Comments on: Media violence and debating effects & influences

By: 30 Blogs to Help Parents Keep Kids Safe Online « Parents’ Universal Resource Experts and Sue Scheff

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 18:14:53 +0000

[...] Media Violence and Debating Effects & Influences [...]

By: Blogs About Kids and Media | Kiwi Commons

Blogs About Kids and Media | Kiwi Commons — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 19:02:01 +0000

[...] Media Violence and Debating Effects & Influences [...]

By: How To Change Pop Culture’s Reliance On Violence | Political Analytical – Insight and Analysis on Politics and Reason

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 01:16:25 +0000

[...] rather than on people who are mentally ill or who might be predisposed to violence, a subject nicely and soberly summed-up by the media scholar Jason Mittell. But there’s a difference between suggesting that it makes more sense to regulate mass culture [...]

By: Roerick Sweeney

Roerick Sweeney — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 00:43:43 +0000

This was very good.

That said, I still blame the media. Don’t get me wrong, I think I agree with everything you said.

However, I think that as a culture, we tend to repress sex and encourage violence. I’m no psychologist, but it seems to me that giving mentally unstable people a phallus that can kill people is a recipe for disaster.

By: jaredwolf74

jaredwolf74 — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 13:37:26 +0000

Thank you so much for sharing this. I’ll admit I skimmed the textbook chapter a little (I’m a media student and I just woke up; two pretty good excuses, right)? I couldn’t agree more that blaming the media for violence is lazy and unfair, but that there’s a necessity to examine the way we see violence in our culture, of which the media is a major influencer.

I’ve recently started my own blog, which will be focusing on the portrayal of mental health in the media. I haven’t really found its direction yet, but I’d love for you to take a look at it when you get a chance!

By: What We Should Be Thinking About Pop-Culture Violence, and What We Will Probably Do Instead | ACROSS THE FADER – US

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 18:21:33 +0000

[...] violence, it at least indicates that armed assaults don’t leap fully formed from American TVs. (Media scholar Jason Mittell has a much more in-depth look at the evidence, or lack thereof, that pop-culture violence causes [...]

By: Erica Andrus

Erica Andrus — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 14:19:41 +0000

Thanks for making this chapter available, Jason. I’ll be assigning it to my Religion and Pop Culture class in January! In religious studies we tend to fall more on the side of influences than effects, yet the field of ritual studies adds some interesting perspectives and possibilities for analysis in terms of active audience engagement, and the real power of narratives, performances, and ritualized world-making to influence what people perceive as “natural” “normal” “good” “evil” etc.

By: What We Should Be Thinking About Violence in Pop Culture, and What We Will Probably Do Instead | TIME.com

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 13:01:27 +0000

[...] it at least indicates that armed assaults don’t leap fully formed from American TVs. (Media scholar Jason Mittell has a much more in-depth look at the evidence, or lack thereof, that pop-culture violence causes [...]

By: Jason Mittell

Jason Mittell — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 01:09:58 +0000

Thanks for your comment. We do already have policy to limit young people’s exposure to violent video games – the ratings system bans youth from buying or renting Mature games. Of course, that system probably works only a little better than our restrictions on pornography, which (I’ve been told) is pretty easy to find on the internet, no matter your age.

If you believe that the potential harm of a cultural work to a small number of people is great enough to outweigh the freedom of everyone else to access it, then the only way to protect them is through an outright ban of certain types of cultural expression. Not only would that be more clearly unconstitutional than gun regulations, it would raise a host of questions: who decides what is forbidden? (After all, we know that the film Taxi Driver inspired an assassination, yet many film critics consider it a masterpiece.) Who enforces those restrictions and with what penalty? That’s not a road I’d like to go down.

By: Skip Snow

Skip Snow — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 03:02:22 +0000

I like you have been upset by the events. I like you believe that if the ability of these mostly white young men to get sophisticated rapid fire wepons (Ausault) then a lot of thier behavior would be significantly curbed, or at least mitigated.

On the other hand, the analysis you did begs a couple of questions. If one grants that the vast majority of people could be exposed to violent media without affect, does one have to examine how media affets a more vulenrable, but tiny population, i.e. the people who might consider mass murder?

If one assumes that the profile of most of these mass murderors includes significant use of video, and online violent games, then, does the play they do inside of these games empower them to make the decisions they do make to carry thier fantasy of mass murder to materialization?

If one finds that the vulnerable in fact are moved by these games to act upon thier fantasies, then is the culture via policy, to restrict everybody’s right to play these games in order to protect these vulnerable folks from this exposure, and thus lessen the number of mass murders that take place.

My point is that only a tiny group of people, almost a statisticly insignificant group of people are going to commit mass murder, and probably they are vulnerable to the things they learn at least in video and online games.

My own feeling is that we should create policy to lessen young people’s exposure to this media, just as we restrict thier access to sexual pornography. However up until now this material has not been regarded as ‘pornograhic’ in that its purpose is to arouse a prurient interest in violence. But perhas it should be regulated exactly as porn is regulated.