Some societies have low crime rates and some have high crime rates (See for instance: Wikipedia Intentional Homicide Rate ). Countries with quite similar material conditions such as the USA and Australia can differ by 400% in the homicide rate. Why do similar countries have different homicide rates? It is because the people of these countries have different ideas and these ideas are transmitted from generation to generation through families and through the media.
In the past 100 years extended families have been disappearing from English speaking countries so the media has become ever more important in transmitting and fashioning culture, political and social ideas. Our societies have been creating institutions that are based on the political arguments that the media have transmitted and adopted.
The media, such as TV, films, radio, newspapers etc. are not just the messenger. The modern media comment on each political, cultural and moral idea, frequently indulging in feeding frenzies where an idea is particularly interesting or threatening. The media also host documentaries, soaps, plays and films that hold up a distorting mirror to the prevalent ideas of the correct way to behave or organize a state.
Suppose that a country changes a policy and this change reduces crime. How could a policy change have occurred? The politicians might announce the policy in newspapers and on the television, or there might be a documentary or semi-documentary format that raises the issue. Editors might favour the viewpoint and screenwriters produce one or two powerful dramas that demonstrate the new policy. The new policy would become fashionable. The general air of acceptance that the new policy would work would be taken as positive by both the politicians and the voting public and the policy would be introduced. In our modern society few politicians or voters would doubt that the media could have a decisive effect.
Voters and politicians have little doubt that the media has a decisive effect. Media outlets are purchased by media barons to cash in on this power of the media. But almost all media operations will tell their audience that they have no effect at all. Certainly they tell their advertisers the opposite but they tell the audience that they are harmless and have no influence.
It is difficult to claim that the media has no influence because many fashions are nothing but media effects. The music media undergoes fashions in music, subtly changing the taste of the general public. Clothing fashions, being largely the content of fashion magazines are the same, fashions that are media fashions. Literature and art are the same. These aspects of culture are all media fashions. Given that the media are themselves a large proportion of culture it is absolutely disingenuous and fatuous for the media to say they have no effect or influence.
If it is accepted that the media does have an effect, is the effect of the media ever harmful? Obviously it can be harmful because it can prevent the adoption of benevolent ideas and enhance the acceptance of malevolent ideas. This can lead to large differences in homicide rates and social distress.
Can we measure the harm done by the media? We know that the media is capable stimulating the population to approve of the invasion of other countries and that it can have a generalised effect, due to the destructive character of many journalists, that undermines the truth but can it directly affect behaviour?
When the media creates a fashion it changes behaviour. The fashion might be for baseball caps, trainers, patterns of speech or music etc. Can the media create criminal behaviour? The media in general does not wholeheartedly support crime and is mainly involved in fashions against crime. Were the media to be full of articles and broadcasts about the sexiness, benefit and excitement of being a criminal it would almost certainly stimulate a crime wave.
When it comes to the direct incitement of anti-social fashions the media is generally quite well behaved, but can the media stimulate anti-social behaviour indirectly? As an example, does the incidental appearance of violence in police dramas and soaps affect behaviour? In these programmes the violent people are generally caught and punished so it is not obvious that there would be an adverse effect of the media on violence in society.
Studies of the effect of media violence on behaviour have been dogged by poor experimental design, often due to lack of funding. This has led to reviews of the literature that have focussed on this poor design. These reviews have also sometimes mixed the studies that were designed poorly with better studies to show that overall no reliable effect has yet been discovered. There have been a few studies that have followed people from childhood to adulthood. Rowell et al in 2003 produced a large study that seemed to confirm that incidental violence on television affects violence in society.
"Results show that men who were high TV-violence viewers as children were significantly more likely to have pushed, grabbed or shoved their spouses, to have responded to an insult by shoving a person, to have been convicted of a crime and to have committed a moving traffic violation. Such men, for example, had been convicted of crimes at over three times the rate of other men." APA Report on Rowell et al 2003
The graphs from Rowell et al's study are shown on the right. Click on these to enlarge them.
A review in The Lancet of the public health effects of violence in the media concluded that:
In the past 100 years extended families have been disappearing from English speaking countries so the media has become ever more important in transmitting and fashioning culture, political and social ideas. Our societies have been creating institutions that are based on the political arguments that the media have transmitted and adopted.
The media, such as TV, films, radio, newspapers etc. are not just the messenger. The modern media comment on each political, cultural and moral idea, frequently indulging in feeding frenzies where an idea is particularly interesting or threatening. The media also host documentaries, soaps, plays and films that hold up a distorting mirror to the prevalent ideas of the correct way to behave or organize a state.
Suppose that a country changes a policy and this change reduces crime. How could a policy change have occurred? The politicians might announce the policy in newspapers and on the television, or there might be a documentary or semi-documentary format that raises the issue. Editors might favour the viewpoint and screenwriters produce one or two powerful dramas that demonstrate the new policy. The new policy would become fashionable. The general air of acceptance that the new policy would work would be taken as positive by both the politicians and the voting public and the policy would be introduced. In our modern society few politicians or voters would doubt that the media could have a decisive effect.
Voters and politicians have little doubt that the media has a decisive effect. Media outlets are purchased by media barons to cash in on this power of the media. But almost all media operations will tell their audience that they have no effect at all. Certainly they tell their advertisers the opposite but they tell the audience that they are harmless and have no influence.
It is difficult to claim that the media has no influence because many fashions are nothing but media effects. The music media undergoes fashions in music, subtly changing the taste of the general public. Clothing fashions, being largely the content of fashion magazines are the same, fashions that are media fashions. Literature and art are the same. These aspects of culture are all media fashions. Given that the media are themselves a large proportion of culture it is absolutely disingenuous and fatuous for the media to say they have no effect or influence.
If it is accepted that the media does have an effect, is the effect of the media ever harmful? Obviously it can be harmful because it can prevent the adoption of benevolent ideas and enhance the acceptance of malevolent ideas. This can lead to large differences in homicide rates and social distress.
Can we measure the harm done by the media? We know that the media is capable stimulating the population to approve of the invasion of other countries and that it can have a generalised effect, due to the destructive character of many journalists, that undermines the truth but can it directly affect behaviour?
When the media creates a fashion it changes behaviour. The fashion might be for baseball caps, trainers, patterns of speech or music etc. Can the media create criminal behaviour? The media in general does not wholeheartedly support crime and is mainly involved in fashions against crime. Were the media to be full of articles and broadcasts about the sexiness, benefit and excitement of being a criminal it would almost certainly stimulate a crime wave.
When it comes to the direct incitement of anti-social fashions the media is generally quite well behaved, but can the media stimulate anti-social behaviour indirectly? As an example, does the incidental appearance of violence in police dramas and soaps affect behaviour? In these programmes the violent people are generally caught and punished so it is not obvious that there would be an adverse effect of the media on violence in society.
Studies of the effect of media violence on behaviour have been dogged by poor experimental design, often due to lack of funding. This has led to reviews of the literature that have focussed on this poor design. These reviews have also sometimes mixed the studies that were designed poorly with better studies to show that overall no reliable effect has yet been discovered. There have been a few studies that have followed people from childhood to adulthood. Rowell et al in 2003 produced a large study that seemed to confirm that incidental violence on television affects violence in society.
The graphs from Rowell et al's study are shown on the right. Click on these to enlarge them.
A review in The Lancet of the public health effects of violence in the media concluded that:
"From a public-health perspective, there is evidence that violent imagery has short-term effects on arousal, thoughts, and emotions, increasing the likelihood of aggressive or fearful behaviour. However, the evidence is less consistent for older children and teenagers. The small amount of good quality research that discusses sex differences suggests that boys are more likely to show aggression after viewing violent media than girls. Longterm outcomes for children viewing media violence are more controversial, partly because of the methodological difficulties in linking behaviour with past viewing. Nevertheless, a small but significant association persists in the research, with an effect size that has a substantial public-health effect. Theories of aggression used to explain these effects have predicted a stronger influence of media violence for those with a predisposition for aggressive behaviour attributable to personality (eg, temperament) or situational factors (eg, growing up in a violent family) or both. Evidence supporting this idea has been noted in quasi-experimental studies. However, there is only weak evidence from correlation studies linking media violence directly to crime." (Browne and Hamilton-Giachritsis. 2005 )
Notice however that very few media outlets extol the virtues of violent crime, indeed the opposite is the case. These studies of the effect of violence on the TV screen are studies of indirect effects, in fact they are largely about unintentional effects. When the media introduces an intentional effect the change becomes part of the moral fabric of our post-modern society. The effect is so powerful that even to investigate it might result in a loss of career and being ostracized by your peers (Try investigating blood groups (race) or sex versus intellectual ability or child abuse versus homosexuality for instance).
Kevin D Browne, Catherine Hamilton-Giachritsis. 2005 The influence of violent media on children and adolescents: a public-health approach Lancet 2005; 365: 702–10
Original Article (pdf). "Longitudinal Relations Between Children's Exposure to TV Violence and Their Aggressive and Violent Behavior in Young Adulthood: 1977 - 1992," L. Rowell Huesmann, Jessica Moise-Titus, Cheryl-Lynn Podolski, and Leonard D. Eron of the University of Michigan; Developmental Psychology, Vol. 39, No. 2.
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