The media refers to ways of communicating information to the public such as TV, radio, newspapers, adverts, films and video games.
The vast majority of us see more criminality in the media that in real life. A lot of what we see is designed to attract our attention and captivate us. This often meant the characters have features which make them effective role models and are easy to identify with. They are designed to encourage attention and we retain unique information. In the media we don’t always see a lot about the negative effect of crime and there is a focus on the rewards.
Erron estimated that by the time children left primary school they would have witnessed 8000 murders and 10000 other violent acts in TV and on film. This is a concern because it shows that people, especially children, can imitate observed behaviour. It is also a concern that they will become desensitised to violence so will be less disturbed but it. This means that they are more likely to be violent or aggressive themselves.
Bandura Ross & Ross showed that children verbally and physically copied aggression from models and replicated their behaviour towards a BoBo doll. They were even more likely to imitate same-sex models.
Bandura et al found that children were even more likely to copy aggressive behaviour from a video of an adult dressed as a cartoon cat than an actual adult producing the same behaviour.
Williams studied the effects of the introduction of broadcast TV to a remote Canadian community. The aggressiveness of children in the town was compared over time with 2 other towns (one with one channel of TV and one with many). With the introduction of TV they saw physical and verbal aggression almost double. The other towns saw an increase but it was much less noticeable.
Charlton et al studied the introduction of TV to the remote island of St Helena. They filmed children during their playtime and analysis of video showed that incidences of violent behaviour were rare, and that they didn’t rise with the introduction of TV.
It can be argued that violence in the media has an effect but that it isn’t the main cause of violence in a person.