Communication Research Project Assignment

Running head:The Influence of Violent News in the United States 1

Communication Research Project Assignment

Vanessa L. Cruz

San Jose State University

The Influence of Violent News in the United States 2

Abstract

News content has greatly influenced public opinion, popular culture, and the representation of

our society. Today, more than ever, with the help of current technology and instant news at our

fingertips, society can easily become influenced by these messages received. In particular, the

rise of news content focused on gun violence is a recurring news story today that holds many

effects to the viewing audience. Most people get their information about violent crime from the

news; however, the media is distorting the reality of mass shootings by the way the stories are

presented to the public. Gun violence in news media is an issue that I would like to explore

because I am concerned that this topic and how it is presented in the news is influencing violent

behaviors within our society. I plan to focus on gun violence in television news and how it has

influenced a rise of violent behaviors in more recent years. This phenomenon of reporting on

mass shootings has become a global issue within the United States.Whether we are mindful of it

or not, viewing gun violence through news media has affected us all in some way by creating

more aggressive behaviors and implying that incidents like this are our social reality. The media

is responsible for creating important content on issues that society relies on in order to

understand their social responsibilities to our community. If the media fails to report all aspects

of a story, people will ultimately be effected.

To help me explore the ways in which the media has placed a heavy concentration on violent

content in news media, I hope to explore the use of Framework and how the Cultivation Theory

is applied through media outlets. I will try to make sense of the media’s agenda and the messages

they are trying to establish with increasing violent news content and continuous focus on the

shooters. I also hope to explore the process of how we got to the point in the United States,

where violent news content is a form of normalcy. By taking a look at these issues through the

The Influence of Violent News in the United States 3

lens of The Cultivation Theory, I hope to understand the effects of viewing this violent content

and how it has shaped the society we are currently living in. Violent acts in news content has

seemed to become a love affair for viewers in the United States, and the media is partially

responsible for this fad. I will break down the process of how the media became a powerful and

influential means of violent consumption.

Introduction

What is Violence

There are many interpretations of what defines violence. Although violence is typically known to

be associated with physical actions, Millwood(2007) simply advocates that there is not enough

studies conducted on how people come to define something as violent. Therefore it is

challenging to grasp a clear definition of what violence is since everyone has their own version

of what it entails. In Millwood’s own group study conducted of both adults and children, she

attempts to understand what is seen as screen violence in the viewers own perspectives. Results

of her group study varied based on the viewers own feelings of anxiety and aggression. Millard

suggests that the viewers own feelings of anxiety and aggression stem from continuously

viewing most of their real life violence through violence perceived in the media. Although not all

violent content received is accurate of most viewers daily realities, the effects of viewing

violence in the news inflicts aggression and antisocial behaviors. Viewers will be both

subconsciously and consciously exposed to violent content through the media whether society

has a definite definition of what it entails or not.

News Media

News media is a form of mass media that creates and delivers news content through print,

broadcasted news, and the internet. The media has been somewhat consistent in how it has been

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covering mass shootings in the United States over the last several years. Once an unfortunate

event occurs all other news drops and the media will go around the clock with the story,

primarily focusing on the shooter. One of the first things we typically find out is a background

history of the shooter. News outlets will bombard us with the shooters full name, his upbringing

and if there were any previous signs of distress. Journalist, Robin Lloyd(2018) states that many

mass shooters have admitted they are seeking fame and have attempted to maximize their

number of fatalities to achieve that fame. By providing a focus of who the perpetrator is, the

media is reinforcing bad behavior, not to mention motivating copycat offenders who see this as

another way to achieve the attention they are seeking. Lloyd also states that there are several

news anchors who refuse to state these offenders full name while reporting on the issue. My

concern is if news reporters feel strongly about not focusing on the shooter or naming them, then

why do media gatekeepers feel it is necessary to provide viewers details of the shooters life when

they have taken the lives of many innocent ones? Why is it constantly the first thing that is

reported in news media after a mass shooting? Is it necessary to know who these perpetrators

are? Focusing on who the shooter is, rather than the crime that was committed or the victims of

those crimes is distorting the reality of mass shootings.

Framework & Cultivation Theory

In an attempt to understand why the media tends to focus coverage on the offender and less on

the victims, I needed to understand how the media frames their content. Based on the research of

(McCombs, M. and Shaw,D., 2017), media framing is referred to the way the media depicts

certain perspectives from which a story is told. Media gatekeepers use framing as a way to focus

attention on certain events and can be used as a way of telling society what to think about.

Viewers are influenced by the media on the basis of what is being told to them about their social

The Influence of Violent News in the United States 5

reality. Although the news is not an exact representation of most realities, it presents various

views of a small reality through a selective process.

Cultivation Theory implies the same shaping of our society but solely focuses on television

effects. It is important to understand the effects of viewing violent content and how it has shaped

the society we are currently living in. Cultivation theorists (Gerbner et al., 2017) suggest that

television can have long-term effects that are indirect but can be significant. According to

Gerbner, some of these effects can lead to more aggressive behaviors which I will discuss in

further details to come. Gebner also suggest that massive television exposure by viewers subtly

shapes the perception of social reality for individuals and for our culture as a whole. It is

important that members of society become aware of media framing and the understanding of

cultivation theory, along with how they are applied in news, so that we can all become critical

viewers of it’s content and to shape our own reality.

Literature Review

Effects of Violent Content

Watching news media creates heavy influence on the viewers of what their everyday world is

like. The media is responsible for shaping the viewers conceptions of social reality and

ultimately for our culture as well. According to (Grizzard et al., 2017) research has presented the

effects of viewing graphically violent content in news media can lead to aggression and

antisocial outcomes. In Grizzard’s experimental study in which he examined news footage from

major American broadcast networks, he focused on violent frames used in news media.

Broadcast networks used media frames and still images of violent acts which froze the image but

continued to use sound bites of what took place at the crime. The results from viewing violent

images in the news creates a visual stimuli which Grizzard suggest can have a negative effect

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and consequences toward the perpetrator. Ultimately the study suggest that viewing graphic

violence in news media can lead to indirect build up of aggression and anxiety in viewers over

time.

Scholar Nicole Martins(2018) conducted an experimental test, in which the goal was to test the

link between media violence exposure and its effects. Results showed that viewing violent media

news stories lead to aggressive behavior immediately after exposure. In the long-run, the study

suggests that exposure to violent news in childhood is associated with aggression in adulthood.

The media has been fascinated with focus on violent news coverage in the last several years

feeding society their daily dose of aggression. However, according to Bartsch (2016), these

messages our society receives does not reflect their daily realities. As a result of the media’s

heavy concentration on violent content, our society has become fascinated with aggressive

behaviors and fantasies leaving the viewers wanting more. In an interview with 39 participants

from different backgrounds regarding how viewers use and make sense of violent content, many

interviewees expressed that they were left deeply disturbed and overwhelmed after viewing

violent content. Some interviewees also discussed and reflected their own violent impulses and

thoughts while viewing violent news content. Although the violent content was referred to as

traumatizing, interviewers also explained that these experiences viewed in the news were also a

form of extreme physiological arousal.

As a result of heavy violent news content in more recent years, society has become numb and

desensitized to these aggressive behaviors. The public has become fascinated with this type of

violence and evil characters since the media has focused on them. Bartsch’s findings suggest that

viewers are learning terror from violent media content which is not an exact representation of

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their everyday lives. It is important that society become critical of the news content in order to

recognize and live our own practical realities.

Framework in News Media

The media has become a powerful source in constructing our culture by using particular news

angles. The pattern of media framing immediately following a mass shooting incident suggest

that the media focuses on the shooter rather than the victims, survivors, or the community

affected. Ruth DeFoster(2017) mentions that news frames tend to highlight “problem

definitions” such as mental health, gun control, drug use, and lack of school security as the

reasoning for these crimes. Media framing is used as a way to promote a particular problem,

while outlining another problem. We see this happen quite often in news coverage of mass

shootings where the media focuses on the personal problems of the shooter. News media places

blame on everything, but rarely the shooter themselves.

The more fatalities, use of multiple weapons, age of perpetrator, and location are all factors in

how the media considers coverage of mass shootings. Robin Lloyd(2018) points out that in a

recent study of mass media coverage in printed news media, 72 percent of mass shooting during

a 50 year period were covered by The Times. During this span of time the mass shooting at

Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida received the most coverage not because it

had the most casualties, but mainly because it involved a younger shooter and took place at a

school where there are many innocent bystanders. Highlighting these stories of casualties in such

rural areas of a community can create fear, anxiety and can influence the audience to think of

their society as a fearful place.

If media gatekeepers continue to chose to present narrow perspectives and sensational coverage

of the shooter, we could provoke copycats because we keep encouraging them. As DeFoster

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presents, copycat incidents usually occur within two weeks of a highlighted mass shooting

incident covered in the news. Everytime an incident occurs, the shooter then becomes the topic

of the week. The media focuses on the shooter in search of understanding by taking a closer look

about them personally rather than covering the other issues at hand. Several news angles could

be taken into consideration and covered, such as gun control, school safety, the victims and the

survivors instead of encouraging other conclusions. Society needs to hear all perspectives on

news coverage relating to these tragic news stories.

Cultivation Theory in News Media

Cultivation Theory was developed by George Gerbner in which he examined the long-term

effects of Television. With the popularity of online media and having access to news through

electronic devices, the theory still applies both to online and television media. In a study

conducted by Hey Yeung Lau(2015) using survey questionnaires to 258 undergraduate students

in an attempt to understand the effects of television and online media. The results indicated that

viewing of the two was an important factor in the interviewees concept of social reality, in

addition to their own behavioral intentions. Lau’s study introduces the phrase, “Mean World

Syndrome,”which suggest an idea that the world is worse than it actually is. Viewers who fall

under this phrase are viewed as being exposed to more violent content through heavy viewership.

Lastly, Lau’s study found that viewers with more vivid memories of the violent content, the

more likely they were disconnected with the real world.

Conclusion

According to Muschert(2006), public opinion rarely remains focused on one issue for too long.

Issues within the media usually gain public attention, then fade away until the next topic of

interest captures the public's attention. With new technologies and instant news at our fingertips,

The Influence of Violent News in the United States 9

our societies attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. Viewers are becoming more

distracted by what the media thinks we need to know, in addition to news outlets competing

more than ever for their viewers attention. In the process of trying to gain viewers, media

gatekeepers seem to focus on the negative issues at hand. By framing mass shootings a societal

problem and placing blame on mental health, lack of school security or gun control we are

dismissing the shooter as the suspect and only encouraging it to happen again.

If the media is going to continue covering news stories on mass shootings, we need to do so with

caution and also hear stories from all angles. It is the public's right to have access to this

coverage, but maybe we can have more ethical ways of reporting on it. One recent change

occurred during the coverage of the Parkland shooting where the news coverage focused more on

the victims and less on the offender. Social groups, such as “Don’t Name Them” and “No

Notoriety” have begun lobbying to not name these shooters. Refusing to name the shooters in

news media may help deny the attention these perpetrators are seeking and deter from future

attacks.

Originally mass shootings appeared in the news media as an issue of concern to the communities

in which they occured. Today, the media is distorting these incidents by framing the perpetrators,

by humanizing them and in the process offending the survivors. Although unethical, it is not

clear why the media continues to focus on coverage of the shooters. America has become

fascinated with violence and this may be the media’s way of gaining their audiences attention.

We have gone astray from covering these events as a community concern to glorified coverage

of the shooter. News reportage has shown no empathy for the victim. We rarely hear their names

and that is due to America’s fascination of evil perpetrators involved in addition to instant news

at our fingertips. Coverage of mass shooting will be the highlighted story of the news round the

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clock and can be found highlighting the shooter on multiple channels throughout the day. Often,

members of society remembers names of murders and not the victims since we do not

acknowledge them in news media. As a viewers we need to be mindful of how stories are

gathered and told through the lens of the media in order to have a clear and critical view of the

issue at hand.

References

Bartsch, A., Mares, M., Scherr, S., Klob, A., Keppeler, J., & Posthumus, L. (2016). More Than Shoot-Em-Up and Torture Porn: Reflective Appropriation and Meaning-Making of

Violent Content. Journal of Communication, 66(5), 741-765. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12248

DeFoster, R., & Swalve, N. (2018). Guns, Culture or Mental Health? Framing Mass Shootings as

a Public Health Crisis. Health Communication, 33(10), 1211-1222.

Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2017.1350907

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Grizzard, M., Huang, J., Weiss, J. K., Novotny, E. R., Fitzgerald, K. S., Ahn, C.,Chu, H. (2017).

Graphic Violence as Moral Motivator: The Effects of Graphically Violent Content in

News. Mass Communication & Society, 20(6), 763-783.

https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2017.1339804

Lau, H.Y.(2015). Cultivation Effects of Television Broadcasting and Online Media. Department

of Journalism and Communication. 2(3),13-16.

Lloyd, R. (2018). Media Coverage of Mass Shootings: Is it Part of the Problem?

https://undark.org/2018/03/08/media-coverage-of-mass-shootings-misses-the-mark-for-d

ecades.com

Martins, N., Weaver, A. J., & Lynch, T. (2018). What the Public “Knows” About Media Effects

Research: The Influence of News Frames on Perceived Credibility and Belief Change.

Journal of Communication, 68(1), 98-119. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqx004

Milwood, A.(2007). The Meaning and Definition of Violence. International Journal of Media

and Cultural Politics, 3(3), 289-305.

Muschert, G.W., & Carr, D. (2006). Media Salience and Frame Changing across Events:

Coverage of Nine School Shootings, 1997-2001. Journal & Mass Communication Quarterly, 83(4), 747-766.

http://libaccess.sjlibrary.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true

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