Essay

The media effects debate has been happening for a while now, some people believe things such as music, films and video games are the main purpose of crimes like school shootings and other violent acts involving young people, where others believe these things have no effect and people must already have problems mentally before which is not influenced by the media.

Hypodermic syringe implies the media has a negative and a great example of a media product which is often blamed for violence in young people is the video game 

‘Grand Theft Auto 5’ the game was released in 2013 and made 800 million dollars in the first day of its release. Although the game is rated 18, many children and teenagers own the game. There’s many factors which can be blamed for negative media effects such as the violence which can also be inflicted onto women, another factor is the strip club which you can visit in the game. Games like this and Call of Duty are instantly the first to blame after incidents like school shootings and assault by young children or teenagers. This is called the moral panic theory.

Another source of a negative media effect is the film franchise ‘saw’ the film has had major controversy around its uncensored gore and violence. The films have been blamed by news media’s because some of the scenes in the films have been copied by people which is referred as copy cat killing. A famous copy cat killer was Matthew Tinling who murdered his neighbour by stabbing him 17 times in the head neck and body, he set up a trap like one in the film which was supposed to sever his spinal cord. This was one of the worst copy cat killings and was a main reason for the large amount of controversy circling around the franchise. Movies and games with violence often link with the cultivation theory, this means when a person is exposed to violence multiple times through out their life they become desensitised to the violence and see it more as an everyday thing. 

Although many people are against violence in video games, some people defend it. People like go to ‘Ferguson’ and his views on it, he said that there is no long term link over 3 years between violent video games and people playing them and games are now very important for things like socialisation and control in a way of de-stressing. 

Active audience theory shows that media isn’t the only reason for incidents in society as it shows different people react differently to specific media products depending on the persons background and and other reasons, this proves that media products such as film and video games cannot take the full blame for violent incidents throughout society.