sexual interaction.

Concurrently, some participants, and particularly high school teachers, perceived a rise in portrayals of transactional sex in online media that capitalize on gender-stereotypical roles and economic power imbalances, particularly manifesting in “sugar-daddy” relationships among young people. One CSO affiliate shared, “… the most current trend [on dating apps] is sugar-daddy and sugar-mommy, which is why people nowadays joke that formerly, you could only purchase a single ticket for one-night stands, but now you can purchase a multiple-round ticket.” (CSO Affiliate, Woman). According to one high school teacher’s experience, sugar-daddy and sugar-mommy relationships were normalized in online media: “Last year, for example, there were so many cases of sugar babies—sugar daddies. They even made short clips to gain views and likes and created videos to post on YouTube to make money.” (High School Teacher, Woman). Another participant from a CSO contrasted her own personal experiences with those of youth only a few years younger: “My age is pretty close to them [but] when I was their age, those types of [transactional] relationships weren’t that common around me and not on the media either. Now it’s much more popular in the media…. These things are normalized because it’s common among young people” (CSO Affiliate, Woman).

Mixed Consequences and Opportunities from Young People’s Engagement with Media

To many focus group and interview participants, including many of high school teachers and university lecturers, increased access to and interaction with media, the lack of reliable information on sexual relationships and sexual violence, and media portrayals and normalization of non-consensual and violent relationships led to increased risk of sexual violence victimization among youth. The accessibility of communication with unknown persons provided by internet access was viewed as facilitating these cases of violence by providing opportunities for youth to be taken advantage of. A CSO affiliate spoke to this point, saying, “They [youth] often use communication apps to date or have sex (slang). Even those children of 15, 16 age… showed their bodies online as requested by older men” (CSO Affiliate, Man).

Several participants elaborated that youth they were familiar with also were at risk of non-consensual recording and distribution of content. Over one-third of high school teachers discussed these risks, and a participant who worked with a youth-centered CSO detailed them, saying, “…some people lure students into the toilet to secretly film them. … [some are] paying students to go to their living space to perform sex, then record clips…. On paid sex viewing websites, many videos with private sex scenes are posted to get money" (CSO Affiliate, Man). This non-consensual sharing of explicit sexual material was not limited to circumstances of non-consensual recording but could also originate in the consensual sharing of videos or images among youth, or between youth and adults. This content was described as potential material for blackmail and manipulation: “Four cases that I handled last year had to do with online erotic messaging via Zalo or text messages: boys and girls, they exchanged erotic images, but the boy saved those images and used them to blackmail the girl." (University Lecturer, Man) According to some participants, they didn’t believe youth understood the risks of content sharing, even to a single person: “The images uploaded on the Internet can be viewed by millions of people. People do not think of it as a danger to themselves. There are cases where private pictures/videos are spread out right in the school. Students did not think that it could be able to be exposed.” (CSO Affiliate, Man).

Conversely, some participants acknowledged benefits to increased access and exposure to media. The internet provides forums where youth who had experienced sexual violence could connect with other survivors, fostering social support: “Nowadays, the young can share their story with some groups or forums on the Internet. …though talking about their situations on the Internet didn’t get them the professional support they needed, they did receive a certain level of empathy and emotional support” (CSO Affiliate, Woman). Another participant noted that the internet provided a layer of privacy that could not be achieved through in-person contact, easing feelings of embarrassment or discomfort in seeking support: “I think they would talk to their friends… [but] talking [in person] could be embarrassing, and they would be afraid that someone might overhear them, so I think they would send messages over Zalo, Facebook.” (University Lecturer, Woman)

Furthermore, social forums on the internet were seen by some participants as providing space for young people to ask questions, to be exposed to different opinions, and to gather a variety of perspectives to inform themselves better: “In this era, information is very accessible. However, what really helps is a space where they feel safe to share their views on this topic. And after sharing, they can also listen to other people's opinions to conclude what is right, what is reasonable, what is not reasonable, and what is needed to be changed?” (University Lecturer, Woman).

Media as a Tool for Sexual Education and Sexual Violence Prevention

Despite participants’ perceptions of the mixed outcomes related to high accessibility of heterogeneous information about sex and sexual relationships and the high use by young people of media for this information, many participants noted that media was a powerful and important tool for disseminating information about sex and sexual violence and for engaging youth. One high school teacher shared, “…with the advance of technology in today's society, we can create websites, Facebook pages, or TikTok channels…to share information about sexual violence and ways to prevent it. I think this is a way for the young to access reliable sources of information more easily” (High School Teacher, Woman). How information is presented in media also was discussed, with some participants highlighting that media can be a tailored medium of information to youth. The flexibility of media as a medium, and particularly online media was noted as a major facilitator or tailoring information. An CSO-based participant shared: “We can run several media projects that propagate sex education content such as talk shows, minigames, etc.… There are certain levels of flexibility for communicating with students of this age, especially in a time when sex education is still something we are aiming at" (CSO Affiliate, Woman). Finally, some participants, particularly those affiliated with CSOs, noted a key feature of media as a potentially effective tool was the ability to reach large populations:

The biggest advantage of youth groups like us, or young NGOs working in the social field, we know about social media, and we use it quite proficiently… Hence, I feel that is our huge advantage, especially if we want to spread the knowledge about sexual violence on the media and social networks. That's quite true because, among our 150,000 followers, 78 - 80% of them are young people aged from 18-20 years old. (CSO Affiliate, Woman)

Other participants echoed these sentiments, with one university lecturer suggesting that existing institutional resources could be leveraged, saying, “I think the best method would be using websites, the ones that are familiar to students, or pages of the student community " (University Lecturer, Woman). This strategy was cited as providing the sense of an “official” channel of information, and more clearly delineating between “official” and “unofficial.” Other partnerships also were discussed, including working with media channels: “I think we can also use the help of media news channels and authorities to spread more awareness and attract attention to the topic of sexual violence.… By doing this, the young do not have to actively learn about it … their mindset about sexual violence can be formed unconsciously" (High School Teacher, Woman). By these means, participants recognized media as potentially facilitating norms change through the efforts of activists and educators, underscoring the perceived power of media as a tool, “…not just to inform people, but also advocate for public opinions.” (University Lecturer).

Despite the numerous positive features of media as an educational tool, a few participants noted limitations. One participant shared, “I can't force them to visit only this page, go to that page, or tell them that they can only read materials related to learning and mustn’t watch movies. That is very difficult" (High School Teacher, Woman). Another participant pointed out that, despite the accessibility of information on the internet, neither access to nor use of the internet to seek out information were universal, potentially leaving vulnerable populations out of media-based programming:

Not everyone can have access to social media, or to the internet. Not everyone has time…. For me, the people who don't … have the conditions to do it are the people we need to approach most. Because those people are people who don't have much access to the mass media, to both information and knowledge sources on gender and sexual violence. (CSO Affiliate, Woman)

Even with these limitations, several of participants acknowledged that media already has shifted norms in Vietnam. One participant said of the youth with whom they work, “With the influence of social media such as YouTube, Tiktok, or Facebook, young people view sexual intercourse at this age as something normal. They think it is no longer a shame as in older times; they even openly share about it instead of keeping it a secret as before" (CSO Affiliate, Woman). Another key informant shared the impact of media on independent decision-making among youth, stating that media has given youth freedom through access to information. Finally, one participant commented on the increasing globalization allowed by media, and the profound impacts of exposure to different ideas:

I believe that the power of media and other means of connecting people, such as social networks, is quite large… There is also the openness of social media, where Vietnamese adolescents are more exposed to Western culture through concepts like freedom of expression and self-expression. Furthermore, girls are no longer constrained by the old concept of virginity. Boys, on the other hand, have more opportunities to study abroad and interact with people from different cultures, resulting in more cultural exchange. There are also an increasing number of reality shows on television about love and romance. As a result, they have a wealth of resources at their disposal to learn more about sex. (CSO Affiliate, Woman)

Leveraging of these resources, participants agreed, could be used to promote sexual health and decrease sexual violence among Vietnamese youth, empowering adolescents to shift social norms and promote increased gender equity.

Summary and Interpretation of Findings

In interviews and focus groups regarding sexual violence prevention among adolescents in Vietnam, high school teachers, university lectures, and affiliates of youth-focused CSOs expansively discussed the role of media and technology in the context of sexual violence and sexual education for Vietnamese youth. Primarily, interview and focus group participants expounded upon the high availability of access to media through technology, and particularly media relating to sex. However, the information presented in this media varies widely, according to participants, with some media that is incorrect or inappropriate for youth, and few available sources of information that were classified as “official.” Respondents shared that the available media—including news media, informational websites, social networking platforms, video streaming platforms, and mobile applications—depict sexual activity that is coercive or violent, normalize transactional sex, reinforce normative beliefs about inequitable gender roles, and prompt mimicry of sexual violence.

Given the high prevalence of youth information-seeking about sex through media (Buhi et al., 2009 ; Santor et al., 2007 ), including in Southeast Asia (Gesselman et al., 2020 ; Ngo et al., 2008 ; Nguyen, 2007 ) and Vietnam, specifically, the availability of accurate and appropriate information on sex and sexual violence is imperative to the education of youth globally. In line with behavioral health theories that integrate mimicry and observational or social learning, such as sexual script theory (Wiederman, 2015 ) and social cognitive/social learning theory (Bandura, 2001 ; Bandura & Walters, 1977 ), participants stated that youth they were familiar with imitated the sexual situations and actions they viewed in media, including violent sexual acts without the consent of their partner. This echoes previous findings of the role of observational learning in the contexts of media, violence, and sexual activity, previously identified associations between exposure to SEM, sexual attitudes, and gender-stereotypical sexual beliefs in the global West and Asia (Gesselman et al., 2020 ; Peter & Valkenburg, 2016 ), and recent findings on a dose–response relationship between SEM and sexually violent behavior among young men in Vietnam (Bergenfeld et al., 2022a ). Participants stated that non-consent was normalized in movies and television, passively reinforcing the violent and coercive sexual behaviors, while news media both sensationalized and neglected to portray the nuances of sexual violence and consent. According to cultivation theory, repeated exposure to portrayals and normalization of sexual violence may promote greater acceptance of and desensitization to violence (Morgan et al., 2014 ), which may provide insight into why some participants reported that youth did not know that nonconsensual sexual acts were in fact sexual violence.

Participants also discussed the implications of this increased access to media relating to sex, with both negative and positive outcomes delineated. Media was cited as increasing opportunities for sexual violence in two main ways. First, youth were put at risk through connecting with unknown people via messaging or networking sites, leading to vulnerable in-person meetings. Indeed, almost 30% of individuals in Southeast Asia are thought to have used sex-tech for finding sexual partners (Gesselman et al., 2020 ), indicating willingness to put oneself in situations that may be conducive to sexual violence. Second, youth were put at risk through the sharing of their own sexually explicit media with others, either privately or publicly. An estimated 60.1% of individuals in Southeast Asia report sending sexually explicit messages, including images and videos (Gesselman et al., 2020 ), which have the potential to then be shared beyond the original recipient without consent. Non-sexually explicit photos posted on social media were also described as a pathway for sexual harassment or TFSV.

By contrast, media also provided forums for learning, exploration, and social support, which participants noted is promising for sexual education and prevention of sexual violence. Social media and blogs were cited as potential sources of diverse opinions and experiences, corroborating previous findings of young women in Southeast Asia using the internet to explore and develop sexual identities and gain accurate information about sex (Boonmongkon et al., 2013 ; Fongkaew & Fongkaew, 2016 ; Ngo et al., 2008 ), and seek advice and social support about sex and sexual violence (Alaggia & Wang, 2020 ; Yeo & Chu, 2017 ). The significant portion of Vietnamese young adults on social media (Silver et al., 2019 ) also marks this as an ideal pathway for education and prevention of sexual violence, as identified by interview and focus group participants.

Interestingly, while participants recognized the diversity of the sources of information on the internet and the impossibility of "forcing" students to view "official” channels, they did not discuss the importance of media literacy education, which may help students to identify the useful/good vs. harmful information. It may be important to emphasize students as agents for change—once they are equipped with the knowledge and skills to analyze media sources with discernment and more accurate knowledge of sexual violence and consent. Media literacy education in high school and university contexts may offer a normatively acceptable pathway to increased critical analysis of sexual and sexually violent content in media, and may not face the same barriers that have been outlined to implementing sexual violence prevention education in Vietnam (Yount et al., 2023a ). This strategy may complement ongoing violence prevention efforts, particularly in high schools given that average educational attainment is projected to exceed 12 years in Vietnam among children of school-entry age (United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 2022 ). Such programs that have been successfully implemented in the United States may be appropriate for adaptation to the context of Vietnam (Scull et al., 2018 , 2022 ).

Limitations and Strengths of Analysis

Some limitations and several strengths of this analysis are notable. First, qualitative research is not generalizable but generates salient themes that may be explored more systematically in future surveys involving representative samples of young people. Second, the data are perceptions of the behavior of young people from high-school teachers, university lecturers, and CSO affiliates and should not be interpreted as the actual behavior of young people. Relatedly, there is a possibility of polysemy in interpretation of media, wherein messaging may be interpreted semantically differently by different individuals (Ewoldsen et al., 2022 ), with implications for processing and actions taken following viewing. Educators may not only interpret media they see differently from their students, but students in one cultural group, class, or educational environment may view or interpret media differently from others, limiting the interpretations educators may be privy to. Only comprehensive inclusion of diverse educators—for the circumstances of this analysis—or youth can capture these multiple interpretations. While significant efforts were made to engage educators from across geographic regions and genders, these efforts may not be sufficient to capture all educator interpretations, let alone those of youth. Despite these caveats, the sample of participants is highly diverse, representing men and women living in urban and rural areas and key informants from diverse youth-serving institutions across all regions of Vietnam. Moreover, the participants in the study, because of their profession and high degree of interaction with young people, are important key informants to query, as knowledgeable adults from their own vantage point. Finally, the team used theory on media and violence to inform a nuanced interpretation of the data and its alignment with results from prior empirical research. The findings provide important insights about possible next steps to understand and to address young people’s use of the media and the diverse and sometimes countervailing ways in which it may help or harm young people’s encounters with sexual violence.

Implications for Research and Sexual Violence Prevention Programming

The findings from this analysis are a strong call for more research among youth in Vietnam, especially surrounding the needs for comprehensive sex education and TFSV. The increased prevalence of TFSV also warrants including this outcome in measures of sexual violence, such as those used in population-based surveys. Thus, large-scale surveys among high-school studies and university studies to document in representative school-based samples the various ways in which media and violence intersect, and at what developmental ages, would provide critical groundwork for developing educational programming that meets the most salient needs at each developmental stage. Expanded research is needed on youth media literacy and the needs of educational systems to facilitate implementation of sexual violence programming (Yount et al., 2023a ). Finally, given increasing access among youth globally to media-related technology and the internet, more work is needed to understand the implications of this access for sexual violence and sexual health, particularly among youth in low- and middle-income countries.

From the perspective of sexual health and sexual violence programming, the findings from this analysis are suggestive of some common and some age-specific needs of young people in Vietnam. First, there is a clear call for official, science-based curricula on sex and sexual violence that is developmentally tailored to high school and university students. A stronger need may exist for comprehensive sexuality education at the high-school level, including education on healthy relationships and media literacy. It may be beneficial to incorporate international standards, such as those suggested in the UNESCO Comprehensive Sexuality Education Implementation Toolkit (UNESCO, 2023 ), into newly developed curricula. Existing effective programs delivered through technology to university students (Yount et al., 2022 ) may be adaptable for the context of high school students, facilitating continuous sexual health and sexual violence education through high school and university. At the university level, there may be a more salient need for sexual violence prevention programming that educates adult students about the nature and scope of sexual violence, the importance of obtaining active consent for sex, the role of (media disseminated) gender norms in perpetuating myths about rape, masculine privilege, and ideas that are harmful to healthy sexual relationships (Bergenfeld et al., 2022b , 2022c ). Notably, peers themselves are an important source of norms about sexual violence alongside media; as such, comprehensive sexual violence prevention programming must address both media- and peer-related risk factors for sexually violent behavior (Yount et al., 2022 ). Furthermore, there is a need for education at both the high-school and university levels about the safety of online dating and social networking so that students are better informed about the risks at the outset of their engagement with online social-network and dating aps. Finally, there is a need for comprehensive education about the types of sexually explicit material that may heighten risks of sexually violent behavior for both groups, given the high prevalence of exposure at a young age in Vietnam (Bergenfeld et al., 2022a ).

Conclusions

The rise in availability and exposure to media among youth globally and in Vietnam has raised new educational needs on sexual violence prevention and sexual health information. New and adapted curricula, with age-specific programmatic elements, may help to mediate the impacts of media on perpetration of violence.

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We would like to thank the participants who generously contributed their time and thoughts to this research, as well as Dr. Minh Tran Hung, the site principal investigator for this research.

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Experts say violent media exposure to children is a complicated issue

BINGHAMTON (WBNG) -- Violence in the media has been a hot topic for decades.

In recent years, television shows, video games and more have become less censored and now there is a question that if over over consumption of violent media can affect the average child.

12 News spoke with Southern Tier residents to see if parents monitor access to violence to their children and whether or not media literacy is taught in their households. Which is, as defined by the National Association for Media Literacy Education, the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create and act using all forms of communication.

Teaching media literacy prompts people to question the content they consume, whether that is how it makes the person feel or even decipher whether something is real or fake.

Parents at the Oakdale Commons told 12 News that they monitor at least some content their children consume.

One parent told 12 News that their children like to go to inappropriate sites. Another parent told 12 News they were shocked when their child played Grand Theft Auto, a videogame series notorious for gratuitous violence against law enforcement and pedestrians.

“I’m like ‘Oh my god,’” parent Christine Brooks said, recalling watching her grandson play the game. “He’s talking about how they have to beat prostitutes. Who bought you that? I never had those games.”

Brooks then listed games that she played, such as Sonic or Mario, which are typically geared to a wide audience.

Another parent told 12 News they were concerned about gory videos on the internet. They recalled being horrified by videos they saw on the internet but also noted that they feel there is more precautions around graphic content now.

Retired Meritor Research Scientist with Cornell University Janice Whitlock told 12 News that constant exposure to violent content can affect a child. She noted that the younger a person is, and the more prolonged the exposure is, the more likely there will be a cognitive impact.

“Exposure to violence can also cause social and cognitive impairments, anxiety and stress, attention problems, sleep issues...” Whitlock said. “It can also make them feel fearful and anxious which then, permeates functioning. So, all of the things you would expect it to do, it can do.”

Yet, Visiting Assistant of Psychology Professor at Binghamton University Alexander Khislavsky told 12 News that real-world violence should be the focus for protecting children from graphic content. He noted that it’s not as simple as concluding that video media affects children negatively.

“However, as far as huge impacts on mental health, my guess is the side of video games & the media, when compared to the actual exposure to violence-- real-life violence in the home, and real-life violence in the community, I guess that this overshadows the video game and media aspect of it,” Khislavsky said.

Khislavsky said that if children are frequently exposed to violence in the home and within their own communities, then it increases their risk of being more aggressive themselves and also interpreting the world in more aggressive ways.

Experts said that the data varies based on the number of violent media consumed by said person and how it intersects with the subject’s race, gender, socioeconomic status and other social and political identities. In short, a child pre-disposed with anxiety due to their parents having it, in addition to growing up in a violent area, will be affected differently than someone who grew up in more calmer environment.

Whitlock and Khivlasky had their definitions of what constitutes violent media.

“It could be part of the news; it could be part of movies. A lot of it depends on the context that it’s shown in,” Whitlock said. “So Japanese anime for example can include violence that will look, and feel, and lend differently, for example, then watching what’s happening in Gaza or the Middle East in the news. So, it’s complex and a lot of it depends on how a child internalizes it.”

“Recent research I read shows that even 14-16 years-old seem to have a little bit of a bump in preferring video games and showing that slight increase in violent aggressive behavior,” Khivlasky said. “However, what you have to understand is that the way that violent and aggressive behavior is measured in these research studies is very very different from a conversation about overt physical aggression.”

The Washington Post’s essential guide to tech policy news

How social media can avoid fueling another Jan. 6

A programming note: Beginning this week, The Technology 202 is getting a refreshed look and feel. We’ll now be known as the Tech Brief, and you’ll still get the same reporting and analysis you’ve come to expect.

Happy Wednesday! Congrats to OpenAI’s Scarlett Johansson blunder for coming in a solid sixth in my colleague Shira Ovide’s ranking of the “most boneheaded self-owns by technology companies.” Send news tips to: [email protected] .

With less than six months before the 2024 presidential election, social media platforms risk once again helping to fuel election-related violence, a working group of experts warns. But there’s still time to change that, they say.

On a Tuesday in late March, a group of former tech company officials, academic researchers and think tankers with expertise on elections and political violence met privately to discuss what tech firms like Meta, Google, TikTok and X could do to avoid facilitating another Jan. 6 insurrection — or worse. Today, the ad hoc group is releasing a report with seven recommendations, which they shared with the Tech Brief ahead of its publication.

While other recent reports have focused on holding tech firms accountable for “backsliding” on content moderation in recent years, this one is forward-looking.

The overarching message: Tech companies need to start preparing for the worst, rather than waiting until it happens.

“On the heels of reporting that far-right extremist militias are once again organizing on Facebook in advance of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, it is urgent for platforms to assess — and immediately act on — threats to the peaceful conduct of elections and the holding and transfer of power,” the report’s authors write.

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For starters, the report calls on tech platforms to explain how they evaluate the risk of political violence at any given time. Google’s YouTube made a decision last year to resume allowing videos that deny the results of the 2020 election, saying they no longer pose a meaningful risk of real-world harm. But they never said how they arrived at that conclusion or what might cause them to revisit it, the report notes. Meta made a similar move in 2022, re-allowing political ads on Facebook and Instagram that included false claims that past elections had been stolen.

“Allowing people to lie about previous elections sets the stage for a false claim of a stolen future one,” said report co-author Daniel Kreiss , principal researcher at the University of North Carolina’s Center for Information, Technology and Public Life. “To me, this is the most shocking example of blatant disregard for really thinking through the political context that we’re in.”

Content moderation may be "imperfect,” but it remains crucial, the report argues.

While several tech giants, including Meta and X, have scaled back on content moderation amid criticism from the right that it amounts to “censorship,” the authors say that’s a mistake. They recommend that platforms develop and articulate clear policies for election-related misinformation and incitement to violence; enforce them year-round; and increase spending on content moderation teams.

Those policies should include rules around “dog whistles” and “coded language,” the authors add. While Twitter, now X, set a policy for “coded incitement” after Jan. 6, the company later rescinded it before rolling out a new, vaguer policy last year. Companies should also think ahead of time about “break glass” measures to deploy when violence is imminent or happens, the report suggests.

“So much of how they address some of these biggest threats is ‘fly by the seat of your pants,’ siloed across the company,” said report co-author Yael Eisenstat , a former Facebook policy official who is now a senior policy fellow at the multi-university research center Cybersecurity for Democracy. “The idea of true cross-company threat analysis and scenario planning just doesn’t exist. … And then they continue to act surprised when a really big moment happens.”

The report comes as state and local officials as well as election workers face growing threats to their safety .

The Justice Department said in March that it had charged 20 people for threatening election workers in recent years. But the problem will only grow if social media platforms don’t crack down on online harassment, doxxing and violent threats, the authors warn. “These should have a particularly low bar for enforcement,” they add.

When companies do make major content moderation decisions, they need to be prepared to explain the rationale and processes behind them, the report says. It cites the seemingly never-ending controversy over platforms’ 2020 decisions to block or throttle a New York Post story about Hunter Biden ’s laptop as an example of what can happen when there’s no transparency.

Whether the tech companies will heed any of these calls remains to be seen.

“Relying on online platforms to ‘do the right thing’ without the proper regulatory and business incentives in place may seem increasingly futile,” the authors write. But Kreiss said he’s hopeful that at least some tech companies will take election integrity more seriously as the severity of the threat becomes more apparent. “I am optimistic that they can move in this direction, in part because I think they benefit from operating in stable democracies.”

The report makes “a number of sensible observations and recommendations,” said Tom Joscelyn , a senior fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and Security who was a principal drafter of the final report of the House select committee on Jan. 6.

The problem, Joscelyn said, is that “anti-democratic arguments and conspiracy theories are now part of the mainstream political right. These ideas are no longer fringe.” For that reason, he suspects that the platforms will end up moderating “only some of the most direct calls for violence” in the 2024 election . And he said he has even less hope for moderation by X, which under Elon Musk has “embraced anti-democratic conspiracism as part of their business model.”

Some of the largest social media firms say they’re already doing more than the report gives them credit for.

A Meta spokesperson said the company works on election integrity year-round and has some 40,000 people around the world working on safety and security — more than it had in 2020. The company also has hundreds of people focused on countering dangerous organizations and has removed thousands of armed groups’ pages.

“Our election policies go well beyond these recommendations, and we have had them in place for years,” Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton said.

TikTok spokesperson Jamie Favazza said the company is continuing to invest in content moderation, hiring for some 1,000 new roles and spending an estimated $2 billion on trust and safety globally this year.

From our notebooks

Microsoft and G42 unveil $1 billion investment in Kenya

Microsoft and the artificial intelligence company G42 on Wednesday announced a new $1 billion investment in digital initiatives in Kenya, part of the U.S. government’s attempts to curb China’s global tech influence, my colleague Cat Zakrzewski reports for the Tech Brief.

As part of the deal, G42, based in the United Arab Emirates, and its partners will build a “green data center” that will provide access to Microsoft’s cloud computing services in East Africa. The companies also committed to new artificial intelligence skills training for workers in the region and to develop AI models in the local languages, Swahili and English.

U.S. officials — including from the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, the Commerce Department, the White House, State Department and other agencies — were involved in brokering the arrangement, Microsoft President Brad Smith said.

The Chinese company Huawei has dominated African markets, building data centers across the continent. Until now, Microsoft has been trying to serve the entire continent from a data center in South Africa, Smith said.

“The ability to spread U.S. technology across Africa has been a longstanding goal for all the right reasons of U.S. foreign policy,” Smith said.

In recent months, Microsoft has struck AI and data center deals around the world totaling billions of dollars, including a $3.3 billion investment in Wisconsin and a $1.5 billion deal with G42 in May.

Government scanner

In novel case, U.S. charges man with making child sex abuse images with AI (By Pranshu Verma and Drew Harwell)

Second global AI summit secures safety commitments from companies (Reuters)

Europe sets benchmark for rest of the world with landmark AI laws (Reuters)

UK watchdog looking into Microsoft AI taking screenshots (BBC)

Apple fights 1.8 billion euro E.U. antitrust fine for curbs on Spotify (Bloomberg News)

Chipmakers ASML, TSMC can disable chip machines if China invades Taiwan (Bloomberg News)

Inside the industry

How Meta AI’s news summaries could damage the industry (By Heather Kelly)

Google search’s new AI overviews will soon have ads (Wired)

Wearable AI startup Humane is said to explore potential sale (Bloomberg)

Meta and Coinbase link up with Match to fight pig-butchering, romance scams (Fortune)

Yesterday’s Tech Brief misstated Sarah Myers West ’s affiliation. She works at the AI Now Institute, which is no longer a part of New York University.
The House Homeland Security Committee holds a hearing , “Advancing Innovation (AI): Harnessing Artificial Intelligence to Defend and Secure the Homeland,” today at 10 a.m.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee holds a hearing , “Legislative Proposal to Sunset Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,” today at 10 a.m.
The Federal Communications Commission holds an open meeting Thursday at 10:30 a.m.
The Federal Trade Commission holds an open meeting Thursday at 1 p.m.

Before you log off

if you ever need a little confidence boost just remember you can always play rock paper scissors with chatgpt pic.twitter.com/XpUF4JqCTJ — gary (@allgarbled) May 21, 2024

That’s all for today — thank you so much for joining us! Make sure to tell others to subscribe to Tech Brief. Get in touch with Cristiano (via email or social media ) and Will (via email or social media ) for tips, feedback or greetings!

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Why a New Yorker Story on a Notorious Murder Case Is Blocked in Britain

The article challenges the evidence used to convict Lucy Letby, a neonatal nurse, of multiple murders last year, and has led to a debate about England’s restrictions on trial reporting.

A large television screen broadcasts a woman’s picture as a man looks on near a camera and other equipment.

By The New York Times

The New Yorker magazine published a 13,000-word article on Monday about one of Britain’s biggest recent criminal trials, that of the neonatal nurse Lucy Letby, who was convicted last year of the murder of seven babies .

The article, by the staff writer Rachel Aviv, poses substantial questions about the evidence relied on in court. And it raises the possibility that Ms. Letby, vilified in the media after her conviction, may be the victim of a grave miscarriage of justice.

But, to the consternation of many readers in Britain, the article can’t be opened on a regular browser there, and most news outlets available in Britain aren’t describing what is in it.

The New Yorker deliberately blocked the article from readers in Britain because of strict reporting restrictions that apply to live court cases in England. A publication that flouts those rules risks being held “in contempt of court,” which can be punished with a fine or prison sentence.

Neither The New Yorker nor its parent company, Condé Nast, responded to requests for comment on Thursday. Earlier in the week, a spokesperson for the magazine told Press Gazette , the British trade publication, “To comply with a court order restricting press coverage of Lucy Letby’s ongoing trial, The New Yorker has limited access to Rachel Aviv’s article for readers in the United Kingdom.”

Under English law, restrictions apply to the reporting of live court proceedings, to prevent a jury’s being influenced by anything outside the court hearing. After Ms. Letby’s sentencing in August last year, those restrictions were lifted. But they were reimposed in September, when the public prosecutor for England and Wales announced that it would seek a retrial on one charge of attempted murder on which the jury had not been able to reach a verdict. “There should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings,” the prosecutor stated. The retrial is set to begin in June.

Ms. Letby has requested permission to appeal her convictions. After a three-day hearing last month, a panel of judges at the Court of Appeal said it would deliver a decision on that request at a later date .

In Britain, those trying to read the New Yorker article on internet browsers are greeted by an error message: “Oops. Our apologies. This is, almost certainly, not the page you were looking for.” But the block is not comprehensive: The article can be read in the printed edition, which is available in stores in Britain, and on The New Yorker’s mobile app.

The questions about its availability in Britain have prompted a debate around England’s reporting restrictions, their effectiveness and their role in the justice system.

Speaking in Parliament on Tuesday, David Davis, a Conservative Party lawmaker and former cabinet minister, questioned whether the restricting of reporting might, in this instance, undermine the principle of open justice, which allows the public to scrutinize and understand the workings of the law.

“The article was blocked from publication on the U.K. internet, I understand because of a court order,” Mr. Davis said. “I am sure that court order was well intended, but it seems to me that it is in defiance of open justice.”

He was able to raise the issue because he has legal protection for comments made in the House of Commons under what is known as parliamentary privilege . Media organizations have a more limited form of protection, known as qualified privilege, to accurately report what is said in Parliament.

In his response to the question from Mr. Davis, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, said: “Court orders must be obeyed, and a person can apply to the court for them to be removed. That will need to take place in the normal course of events.”

Mr. Chalk added: “On the Lucy Letby case, I simply make the point that juries’ verdicts must be respected. If there are grounds for an appeal, that should take place in the normal way.”

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How 2 debunked accounts of sexual violence on Oct. 7 fueled a global dispute over Israel-Hamas war

FILE - Volunteers from the ZAKA rescue service remove blood stains from a public bomb shelter on a road near the Israeli-Gaza border in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Nov. 20, 2023. Some allege the accounts of sexual assault were purposely concocted. Zaka officials and others dispute that. Regardless, AP’s examination of Zaka’s handling of the now debunked stories shows how information can be clouded and distorted in the chaos of the conflict. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg, File)

FILE - Israeli soldiers inspect the site of the Nova music festival where at least 260 Israeli festival-goers were killed during the attack by Hamas militants on Oct 7, near the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel. Oct. 13, 2023. Some allege the accounts of sexual assault were purposely concocted. Zaka officials and others dispute that. Regardless, AP’s examination of Zaka’s handling of the now debunked stories shows how information can be clouded and distorted in the chaos of the conflict. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, File)

FILE - The site of the Nova music festival where at least 260 Israeli festival-goers were killed during the attack by Hamas militants on Oct 7, near the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel, Oct. 12, 2023. Some allege the accounts of sexual assault were purposely concocted. Zaka officials and others dispute that. Regardless, AP’s examination of Zaka’s handling of the now debunked stories shows how information can be clouded and distorted in the chaos of the conflict. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg, File)

ZAKA emergency services put the body of a Hamas militant into a body bag in kibbutz Be’eri, Oct. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner, File)

FILE - Israelis killed by Hamas militants lie on the road near Sderot, Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. Some allege the accounts of sexual assault were purposely concocted. Zaka officials and others dispute that. Regardless, AP’s examination of Zaka’s handling of the now debunked stories shows how information can be clouded and distorted in the chaos of the conflict. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg, File)

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JERUSALEM (AP) — Chaim Otmazgin had tended to dozens of shot, burned or mutilated bodies before he reached the home that would put him at the center of a global clash.

Working in a kibbutz that was ravaged by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Otmazgin — a volunteer commander with ZAKA, an Israeli search and rescue organization — saw the body of a teenager, shot dead and separated from her family in a different room. Her pants had been pulled down below her waist. He thought that was evidence of sexual violence.

Volunteers from the ZAKA rescue service remove blood stains from a public bomb shelter on a road near the Israeli-Gaza border in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Nov. 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg, File)

He alerted journalists to what he’d seen. He tearfully recounted the details in a nationally televised appearance in the Israeli Parliament. In the frantic hours, days and weeks that followed the Hamas attack, his testimony ricocheted across the world.

But it turns out that what Otmazgin thought had occurred in the home at the kibbutz hadn’t happened.

Beyond the numerous and well-documented atrocities committed by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, some accounts from that day, like Otmazgin’s, proved untrue.

“It’s not that I invented a story,” Otmazgin told The Associated Press in an interview, detailing the origins of his initial explosive claim — one of two by ZAKA volunteers about sexual violence that turned out to be unfounded.

“I couldn’t think of any other option” other than the teen having been sexually assaulted, he said. “At the end, it turned out to be different, so I corrected myself.”

But it was too late.

FILE - Israeli soldiers inspect the site of the Nova music festival where at least 260 Israeli festival-goers were killed during the attack by Hamas militants on Oct 7, near the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel. Oct. 13, 2023. Some allege the accounts of sexual assault were purposely concocted. Zaka officials and others dispute that. Regardless, AP’s examination of Zaka’s handling of the now debunked stories shows how information can be clouded and distorted in the chaos of the conflict. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, File)

The United Nations and other organizations have presented credible evidence that Hamas militants committed sexual assault during their rampage. The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, said Monday he had reason to believe that three key Hamas leaders bore responsibility for “rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity.”

Though the number of assaults is unclear, photo and video from the attack’s aftermath have shown bodies with legs splayed, clothes torn and blood near their genitals.

However, debunked accounts like Otmazgin’s have encouraged skepticism and fueled a highly charged debate about the scope of what occurred on Oct. 7 — one that is still playing out on social media and in college campus protests.

Some allege the accounts of sexual assault were purposely concocted. ZAKA officials and others dispute that. Regardless, AP’s examination of ZAKA’s handling of the now debunked stories shows how information can be clouded and distorted in the chaos of the conflict.

Israeli soldiers inspect the site of the Nova music festival where at least 260 Israeli festival-goers were killed during the attack by Hamas militants on Oct 7, near the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel. Oct. 13, 2023.(AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, File)

As some of the first people on the scene, ZAKA volunteers offered testimony of what they saw that day. Those words have helped journalists, Israeli lawmakers and U.N. investigators paint a picture of what occurred during Hamas’ attack. (ZAKA, a volunteer-based group, does not do forensic work. The organization has been a fixture at Israeli disaster sites and scenes of attacks since it was founded in 1995. Its specific job is to collect bodies in keeping with Jewish law.)

Still, it took ZAKA months to acknowledge the accounts were wrong, allowing them to proliferate. And the fallout from the debunked accounts shows how the topic of sexual violence has been used to further political agendas.

Israel points to sexual violence on Oct. 7 to highlight what it says is Hamas’ savagery and to justify its wartime goal of neutralizing any repeated threat coming from Gaza. It has accused the international community of ignoring or playing down evidence of sexual violence claims, alleging anti-Israel bias. It says any untrue stories were an anomaly in the face of the many documented atrocities.

In turn, some of Israel’s critics have seized on the ZAKA accounts, along with others shown to be untrue, to allege that the Israeli government has distorted the facts to prosecute a war — one in which more than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed , many of them women and children, according to Gaza health officials.

A U.N. fact-finding team found “reasonable grounds” to believe that some of those who stormed southern Israel on Oct. 7 had committed sexual violence, including rape and gang rape. But the U.N. investigators also said that in the absence of forensic evidence and survivor testimony, it would be impossible to determine the scope of such violence. Hamas has denied its forces committed sexual violence.

BODY BAGS AND ROCKET FIRE

Israel was caught off guard by the ferocity of the Oct. 7 assault , the deadliest in the nation’s history. About 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage. It took days for the military to clear the area of militants.

There were hundreds of bodies scattered across southern Israel, bearing various signs of abuse: burns, bullet holes, signs of mutilation, marks indicating bodies were bound. ZAKA volunteers weren’t used to dealing with so many bodies.

“You get dizzy at some point,” said Moti Bukjin, ZAKA’s spokesperson. “Some of the bodies are burned. Some are mutilated. Some of the bodies are decapitated. Every house has a story.”

Standard protocols for dealing with attacks, which Israel encountered frequently on a far smaller scale in the early 2000s, collapsed. There was confusion over who was dead and who was taken captive, especially in the hard-hit communal farming villages and in the aftermath of the outdoor Nova music festival.

FILE - The site of the Nova music festival where at least 260 Israeli festival-goers were killed during the attack by Hamas militants on Oct 7, near the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel, Oct. 12, 2023. Some allege the accounts of sexual assault were purposely concocted. Zaka officials and others dispute that. Regardless, AP’s examination of Zaka’s handling of the now debunked stories shows how information can be clouded and distorted in the chaos of the conflict. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg, File)

The site of the Nova music festival where at least 260 Israeli festival-goers were killed during the attack by Hamas militants on Oct 7, near the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel, Oct. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg, File)

Authorities were concerned that remaining militants might snatch more bodies. ZAKA says it was instructed to gather the dead as swiftly as possible and send them for identification and quick burial, according to Jewish custom . ZAKA said it sent some 800 volunteers to southern Israel, arriving at the music festival late on Oct. 7 and entering the kibbutzim two days later, according to Otmazgin.

For the first three days, many hardly slept at all. Accompanied by military escorts, volunteers went house to house, wrapping the bodies in white plastic bags on which they wrote the person’s gender, the house number where they were found and any other identifying details. Then they’d say the Jewish mourning prayer and load them into a truck, according to Tomer Peretz, who volunteered for the first time with ZAKA in the days following the attack.

As first responders worked, rocket fire from Gaza boomed overhead. Volunteers paused and crouched when air raid sirens blared. They used anything they could find to move bodies — even shopping carts. “We worked a minute and a half per body, from the moment we touch it to the moment it is on the truck,” said Otmazgin, commander of special units with ZAKA.

Peretz, a U.S.-based artist, said the volunteers weren’t there to do forensic work; he thought the soldiers who cleared the houses of explosives beforehand were handling that process. But the Israeli military told the AP that the army did not do any forensic work in the wake of Oct. 7.

Bukjin said police forensics teams were mostly focused on the southern cities of Sderot and Ofakim. Otmazgin said forensics workers were present in the kibbutzim but spread thin and could not follow standard — and painstaking — protocols because of the scale of the attack. He said forensics teams in the area mostly instructed ZAKA on how to help identify the bodies.

That means that bodies which might have shown signs of sexual assault could have eluded examination. Instead, they were loaded into body bags, sent to a facility to be identified and dispatched for quick burial.

“People seem to have expected that the aftermath of the attack would be like a movie, that immediately the police would come, that everything would be very sterile and very clean. People who don’t live in a war zone do not understand the horrific chaos that took place that day,” said Orit Sulitzeanu, the executive director of The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel.

The group has spent months gathering evidence of sexual violence that occurred that day, sifting through many accounts emerging from the chaotic early days just after the attack. “Some of those stories that turned out not to be true were not lies,” she said. They were, she said, “mistakes.”

FIRST ACCOUNT: PANTS PULLED DOWN

Otmazgin said he was the origin of one of two debunked stories by ZAKA volunteers about sexual assault.

He said he entered a home in Kibbutz Be’eri , one of the hardest-hit communities, where nearly a tenth of the population of roughly 1,000 was killed, and found the body of a teenage girl separated from two of her relatives. Her pants, he said, were pulled down. He assumed that meant she had been sexually assaulted.

“They slaughtered her. They shot her in the head and her pants are pulled down to here. I put that out there. Have someone give me a different interpretation,” he said then, showing an AP reporter a photo he took of the scene, which he had altered by pulling up the teenager’s pants.

Today, he maintains that he never said outright that the girl whose body he saw had been sexually assaulted. But his telling strongly suggested that was the case. Otmazgin says he told journalists and lawmakers details of what he’d seen and asked if they might have some other interpretation.

Nearly three months later, ZAKA found out his interpretation was wrong. After cross-checking with military contacts, ZAKA found that a group of soldiers had dragged the girl’s body across the room to make sure it wasn’t booby-trapped. During the procedure, her pants had come down.

Otmazgin said it took time to learn the truth because the soldiers who moved the body had been deployed to Gaza for weeks and were not reachable. He said he recognized that such accounts can cause damage, but he believes he rectified it by correcting his account months later.

A military spokesperson said he had no way of knowing what had happened to every body in the assault’s immediate aftermath. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.

Another account with details similar to Otmazgin’s but attributed to an anonymous combat medic has also come under scrutiny after emerging in international media, including in a story by the AP. But the medic did not disclose where he saw the scene.

The military would not make the medic available for further interviews, so it was not possible to reconcile the two accounts or verify the medic’s.

SECOND ACCOUNT: EVERYTHING WAS CHARRED

Yossi Landau, a longtime ZAKA volunteer, was also working in Be’eri when he entered a home that would produce the second debunked story. Landau would recount to global media what he thought he saw: a pregnant woman lying on the floor, her fetus still attached to the umbilical cord wrenched from her body.

Otmazgin was overseeing the other ZAKA workers when he said Landau frantically called him and others into the home. But Otmazgin did not see what Landau described. Instead, he saw the body of a heavy-set woman and an unidentifiable hunk attached to an electric cable. Everything was charred.

Otmazgin said he told Landau that his interpretation was wrong — this wasn’t a pregnant woman. Still, Landau believed his version, went on to tell the story to journalists and was cited in outlets around the world. Landau, along with other first responders, also told journalists he had seen beheaded children and babies. No convincing evidence had been publicized to back up that claim, and it was debunked by Haaretz and other major media outlets.

Bukjin said it took some time for ZAKA to understand that the story was not true, then asked Landau to stop telling it. Otmazgin also told Landau to stop telling the story, but that wasn’t until about three months after the attack when ZAKA was wrapping up its work in the field. The United Nations said Landau’s claim was unfounded.

Otmazgin said it has been difficult to rein Landau in, both because he vehemently believes in his version and because there is no way to stop journalists from engaging with him directly. Both Otmazgin and Bukjin attributed Landau’s continued belief in the false account to him having been deeply traumatized by what he saw in the aftermath of Oct. 7.

AP journalists attempted to reach Landau multiple times. While he answered initial inquiries, he was ultimately unreachable.

’WE’RE NOT FORENSICS WORKERS’

Almost immediately after Oct. 7, Israel began allowing groups of journalists to visit the ravaged kibbutzim . On the trips, journalists found ZAKA volunteers onsite to be some of the most accessible sources of information and some shared what they thought they saw, even though, as Bukjin notes, “we are not forensics workers.”

“They pretend to know, sometimes very naively, what happened to the bodies they are dealing with,” said Gideon Aran, a sociologist at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University who wrote a recent book on the organization.

Bukjin said that the group’s usual media protocols faltered and that volunteers, who he said typically were vetted by him before being interviewed, were speaking to journalists directly. “The information is wild, is not controlled right,” said Peretz, the first-time volunteer. He said he took photos and video of what he saw even though he was told not to and was interviewed repeatedly about what he witnessed.

Other first responders also offered accounts — of babies beheaded, or hung from a clothesline, or killed together in a nursery, or placed in an oven – which were later debunked by Israeli reporters.

ZAKA is a private civilian body made up of 3,000 mostly Orthodox Jewish volunteer workers. Beyond its work in Israel, the group has also sent teams to international incidents, including the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the 2002 attacks in Mombasa, Kenya. As part of its role to ensure burial according to Jewish law, its volunteers scour crime scenes for remains in order to bury each body as completely as possible.

Aran, the sociologist, said Oct. 7 was unlike anything the organization had previously witnessed. ZAKA’s main experience with victim identification before Oct. 7 was limited to distinguishing militant attackers from their victims, not determining who was a victim of sexual assault, Aran said.

FILE - Israelis killed by Hamas militants lie on the road near Sderot, Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. Some allege the accounts of sexual assault were purposely concocted. Zaka officials and others dispute that. Regardless, AP’s examination of Zaka’s handling of the now debunked stories shows how information can be clouded and distorted in the chaos of the conflict. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg, File)

Israelis killed by Hamas militants lie on the road near Sderot, Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg, File)

DEBUNKED ACCOUNTS VS. THE EVIDENCE

After untrue accounts of sexual assault filtered into international media, the process of debunking them appeared, at times, to take center stage in the global dispute over the facts of Oct. 7. On social media, accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers question the very occurrence of sexual violence.

The loud debate belies a growing body of evidence supporting the claim that sexual assault took place that day, even as its scope remains difficult to ascertain.

The U.N. team investigating sexual violence said it saw “credible circumstantial information which may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including genital mutilation, sexualized torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

That included photos and videos showing a minimum of 20 corpses with clothes that had been torn, revealing private body parts, and 10 bodies with indications of bound wrists and or tied legs. No digital materials showed sexual violence in real time, the report said.

The investigators described the accounts that originated with Otmazgin and Landau to be “unfounded.” Regarding Otmazgin’s original account, they said the “crime scene had been altered by a bomb squad and the bodies moved, explaining the separation of the body of the girl from the rest of her family.”

Otmazgin said he publicly corrected himself after discovering what had transpired, including to the U.N. investigators he met. He showed the investigators — and later an AP reporter — photos and video, including one of a deceased woman who had a blood-speckled, flesh-colored bulb in her genital area, as well as several bodies of women with blood near their genitals and another who appeared to have small sharp objects protruding from her upper thigh and above her genitals.

More evidence is emerging as time goes by. A released hostage has described facing sexual violence in captivity in an account to The New York Times , and a man at the music festival said he heard a woman screaming she was being raped.

On Monday, releasing arrest warrants for top Hamas and Israeli officials, ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan said that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that hostages taken from Israel have been kept in inhumane conditions, and that some have been subject to sexual violence, including rape, while being held in captivity.”

The U.N. report shines a light on the issues that have contributed to the skepticism over sexual violence. It said there was “limited crime scene processing” and that some evidence of sexual assault may have been lost due to “the interventions of some inadequately trained volunteer first responders.” It also said global scrutiny of the accounts emerging from Oct. 7 may have deterred survivors from coming forward.

PULLING FOCUS FROM THE VICTIMS

In the fraught global discourse surrounding Oct. 7 and the war it sparked, sexual violence has been a particular point of tension.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as prominent figures such as former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and top technology executive Sheryl Sandberg, have called out what they saw as global indifference toward Israeli women who were sexually assaulted in the attack.

Some critics of Israel’s war, meanwhile, have raised questions about the weight of the evidence, using debunked testimonies, including from ZAKA volunteers, to do so. The site oct7factcheck.com, which says its aim is to combat “atrocity propaganda” that could “justify military or political actions,” has repeatedly challenged investigations in mainstream media about sexual violence.

The site, which is run by a loose coalition of tech industry employees supporting Palestinian rights, says it has not yet reached a conclusion on the occurrence of gender-based violence. It has alleged that ZAKA members are “behind many of the Oct. 7 fabrications.” The site has also highlighted other debunked accounts, including about a baby found in an oven and a hostage giving birth in captivity.

Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a U.S. policy fellow at Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian think tank, said a long history of what he calls Israeli disinformation and propaganda has fueled global skepticism over the claims. The debunked ZAKA stories, he said, contributed to the sense that Israel exaggerated accounts of atrocities committed by Hamas to dehumanize Palestinians as its military continues its deadly offensive.

“Skepticism of all claims made by the Israeli military, a military that is being investigated for genocide at The Hague, are not only justified but should be encouraged,” he said. “That’s why Palestinians, and much of the international community, are asking for thorough scrutiny.”

Dahlia Scheindlin, a commentator on Israeli affairs, said those downplaying the atrocities committed by Hamas have seized on the debunked ZAKA accounts as “ammunition” to show that Israel fabricates or that Oct. 7 wasn’t so bad, rather than examining all the available evidence to build a more comprehensive picture of what happened.

At the same time, any false accounts, even if produced without malice, lead to further polarization and pulls the focus away from victims, she argues. “Every bit of misinformation, disinformation — good faith or bad faith, mistakes or lies — is extremely destructive.”

COMMENTS

Violence, Media Effects, and Criminology
Media Exposure and Copycat Crimes. While many scholars do seem to agree that there is evidence that media violence—whether that of film, TV, or video games—increases aggression, they disagree about its impact on violent or criminal behavior (Ferguson, 2014; Gunter, 2008; Helfgott, 2015; Reiner, 2002; Savage, 2008).Nonetheless, it is violent incidents that most often prompt speculation that ...
Media violence and youth aggression
Most media violence research involves youth aggression rather than violence, noted Douglas Gentile (Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA). Aggression is defined as any behaviour—physical, verbal, or relational—that is intended to do harm, he said, whereas violence is "a very narrow subtype of aggression that is physical and extreme, [and ...
The Impact of Electronic Media Violence: Scientific Theory and Research
Secondly, the effect size of media violence is the same or larger than the effect size of many other recognized threats to public health. In Figure 1 from Bushman and Huesmann , the effect sizes for many common threats to public health are compared with the effect that media violence has on aggression. The only effect slightly larger than the ...
Violent media and real-world behavior: Historical data and recent
A 2014 study in Journal of Communication, "Does Media Violence Predict Societal Violence? It Depends on What You Look at and When," builds on prior research to look closer at media portrayals of violence and rates of violent behavior. The research, by Christopher J. Ferguson of Stetson University, had two parts: The first measured the ...
Violent media use and aggression: Two longitudinal network studies
Violent media and aggression. In 2015, the American Psychological Association published a press release stating that playing violent video games is linked to aggression (APA, Citation 2015).This decision proved controversial, as some believe that there is no link between violent media and aggression (Ferguson et al., Citation 2020).In particular, it has been argued that experimental studies of ...
Ecologies of Violence on Social Media: An Exploration of Practices
Indeed, as access to and use of social media continue to expand across the world (), so does the violence enacted through these digital platforms become more common.For example, a report published by the Pew Research Center (Vogels, 2021) found that over 41% of people in the United States of America have suffered online harassment, from physical threats (14%) and sexual harassment (11%) to ...
Content Effects: Violence in the Media
Violent content appears frequently in screen and audio media and takes many forms, including physical and relational aggression, gory images, violent stereotypes, and cyberbullying. Over six decades of research demonstrates that different types of media violence have significant detrimental effects, both immediately and in the long term.
Does Media Violence Lead to the Real Thing?
Naturally, debate over media violence stirs up strong emotions because it raises concerns about the balance between public safety and freedom of speech. Even if violent media are conclusively ...
Media Violence: The Effects Are Both Real and Strong
Abstract. Fifty years of research on the effect of TV violence on children leads to the inescapable conclusion that viewing media violence is related to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behaviors. The changes in aggression are both short term and long term, and these changes may be mediated by neurological changes in the young viewer.
The Role of Media Violence in Violent Behavior
Abstract Media violence poses a threat to public health inasmuch as it leads to an increase in real-world violence and aggression. Research shows that fictional television and film violence contribute to both a short-term and a long-term increase in aggression and violence in young viewers. Television news violence also contributes to increased violence, principally in the form of imitative ...
Essay on Media and Violence
Published: 2021/11/16. Number of words: 1311. Introduction. Research studies indicate that media causes violence and plays a role in desensitization, aggressive behavior, fear of harm, and nightmares. Examples of media platforms include movies, video games, television, and music. Violence in media has also been associated with health concerns.
The Facts on Media Violence
The Facts on Media Violence. In the wake of the Florida school shooting, politicians have raised concern over the influence of violent video games and films on young people, with the president ...
Violence in the media: Psychologists study potential harmful effects
The advent of video games raised new questions about the potential impact of media violence, since the video game player is an active participant rather than merely a viewer. 97% of adolescents age 12-17 play video games—on a computer, on consoles such as the Wii, Playstation, and Xbox, or on portable devices such as Gameboys, smartphones, and tablets.
(PDF) Desensitization to media violence: Links with habitual media
The Current Study The current study was designed to add to the existing body of evidence on the role of desensitization in the media violence- aggression link in four ways: (a) by looking at altered emotional reactions to a violent film clip as an outcome variable of long-term, habitual media violence exposure; (b) by looking at ...
Violence in the Media: What Effects on Behavior?
In a 2009 Policy Statement on Media Violence, the American Academy of Pediatrics said, "Extensive research evidence indicates that media violence can contribute to aggressive behavior, desensitization to violence, nightmares, and fear of being harmed." 3. This year, the Media Violence Commission of the International Society for Research on ...
How Violent Media Can Impact Your Mental Health
Today, the violence shown on the news media may especially impact people's mental health. New technology means that violent events, including terrorist attacks, school shootings, and natural disasters, can be filmed and reported on immediately, and media consumers all over the world will be exposed to these events almost instantly via social ...
The portrayal of violence in the media: impacts and implications for
Numerous research studies identify an association between exposure to violence in entertainment and violent behaviour, but do not prove that exposure causes violent behaviour. Rather, there is a risk that exposure to media violence will increase the likelihood of subsequent aggressive behaviour. This risk can be increased or decreased by a large number of other factors.
Essay on Media Influence On Violence
500 Words Essay on Media Influence On Violence Introduction to Media and Violence. When we turn on the TV, browse the internet, or play video games, we often see scenes of fighting, shooting, and other kinds of harm. This is called violence, and it's a common sight in many forms of media. Media includes things like television shows, movies ...
88 Media Violence Essay Topic Ideas & Examples
Media Violence Effect on Youth and Its Regulation. It is also important to note that the more important the media puts on violence, the more people are tempted to engage in it for the sake of attention. Media Violence and Importance of Media Literacy. Media literacy is the public's ability to access, decode, evaluate and transmit a message ...
Media Violence and Aggressive Behavior
Media Violence and Aggressive Behavior Essay. It is said that television and media brought about new problems that are evident in the modern day and age. Mostly, these influences are harmful in relation to violence and people's general behavior, which is characterized as careless, destructive and unpredictable. We will write a custom essay on ...
The ripple effects of violent crimes: What is the role of the media in
In a rare surge of violence, Australian cities have been affected recently by multiple knife attacks. The most devastating occurred on 13 April at a shopping centre at Bondi Junction in Sydney.A ...
Social media's role in the rise of youth violence
In many of these cases, police say social media played a central role. Stephanie Sy reports on the challenges of addressing teen violence. Violent crime has been on a downward trend across the ...
Media Violence Argument
Jonathan Freedman's Argument. Those who are against the notion like, Jonathan Freedman, argue that scientific evidence shows no connection between media violence and the actual aggressive behavior in people. They argue that the violence in the media just causes arousal and existent among the people but not necessarily aggressive behavior.
Media Violence Essay
Media violence is believed to be causing aggression in today's youth and society. This paper will examine the potential reasons on how media violence is causing aggression Review of Literature In a study conducted, media psychologists, mass communication scientists, pediatricians, and parents all completed an anonymous online survey that ...
The Harmful Effects of Violence in Media
Second, short-term effects are highly linked to the imitation of violent visual images. People witness, read, or hear of an event through the mass media. There are many effects of media violence that not all people know of. These effects can damage a human being's thinking, especially a child's. I. Violent messages in the media.
The Media and Sexual Violence Among Adolescents: Findings ...
Growing access to technology and media has presented new avenues of influence on youth attitudes and norms regarding sexuality and sexual violence, as well as new technological pathways through which to perpetrate sexual violence. The aim of this research was to understand contextual influences on and needs for scale-up of sexual violence prevention programming in the media-violence context of ...
Experts say violent media exposure to children is a complicated issue
BINGHAMTON (WBNG) -- Violence in the media has been a hot topic for decades. In recent years, television shows, video games and more have become less censored and now there is a question that if ...
How social media can avoid fueling election violence in 2024
On a Tuesday in late March, a group of former tech company officials, academic researchers and think tankers with expertise on elections and political violence met privately to discuss what tech ...
Why a New Yorker Story on a Notorious Murder Case Is Blocked in Britain
The article challenges the evidence used to convict Lucy Letby, a neonatal nurse, of multiple murders last year, and has led to a debate about England's restrictions on trial reporting.
Israel-Hamas war: How 2 debunked accounts of sexual violence fueled
A U.N. fact-finding team found "reasonable grounds" to believe that some of those who stormed southern Israel on Oct. 7 had committed sexual violence, including rape and gang rape. But the U.N. investigators also said that in the absence of forensic evidence and survivor testimony, it would be impossible to determine the scope of such violence.