Graphic Violence: Illustrated Theories About Violence, Popular Media, and Our Social Lives 9780815362296, 9780815362302, 9781351112512

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GRAPHIC VIOLENCE

Graphic Violence provides an innovative introduction to the relationship between violence and visual media, discussing how media consumers and producers can think critically about and interact with violent visual content. It comprehensively surveys predominant theories of media violence and the research supporting and challenging them, addressing issues ranging from social learning, to representations of war and terrorism, to gender and hyper-masculinity. Each chapter features original artwork presenting a story in the style of a graphic novel to demonstrate the concepts at hand. Truly unique in its approach to the subject and medium, this volume is an excellent resource for undergraduate students of communication and media theory as well as anyone interested in understanding the causes and effects of violence in media. Emily D. Edwards is Professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. She has produced or directed more than 17 films—from narrative features, to documentaries, to animations, to experimental films—and has also reported as a journalist for ABC and NBC affiliates in Alabama and Tennessee. Tristan Fuller is a Graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design. His current project is writing and illustrating a series to publish in 2020. For more information and more art, go to tristanfuller.com or visit his Instagram @tristanfuller42.

GRAPHIC VIOLENCE Illustrated Theories About Violence, Popular Media, and Our Social Lives

Written by Emily D. Edwards Art by Tristan Fuller

First edition published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Emily D. Edwards to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-8153-6229-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-8153-6230-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-3511-1251-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments 1 The Characteristics of Story: Conflict, Chronicle, and Violence

vii ix

1

2 The Journeys of Brutal Stories

27

3 Helpless Audiences and the Magic Bullet

55

4 Obstinate Violence

83

5 Learning Violence: The Drama of Aggression

109

6 Mean Worlds and Remorseless Strangers With Guns

137

7 What an Audience Wants: Selection, Gratification, and Violence

169

8 Gender, Hyper-Masculinity, and the Violent Story

201

vi

Contents

9 Terrorism, War, and Media Systems

239

10 The Violent Aesthetic

267

Index

293

ILLUSTRATIONS

1.1 2.1 3.1 4.1 5.1 6.1 7.1 8.1 9.1 10.1

“The Neighbor” “Cinder the Cat” “A School Fight” “The Heist” “The Playground” “The Gun” “A Morbid Date Night” “Brooke” “The Bomb” “The Pitch”

15 44 69 99 127 155 186 218 239 278

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I interviewed many people, was a regular nuisance at my university’s library, and pestered friends, family, students, and professional colleagues for their wisdom as I was developing this book. I appreciate everyone’s patience. I owe special gratitude to my husband, Doug Mokaren, and my friend and colleague, Dr. Rose Kundanis, for reading draft chapters, and my colleagues at the University Film and Video Association for offering ideas and encouragement. I deeply appreciate the contributions of former students, who told me stories about how violence intruded on their lives or the lives of loved ones and the ways they thought media were a factor. Thanks also to my daughter, Marissa Mokaren, for reading and contributing to walkthroughs for the sequential art. I especially want to thank my former graduate student, now professional colleague, Brian Fuller, for introducing me to his talented son, Tristan Fuller. I also want to thank ArtsGreensboro and Textbook and Academic Authors Association for supporting a project that straddled the boundaries of art, journalism, and traditional research. Finally, I want to thank my publisher for taking a risk on a book that includes comics as explanations for the highly abstract narratives of media theory.

1 THE CHARACTERISTICS OF STORY Conflict, Chronicle, and Violence

Ask any news editor, screenwriter, movie producer, journalist, drama instructor, or graphic novelist for the essence of story and these people will likely tell you that the core of any story is a character in conflict. Most stories involve a protagonist (the main character) with a goal and the conflicts encountered when something or someone prevents the protagonist from achieving that ambition. Without conflict, a storyteller cannot build the necessary tension to create plot. Media professionals have additionally embraced the notion that if conflicts are not externalized into action, the story becomes static and talky, rather than dramatic, visual, and emotionally compelling. Dramatic conflict is heightened with urgency. “If a character desperately wants to achieve a goal, and some obstacle is thrown in the way, the dramatic tension heightens in direct proportion to that emotional intensity” (Blum, 1995, p. 82). Time-honored advice for development of screenplays has been to recognize that conflict has primal power for stories, so a good writer will fan all the possible flames of conflict (Armer, 1993). Conflict may not always lead to violence. However, conflict is the root from which violence can grow. As the centerpiece of storytelling, understanding conflicts and their resolutions are key to understanding story violence. We can all identify with conflict; it is a part of life. An argument with a family member, disagreements with coworkers, disputes with neighbors, a fight with city council, the road rage of motorists, the rejection of a lover: the list of potential conflicts can get quite long. Happily, not every conflict rises to the level of violence, but all too often media stories demonstrate violent methods for conflict resolution. While violence often has a starring role in popular media stories, violence was also central to mythology, drama, fairy tales, and folklore long before it was championed in modern media. Violence was the “go to”

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resolution in stories told generations before arrival of film, television, computer games, internet, and social media. You will notice that I frequently substitute the word “story” where media theories have historically used the phrases “media message” or “media contents.” “Story” is useful because it emphasizes the often dramatic nature of cultural messages and makes the human construction of media contents more evident. Some might question this substitution, asking, “Where is the ‘story’ in a recipe or instruction manual? Where is the protagonist? Where is the conflict?” The story may not always be obvious but is often implied. In the case of a cake recipe, the protagonists are the readers, imagining all that needs to be accomplished as they embark on the journey of making a cake, encountering the series of tasks to be completed and complications to overcome before that final triumphant or disastrous moment when cakes come out of the oven. Admittedly, some stories are more clearly dramatic. Story is not synonymous with lie, which is a deliberate departure from fact in an effort to mislead. My use of the word story simply acknowledges that people must choose how to explain the world they experience. All the narratives people tell are fabrications. They are human creations that might lead to a better understanding of events—or make them incomprehensible. Media stories can be as short as a headline, a single photo, or a one-sentence flash fiction tale. Longer form stories are typically threads of many smaller stories woven into a larger media tapestry. Stories may be as long as a feature film, a multi-season television series, a feature documentary, a continuing computer game, or a novel franchise. Though stories are human constructions, some media theories we will examine suggest it is the other way around, too. Stories help construct the human psyche and it is the violent stories that leave the largest dents.

Defining Violence The literature about popular media influence on social violence is extensive. While there may be disagreement in the research, one point of consensus is that American media circulate a lot of violent stories to a vast, worldwide audience. However, scholars have varying definitions for the media violence we observe and the social violence we experience. In some cases, research limits media violence to depictions of overt physical human aggression that maims or kills others. Many studies have widened this definition to include threat, so media violence is defined as “the depiction of overt physical action that hurts or kills or threatens to do so” (Signorelli & Gerbner, 1988, p. xi). The three-year National Television Violence Study (NTVS) defined violence as “any overt depiction of a credible threat of physical force or the actual use of such force intended to physically harm an animate being or group of such beings” (Anderson et al., 2003, p. 81). The British Broadcasting Corporation’s definition of violence is “any action of physical force, with or without a weapon, used against oneself

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or another person, where there is an intent to harm, whether carried through or merely attempted and whether the action caused injury or not” (BBC, Broadcasting Standards Commission & Independent Television Commission, 2002). Many researchers agree that depictions of violence involve the willful human intent to cause harm to another person or people; some will also include cruel human violence against animals, but generally stop short of including animal predators killing other animals for food or survival. Even animal violence is problematic when considering the brutality in movies like Jaws (1975), Jurassic Park (1993), Jurassic World (2015), and the various versions of King Kong (1933, 1976, 2005) when monster-sized creatures annihilate human victims and each other with what seems like bloody delight. We can argue that this violence appeals to the blood lust of human audiences whose ancestors staged vicious events like dog fighting, cock fighting, and bear baiting for entertainment. The human-created and genetically manipulated dinosaurs envisioned for Jurassic Park and its sequels are not purely a scientific fascination of the movie’s characters about extinct creatures but include an attraction to the thrill of primeval danger. When the ancient threat of dinosaurs no longer seems exciting enough for theme park visitors in Jurassic World, the film’s scientists depart from “nature’s design” to genetically manipulate DNA, manufacturing bigger, meaner, more ruthless creatures that never existed in nature. Indominus, the gigantic dinosaur created as the star attraction for Jurassic World, had a mysterious genetic mixture that included the cunning of Velociraptors (raptors), giving Indominus the drive to hunt and kill for pleasure as well as problem-solving skills and aspirations for vengeance. Indominus functions as a massive and vicious “Other” that the film’s human characters can destroy without guilt. Another definition describes violence as any behavior intended to cause severe physical harm to another person who does not want to be harmed (Bushman & Huesmann, 2010). This definition would not consider sadomasochistic acts such as those suggested in the film Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) as violent when both partners seek out this behavior and seem to enjoy the experience. If a masochist does not want to avoid pain but invites it, then the sadomasochistic sex-play depicted in the film is not violent, unless the “fun” develops into an agony-filled situation the masochist cannot manage and does not want. Early researchers additionally struggled with whether or not cartoon violence or slapstick should be included in a definition of media violence. Some believed that when one of The Three Stooges (1934–1946) clouts his friend on the head or pokes him in the eye, this rough clowning hardly constitutes violence. In cartoons such as Tom and Jerry (1940–1958), the animated anthropomorphized cat-and-mouse rivalry between the title characters often results in bashed cartoon skulls and battered cartoon limbs, events that would definitely be considered violent had they been live action. When researcher George Gerbner studied television violence in the 1970s, he included cartoon violence, explaining that “scenes of violence occur an average three to five times per hour in prime-time

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dramatic fiction, and between 20 and 25 times per hour in cartoons” (p. 340). Other researchers argued that the improbable exaggeration and intended comedy of the action should make cartoons exempt. Writing in 1989, media critic James B. Twitchell defined violence as a force directed against a victim, “usually a human being.” He described violent entertainment in media as “preposterous violence,” scenes so exaggerated that most of the audience will understand that they are watching “make-believe” (p. 3). Popular media brought “preposterous violence” to eager audiences as a dependable cultural bedtime fantasy. Some definitions list examples, such as “images of fighting, bloodshed, war, and gunplay produced for the purpose of entertainment, recreation, or leisure” (Goldstein, 1998, p. 2). The problem with lists is that they may not be all-inclusive. This particular list seems limited to entertainment, but news broadcasts and documentaries also depict violent acts. News outlets have a responsibility to alert audiences about the violence in their communities, but when audiences use news broadcasts to gape at tragedy, news might become a digital form of “rubber-necking” or recognition that deadly tragedy captures eager audience attention. Not all news is the reporting of violence, but violence can give a news story weight and precedence in the lineup. Most definitions of media violence don’t eliminate violence in news stories from research consideration and some research has shown that news reports about crime and violence can have negative effects on viewers (Williams & Dickinson, 1993). The implication in these definitions is that violence is a human endeavor. Though weather forecasters may speak about a “violent storm” and people can be maimed and killed as a result of a hurricane, a catastrophic storm or any other violent natural disaster does not have human intention behind its destructive path. These tragedies of nature fall outside the definitions. Media stories about unintentional accidents, such as a wreck on a highway, are also omitted from the research definition of violence. Violence needs human objectives and motivation. The concern is to create a definition of violence that brings disturbing actions into sharp focus without being so broad as to be meaningless. Graphic violence suggests that some depictions may be more visually explicit and brutal than others. As the title for this book, the phrase evokes the nature of violence in visual media such as film, television, videos, computer games, comic books, and graphic novels as well as the descriptive qualities of media using words, sound effects, and music to create vivid, “graphic” imagery in the imagination. The phrase also refers to the sequential art used as narrative examples throughout this book. Pictures can be more explicit and relatable for some readers, which is a powerful advantage of pictures. Though not a definition of violence often encountered in social science research, some groups, such as the Poor People’s Campaign (1968–), ask us to consider public policy that disenfranchises people to the point of physical and emotional harm or death to be considered a form of institutional violence

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(Reverend Dr. William J. Barber, III, Poor People’s Campaign Rally; New Light Baptist Church, Greensboro, NC, October 29, 2018). Examples of this violence include economic systems that allow: a hungry child to starve, a person with a treatable illness to die without health care, or an industry to dump toxic wastes in low-income neighborhoods.

Aggression and Violence Researchers define aggression as behavior intended to harm a person who does not want to be hurt (Baron & Richardson, 1994). This harm can be psychological or physical. The person who intentionally and forcefully shoves someone aside to get at the front of a line is behaving aggressively, but if there was no serious physical harm, (no murder, aggravated assault, or rape) then the action is aggressive but not violent. Aggression may be manifested in destructive and even attacking behavior. It may arise from innate drives, as a response to frustration or hostility, as a reaction to hindering, or as encouragement from others. Aggression may also be a self-expressive drive toward mastery. Though there is a distinction between violence and aggression, sometimes people treat these words as synonyms. Others see violence as the extreme form of aggression. Violence might be defined as aggressive physical actions where an assailant makes or attempts to make physical contact that causes injury or death (Bushman, 2017). Though there are differences between the definitions of aggression and violence, media research generally measures aggressive acts as opposed to violent ones. The Institutional Review Boards that oversee research projects involving human subjects want to ensure there are no abuses or risks to subjects. Because of these ethical concerns, media research involving experiments with people will measure aggression not violence. For example, researchers wanting to see if violent video games provoke aggressive behaviors might measure the number or intensity of electric shocks players are willing to give another person after they had played a violent game. Subjects in this experiment may believe they are punishing another person with shocks that are painful but not destructive. The eagerness with which a subject applies intense shocks to another person would be considered aggressive but not violent. Researchers use similar measures to calculate aggression after exposure to other violent media. A subject’s willingness to blast a person with a loud noise or enthusiasm for putting large amounts of hot sauce in another person’s food are considered reliable measures of aggression (Lieberman, Solomon, Greenberg, & McGregor, 1999).

Good Reasons for Violent Depictions Not all violent depictions in popular media are gratuitous or unnecessary. Producers may want to call attention to a problem, arouse sympathy for victims, and perhaps move a concerned public toward political action in the hope of

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righting a wrong or preventing future harm. One example from the art world involved Pablo Picasso’s reaction to news about the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. The horror of combat inspired Picasso’s mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair. Art critics declared this mural to be one of the most unsettling indictments of war in the last century. Some believed this painting had the power to make people see war differently, to no longer view it as inevitable or natural (Schama, 2006). In spite of Picasso’s efforts, the world continued to engage in war. It would be overly optimistic to believe that one mural could have such an impact that it could stop world wars. Many people may have never seen the mural; some may have seen it but found it confusing; others may have had different interpretations of what Guernica represented. The black, white, and gray images in Guernica are violent and disconcerting but it is up to individuals looking at the work to determine what the mural signifies, to decide if the painting is an indictment of war or a stylized glorification of it. This matter of interpretation is the problem with violence in art and storytelling: not all audiences will understand the meaning of a story the way the producers intended. It may be equally true that not all media producers understand the impact of the violence in their own stories.

Structuring Story Aristotle’s Poetics (335 BC) is the earliest written account of how a story should function. Aristotle advises that dramatic plots should be complex, should have reversals of fortune, should be logical within the context of the story, and should be self-contained with a beginning, middle, and end. A good story should also be compelling, engaging audiences and emotionally arousing them (Butcher, 1923). Many key elements of this ancient approach to drama are still used in the formal structuring of stories for contemporary media, though modern stories may rearrange the implied three-part structure of beginnings, middles, and endings for non-linear and other alternate compositions. Episodes of some television series and webisodes are not self-contained, as Aristotle suggested they should be. Even feature films may be serialized, looking to prequels and sequels to extend the story. In the worlds of computer games and online media, stories become more organic, with audiences participating in their distribution or contributing to stories that will evolve across time and platforms. Storytelling has changed but traditional structures do continue to inform the development of contemporary media, even if beginnings, middles, and endings are not as distinctly presented as Aristotle advised. Ancient audiences could imagine events happening before and after the drama that began and ended on stage, just as modern film audiences can imagine other plots and actions that occur simultaneously with those on screen as well as events occurring before the film began and those that might continue after the credits roll. All plots, even ancient Greek ones, suggest

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continuing and simultaneous actions, but beginnings, middles, and endings are still suggested in the causes of conflicts and their resolutions. As with ancient Greek dramatists, the primary job of contemporary producers of media stories is the work of selection. Whether it is a fictional story or a news account, the storyteller must decide where the story starts and stops, what elements to include, what to leave out, and how all of it should be arranged. One thing that is always true about art and storytelling is this work of choosing.

Mythic Journeys and Media Stories In traditional societies, myth provided a key and sacred part of socialization. Myths were stories about primordial beginnings, supernatural beings, and marvelous heroes dedicated to saving loved ones, families, communities, or the whole world. The American mythologist, Joseph Campbell, believed that much of human storytelling can be distilled into one single mythic journey that is told and retold with varying details: a similar hero on a similar journey but with a thousand different faces (1949). His recognition that the heroes from different mythologies and vastly different cultures take comparable journeys has inspired screenwriters to deliberately apply Campbell’s theory of the hero’s journey to the writing of new scripts in hopes of capturing the power of that mythic story (Indick, 2004, pp. 143–164). The significant points of this journey involve a high degree of suffering as the protagonist travels from the exposition of the protagonist’s ordinary world (the background information audiences need to properly understand the protagonist’s character and situation), to the point of attack (call to adventure or inciting incident where a major conflict rears its head), to rising action (where more violent conflicts might occur), to climax (the turning point in the protagonist’s principal dilemma), to the falling action leading to the resolution of the conflict (dénouement, “happily ever after,” death, disaster, or return home). The journey’s plot will be concerned with the way conflicts in the story are structured and the causal and logical connections among them. A story’s “journey” may not involve literal physical travel, though for many stories it does. The journey may refer to the protagonist’s pursuit of answers to a problem, such as a detective’s search for the identity of a criminal. The journey might concern a hero’s response to competition or a protagonist’s development through the choices and challenges of unusual life circumstances. Campbell describes other archetypal elements and characters that a mythic protagonist might encounter, such as mentors, tricksters, and temptresses, but none are as critical to the journey as the conflicts that these other characters and situations might present for the hero. Most stories, whether they are news stories or complete fiction, have built into them this element of conflict, which may or may not resolve violently. The structure of the mythic journey is easy to see in folklore and fairy tales, which have also been a consistent cultural element, orally handed down through

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generations and later reproduced in comic books, films, television programs, computer games, and online media. The adults who originally told these stories around the fire must have believed that the conflicts and violence in these stories provided moral lessons in the scary troubles a hero encounters and overcomes. Folklore might also provide encouragement, telling children that even a smaller, weaker protagonist could defeat a witch, a wolf, or an ogre with skill, cunning, or, as in the case of the Bible’s David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17), the right weapon deftly applied. Others have noticed that in a patriarchal world, a differently gendered hero has extra complications that can hinder the journey and may deny protagonists the higher heroic purpose that heterosexual male protagonists achieve (Murdock, 1990). The Charles Perrault and Brother’s Grimm printed versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” have a female protagonist with a simple mission to deliver food to her ailing grandmother. The story is based on older folktales about an obstinate daughter, who ignores her mother’s warning to stay on the path as she journeys through the woods. The Big Bad Wolf wants to eat both the girl and the food in her basket. He stalks her, enticing her to leave the path and linger in the woods picking flowers while he travels ahead to Grandmother’s house. The fairy tale ends in violence with Big Bad Wolf gobbling up Grandmother and disguising himself as the elderly woman, tricking Red, and devouring both the girl and her basket of goodies. In some versions, a woodcutter arrives in time to lop off the wolf ’s head, split open his belly, and save the victims the wolf had swallowed alive and whole. The moral ending of this story advises girls to listen to the wisdom of parents and “don’t talk to strangers,” because some strangers might be wolves who want to do you harm. The story denies the female protagonist an opportunity to show courage in pursuit of a higher purpose. Red becomes a damsel in distress, relinquishing heroic potential to the woodcutter. Modern media retelling of fairy tales do not necessarily yield a children’s story. The movie Freeway (1996) with Kiefer Sutherland is one example of a media reworking of the Red Riding Hood tale. In this version, a juvenile delinquent steals a car from her social worker and drives off to her grandmother’s house, but the car breaks down. A high-school guidance counselor will offer the girl a ride but he is a murderous pedophile, a wolf on the hunt. The 1988 film The Accused, with Jody Foster, can also be considered a contemporary version of “Red Riding Hood,” a warning about what can happen to girls and women who stray from the proper path and wander into bars where “wolves” lurk. In this retelling, the legal system, rather than a woodcutter, provides the heroine’s revenge. There have been other, more literal versions of this story that have very adult content. In the Company of Wolves (1984) explores the developing sexuality of a young girl and contains violently graphic scenes of a woodsman lopping off a werewolf ’s head. Adaptations of the fairy tale continue in the 21st century with movies like Deep in the Woods (2000), The Woodsman (2004), Little Red Riding Hood (2011), Three Brothers (2014), and references in television series like Grimm (2011–2017) and

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Once Upon a Time (2011–). In these examples, the conflicts of an ancient story are revised and repackaged for contemporary audiences. The point to recognize here is that violent narratives are not new with modern media but are often newer versions of very old stories. What is new is the frequency with which audiences encounter violent stories through the display of media spectacles.

The Mythic Journey and Journalism News has recognizable elements that distinguish it from fiction: it is supposed to be factual, timely, and important. But even news accounts often use a dramatic structure, presenting real people as characters in disagreement over issues, in ordeals they are trying to survive, and in disputes over goals they are attempting to achieve. People commonly refer to news accounts as “news stories,” another clue to their essentially dramatic nature. News writing textbooks for traditional media teach young reporters to see conflicts and put these conflicts clearly in the lead or at the beginning of their stories to draw audience attention (Stovall, 2009, p. 79). Textbooks on newswriting for convergent media also describe conflict as crucial, telling student reporters to emphasize the climax of the story, which is where the major conflict comes to a turning point (Wilkinson, Grant, & Fisher, 2009; Lieb, 2009). Certainly not all news stories are easily compared to mythological journeys and not all news will contain violence. However, journalists seem quick to identify the mythic and heroic elements when they can, even if the actual individuals involved see nothing mythic at all in their lived experience. Numerous news outlets commented on the heroism in the actions of James Shaw Jr., an ordinary citizen eating at the lunch counter of a Tennessee Waffle House on April 22, 2018 when a gunman began shooting an assault rifle to massacre people inside. “Glass shattered, dust swirled and Shaw said he saw a man lying on the ground” (Van, 2018). According to Campbell’s journey, the hero will initially refuse a “call to adventure.” CNN reported that Shaw jumped from his seat and began to slide along the ground toward the restroom and escape, but when the shooter paused to reload, Shaw saw an opportunity and charged the man, wrestled the gun away, and tossed it behind the counter. Still refusing the call of heroism, Shaw later told reporters that what he did was simply a “selfish” survival reflex. He protested that he was not a Superman. The hero’s journey rarely ends with that first heroic act. Mourning the dead and wounded, Shaw proceeded to raise money for victims and called on other citizens to find the “fire inside themselves” when a situation calls for it (Ellen DeGeneres Show, May 2, 2018). In Campbell’s hero’s journey, the protagonist will finally make a commitment to his new role, which will ultimately be transformative for himself and the community he serves. Real people may find the role of the hero to be perplexing when it is bestowed on them, but reporters and audiences seem eager for heroic inspiration, particularly when so much news is simply tragic.

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Genre, Violence, and Audience Expectations There might be one general template for heroic storytelling provided in the mythic journey, but differences in the details of journeys brought about the classification of stories into genres. The word genre refers to recognizable patterns in story elements such as plots, atmospheres, and characters. Genre can indicate a visual style of production (such as film noir), a type of production technique (such as animation), an expectation of setting (such as the American Western), or the plot expectations for stories of romance, horror, action-adventure, or science fiction. Genres operate under cultural consensus. Stories are grouped according to audience expectations. Categorizing by genre is another way audiences can predict whether or not the conflicts in media stories will have violent resolutions. For certain genres we can predict that conflicts will resolve with bloody force. Violent conflict resolution is expected for genres of action/adventure, horror, science fiction, western, war, and crime, but violence is not excluded from any genre. Romances, family dramas, even children’s stories can have violent resolutions to conflicts their protagonists confront.

Types of Conflict and Their Violent Resolutions One way to consider violence in stories is to examine the conflicts stories use and how often violence becomes the resolution. Conflicts depicted in media stories rarely appear in isolation. Several different conflicts can ripple through a complicated plot like a line of dominos.

Conflicts of Individual Against Self Though conflict suggests two parties in opposition, situations can arise where people do violence to themselves or others because of internal conflict. Protagonists may not know their own goals, the best route for the journey toward those goals, or how to solve problems that arise. In the conflict between individual and self, protagonists become their own worst enemy. The character may be a drug addict, alcoholic, or have mental health problems that would prevent a clear understanding of events. When an internal conflict is resolved with violence, the protagonist sometimes engages in self-injury or even suicide. The character might be fragile, susceptible to emotional trauma, and self-deception so that suicide may seem the only way to stop that pain of internal conflict. The film Suicide Room (2011) tells the story of a teen who escapes from humiliation, bullying, and family pressures into the virtual world of the Suicide Room and ultimately turns to self-destruction to resolve his inner turmoil. Another film, A Beautiful Mind (2001), based on the life story of John Forbes Nash Jr., shows Nash as a schizophrenic math prodigy developing the mental disorders that encourage him to murder his wife, his inner conflicts and delusions turning outward to violence on others.

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When journalists report stories where a fragile person uses suicide to resolve internal conflict, a copycat phenomenon known as the Werther effect or suicide contagion sometimes follows (Schmidtke, 1988; Loureiro, Moreira, & Sachsida, 2015). This is an upsurge in subsequent suicides when reporting encourages susceptible audiences to self-destruct. In 2018, the Centers for Disease Control issued a press release warning that suicide rates had increased sharply in the United States, climbing to the highest levels in nearly 30 years. Social media have also been blamed for inspiring suicide. Research suggests that young people who experience bullying, as either an offender or a victim, too often turn the conflict inward and attempt suicide (Hinduja & Patchin, 2010). Because the prevalence of suicide in the United States is more common than homicide as a cause of death, the federal government and other groups have endorsed guidelines for reporting suicide (World Health Organization, 2008), which recommends not reporting the methods of suicide or glamorizing it, but does recommend including helpline information. Both news and entertainment stories should avoid suggesting that suicide is a practical or impressive solution to internal conflict.

Conflicts of Individual Against Individual In this type of conflict, two individuals go head-to-head in competition or one individual tries to prevent another from achieving a goal. In fictional narratives, the conflict between individuals (or protagonist against antagonist) might set two people against each other over an idea, resource, love interest, job, or any prize. The conflict escalates to violence when they can’t resolve the conflict amicably and attempt to destroy each other. Bullying is conflict between individuals when one individual feels justified for harassing another because the victimized person is different in some way that offends or threatens the bully. Individuals pitted against each other is also the central conflict in some sports, such as boxing or wrestling, though some contemporary American sports organize individuals into teams. Not all sports involve violence, though research has found that male viewers of televised football enjoy the game more when the plays become rougher and increasingly aggressive (Bryant & Zillman, 1983). Many sports, dating back to the times of ancient Greece, have been described as ritualized warfare at the hand-to-hand combat level, where the hero or star athlete strives to defeat a worthy opponent within a venue where death is possible. In ancient Rome, a popular spectator sport involved a gladiator in lavish and brutal confrontations against another gladiator, wild animals, or condemned criminals. The sports arena created a privileged space where violence and death were permitted and celebrated. The spectators for these gladiatorial games were not polite, detached observers but unruly and riotous, intoxicated with the savage blood and brutality of the “sport” (Guttmann, 1983, p. 11).

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Conflicts of the Individual Against the Group In this type of conflict, the protagonist will quarrel with the ambitions, the interests, the prejudices, the follies, or the malevolence of a group of like-minded people. In the Norwegian film, An Enemy of the People (2005), a consumer activist is involved in a dispute with a company selling “healthful” water bottled from a local spring. In this adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen play, the activist discovers that pesticides contaminate the water and crusades to close the company. He finds himself in dispute with his own family and members of his hometown, whose livelihoods he threatens with a company shutdown. Similarly, the initial conflict in Jaws (1975) comes between the police chief and the resort community he wants to protect from the monstrous shark. Community leaders worry that news of a shark attack and the necessity for closing beaches will spoil the summer tourist season, a primary revenue source for the town.

Conflict of Group Against Group This is a type of conflict that occurs between factions such as rival gangs, sports teams, social groups, and even between families, such as the historic case of the decades-long feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys in West Virginia and Kentucky during the 19th century. Because it is difficult for audiences to become emotionally invested in the nameless characters of a large group, stories about rival factions will use group conflict as a framework for stories about individuals, singling out a protagonist who is a leader or a featured character. Group versus group conflicts become the backdrop for individual struggles, as in the case of the film West Side Story (1961), a Romeo and Juliet style tragedy depicting what happens when two young people from rival New York City gangs fall in love and attempt to bring peace between enemy gangs. Movies like Urban Justice (2007), Ghetto Stories (2010), and Gangs of New York (2002) feature clashes between rival street gangs but also focus on individual characters who become protagonists that audiences can recognize.

Conflicts of the Individual Against Law, Government, or Ideology Citizens may like to think of their laws as the means of solving conflicts between individuals rather than causing them. A wronged individual should be able to turn to the law for justice, but in this type of conflict, a government and its laws are corrupt or perceived as corrupt and the hero must take on a system that may be dishonest, discriminatory, or morally bankrupt. Something conceptual, such as a harmful ideology, must be made tangible in media stories, usually in the form of characters and behaviors a protagonist can oppose. An ideological conflict between nations at war, or factions within a government, also needs characters

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or spokespersons to make the positions clear. The Giver (2014) is a film based on the novel of the same name by Lois Lowry (1993) in which a futuristic society confines historical knowledge to one person, the Receiver of Memory. The film shows how a powerful government controls citizen’s lives through a regimen of drugs that erases perceptions of color, emotion, and individuality. This government removes any choice people have in their future under the assumption that people’s choices will always lead to violence and ruin. Once citizens become elderly, the state “releases” them; they are euthanized. As the Receiver of Memory, the young protagonist questions whether people should be  ignorant about their emotions, perceptions, and violent history. He becomes a rebel, defying the government in an attempt to return free will to its citizens. The conflict of an individual against the law can be reversed when the story’s viewpoint favors the government in power and its heroic representative. From one perspective the rebellious character is a freedom fighter, from another perspective the rebellious character is a terrorist or a criminal and the heroic character functions to defend an honorable status quo from external threats. Police detectives, lawyers, judges, even an ordinary citizen might be pitted against the harmful ideologies of fanatics, criminal gangs, or insidious corruption within their own government. The film To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), based on the Harper Lee novel (To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960), tells the story of a lawyer in America’s Depression-era South. Atticus Finch defends a black man against an undeserved rape charge, but he also attempts to defend his children, community, and the American justice system against the ideological damage of racial prejudice.

The Conflict of Individual Against Nature The conflict between an individual and nature might be classified as violence if a character exerts harm against an “animate being.” Both the book Water for Elephants (2006) and the 2011 movie describe the ringmaster of a traveling circus as brutally cruel with the elephant, Rosie, beating her with a hook. Rosie will later attack the ringmaster with an iron stake in what appears to be an act of revenge. The conflict of individual against nature may not lead to actions that researchers have defined as violence if the conflict is between a protagonist fighting for survival against some environmental force. This is not an act of violence. As we said earlier, there is no human agency in a hurricane and a protagonist cannot reason with a storm or overcome it with brute force. The job of the protagonist is simple survival for self and others. In movies based on survival stories like Robinson Caruso (1997), Into the Wild (2007), Robin Caruso on Mars (1964), 127 Hours (2010), Gravity (2013), Backcountry (2014), and Wild (2014), protagonists must find a way to subsist without the convenient amenities of civilization or working technology. The conflicts in these stories are more often obstacles to overcome, unless antagonistic characters intervene with destructive intentions.

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When desperate characters victimize each other as a solution to survival, the conflict reverts to one between individuals. Donner Party is a 2009 film based on the historical events of American settlers who become snowbound in the Sierra Nevada during the winter of 1846–1847. Starvation causes some to resort to cannibalism in a conflict between individuals when certain members of the Donner Party want to sacrifice some to feed others.

The Conflict of Individual Against the Supernatural This is a type of conflict where a protagonist is pitted against the improbable antagonism of zombies, witches, werewolves, ogres, vengeful spirits, space aliens, and other supernatural entities. Independence Day is a 1996 film in which Captain Steven Hiller (Will Smith) takes on space aliens that have come in their gigantic spacecraft to destroy earth. There is no negotiating with these aliens. The captain will join forces with a scientist, David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum), to outsmart the alien’s superior technology. Again, perspectives can be switched so that the story’s protagonist becomes the supernatural individual pitted against human aggression. In the 1990 romance film, Ghost, the spirit of a murdered man must be reconciled with his new status as a ghost but must also find a way to warn his girlfriend that she is in danger. Stories about superheroes at odds with supervillains will also contain supernatural conflict.

Motiveless Violence This type of story has no apparent conflict to resolve. Violence seems to erupt without a festering dispute. The perpetrator appears to enjoy violence for its own sake. One example is the character of Alex DeLarge from the classic film Clockwork Orange (1971). Alex and his gang of delinquents will drug themselves in preparation for an evening of recreational “ultra-violence,” raping, bludgeoning, and murdering strangers just for the “fun” of it. Though the violence may appear to have no logic or reason, it is possible that the violent act does have a motive, just not one easily understood, even by the perpetrator.

The Neighbor: Constructing a Tale of Violence When babies are born, they experience the world as an unfiltered commotion of sensations: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touch. Over time infants will learn to filter experience, shaping sensations into events, events into patterns, and finally patterns into stories with meaning and value. Stories help people make sense out of personal experience. They are an important part of life, reinforcing beliefs and sometimes challenging them. Likewise, the violent incidents people experience in life will not naturally come in a story form but get shaped that way after the storyteller has filtered through the sensations, confusion, and pain of the event to describe what happened.

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The following narrative is based on the account given to me by a young woman about the murder of her next-door neighbor. The narrator is not the victim or the perpetrator of violence, but violence touched her life the way it does for many people, as a witness. Her story transitioned from lived experience, to oral accounts, to media news stories, to social media posts, and finally to a version shaped to fit the requirements of sequential art for this book. In each step of this process, decisions were made about what details should be included and which should be left out. In the graphic narrative, some elements have been emphasized to highlight a particular message about storytelling. This is what media professionals refer to as artistic license.

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Discussion: The Murder of a Neighbor This story retold as a graphic narrative has special characteristics it did not have when it was told orally. The graphic representation doesn’t depict the real characters but the artist’s interpretation of a descriptive account. The violent conflict doesn’t belong to the characters with the most visibility, Marcy and Neil, but to their neighbor, Mike, his girlfriend, and the estranged exhusband who commits the murders. As the narrator, Marcy mentions conflicts she had with Mike over beer cans and music, but the story suggests she either ignored these problems or maybe they just didn’t bother her enough to confront Mike about them. It was a conscious choice in the development of this story to have the violence occur off-panel; the reader does not see Mike and his girlfriend get killed. Like all other graphic stories in this book, this account is “inspired by” a lived experience and not a moment-by-moment literal report of it. The retelling of an experience cannot reproduce the lived event, nor would we want it to. Consider this news story excerpt: “A local man died in a double homicide late Friday. Police said the violence began as a domestic dispute when the alleged perpetrator arrived at a residence, where his ex-wife was visiting her new boyfriend. A neighbor told News Five that she heard shots and saw a man running from the house.” The relationship between the news story and the sequential art may seem thin, but the basic facts of the story, the murder of a man and his girlfriend in a residential neighborhood, have not changed. The sequential art does not explain if violent media stories inspired the perpetrator to commit murder or if an angry ex-husband stalking his ex-wife simply saw an opportunity for violence and took it. News media reporting of the incident did influence Marcy’s understanding of her own lived experience, helping her to shape the story she shared with others. All the stories we tell each other are constructions. People experiencing a violent event firsthand must make decisions about what to include and what to leave out as they explain what happened. As we will discuss in Chapter Two, this is the process of encoding. As time passes and the story is retold, the storyteller is likely to become more skillful with each rehearsal and the story will acquire more definite form.

Theory as Story Some writers have used metaphors to explain theory, describing theory as a “fishing net” that captures facts or a “map” that charts conceptual territory. Because “story” is central to our discussion in this book, I use story as an explanation for theory. Unlike the stories in news reports or in entertainment media, a theory is not a narrative about individuals in conflict but a narrative that explains data and experience. Theory is a very focused and abstract form of

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storytelling based on an understanding of observations, experiments, and other research findings. Theory is not intended to entertain in the way that many stories do, so theory leaves out interesting, idiosyncratic details. A good theory is like a good story, explaining how some aspect of the world works. It concentrates on what is crucial. A good theory will clarify the past, help us to understand the present, and allow us to predict the future. It will be easy to understand and less complex than other explanations. Like any story, people create theories. Philosophers, media critics, and researchers constructed the theories examined in this book to explain how popular media work and the relationship between the violence in media stories and the social violence people experience. Research does not set out to prove or disprove a theory. A theory is not a fact but a way of organizing facts into a helpful narrative. A hypothesis, which is a calculation about the outcomes of research based on that theoretical narrative, can be proved wrong, but the theory that helped shape that hypothesis is simply less useful if it can no longer explain the findings. And that is another requirement social sciences will make of a theory: it will suggest hypotheses that can be tested. A simple hypothesis is a prediction about the influence of an independent variable on a dependent variable. For example, if we predict that watching violent videos will make audiences angry, the viewing of these violent videos would be the independent variable or the cause behind any change on the dependent variable, the mood of an audience. Research testing this hypothesis might come in the form of an experiment measuring audience moods before and after viewing the violent videos. The results of research produce data or evidence. Anecdotal evidence relies on personal testimony, rather than an experiment, survey, or other systematic research. Though a theory might predict the outcome of someone’s personal story, an individual’s unique account is not considered conclusive proof validating the theory as an effective explanation. The graphic narratives in this book are based on anecdotal evidence. As we will see, multiple theories might explain or predict the outcomes of these personal narratives. Not all theories are easily testable and not all theories included for discussion in this book inspire testable hypotheses for research. I include some ideas because the explanations they provide are too intriguing to ignore. A goal of media theory is to be a useful explanation, one that will help us to understand how media operate, the function of violence in media stories, and the impact of media violence on lived experience. The job of theory is to contribute to public understanding about the violence in our storytelling, to help us tell better stories, and to help predict any harmful effects violent contents might have for some audiences. The study of media violence has not been without its own conflicts. Researchers from different perspectives frequently disagree and different theories will present conflicting explanations. Just as one story cannot relate every detail of an event from every perspective, no one theory can fully explain the

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whole of reality. Macroscopic theories attempt broader explanations of our experience. They are concerned with large-scale questions such as how violent media stories contribute to or interfere with society as a whole. Even grand, macroscopic theories may discard, overemphasize, or overlook some important details. Microscopic theories are less troubled with the bigger picture and more involved with smaller questions, such as how individuals find meaning in a media story or the significance and influence of one particular story for a culture. Critics of popular media have many different ideas about how media stories inform our lives and what the violence in these stories means. Structural and functional approaches believe that social groups and institutions are like parts of a living organism, working together to keep a society functioning. Because popular media institutions are among the many interconnected units in a society, when media institutions malfunction or their stories become consistently distorted, violent, or broken, the structural-functional view expects harmful results for the entire society. Cognitive and behavioral theories focus on the psychology of individuals, examining the ways that popular media help individuals interpret events and experiences. A fair number of the theories about violent media effects on audiences come from this perspective. Critical theories tend to be concerned with the conflict of interests in a society and the way the stories of popular media, including the violent ones, help perpetuate ideas about the power of one group over others. Theories from cultural studies are interpretive, attempting to understand how meaning is generated, disseminated, contested, and how this meaning is related to systems of power and control. Because a good theory can help us predict and plan, it has potential to enrich our lives just as the storytelling functions of art, drama, literature, and popular media deepen and expand our experience. Like any great story, a useful theory can improve our understanding of ourselves and our world, but a clumsy, incomplete, or biased theory can distract and confuse us. The human impulse to tell stories is a powerful one. In a classic study about the instinct to find a story, researchers asked subjects to interpret a short animated film in which geometrical figures, a circle, and two triangles (one triangle slightly smaller than the other) move around a large rectangle, which has one section that swings open and shut like a door (Heider & Simmel, 1944). The subjects typically saw the smaller shapes as personalities and the large rectangle as a house. Subjects created elaborate stories in which geometric shapes became characters with intentions. In one example, the triangles are two men fighting over the circle, a woman. The larger triangle is a bully and the circle tries to avoid him. When the smaller triangle and circle escape together, the larger triangle, “blinded by rage and frustration,” breaks the house into pieces (p. 247). Subjects not only found stories in the movements of geometric shapes, they found aggressive stories with fighting and bullying.

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References for Chapter One Anderson, C. A., Berkowitz, L., Donnerstein, E., Heusmann, L. R., Johnson, J. D., Linz, D., .  .  . Wartella, E. (2003). The influence of media violence on youth. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4(3), 81–110. Armer, A. A. (1993). Writing the screenplay: TV and Film. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Baron, R. A., & Richardson, D. R. (1994). Human aggression (2nd ed.). New York: Plenum. Blum, R. (1995). Television and screen writing: From concept to contract (3rd ed.). Boston: Focal Press. British Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcasting Standards Commission, & Independent Television Commission. (2002). Briefing update: Depiction of violence on terrestrial television. London: BBC. Bryant, J., & Zillman, D. (1983). Sports violence (J. H. Goldstein, Ed.). New York: SpringerVerlag (pp. 195–211). Bushman, B. J. (2017). Aggressive cues: Violent media and weapons. In B. J. Bushman (Ed.), Aggression and violence (pp. 184–198). New York: Routledge. Bushman, B. J., & Huesmann, R. (2010). Aggression. In S. T. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Butcher, S. H. (1923). Aristotle’s theory of poetry and fine art: With a critical text and translation of the poetics (4th ed.). New York: Dover Publications. Campbell, J. (1949). The hero with a thousand faces. New York: Meridian Books. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018, June 7). Suicide rates rising across the U.S. CDC Newsroom. Goldstein, J. H. (Ed.). (1998). Why we watch: The attractions of violent entertainment. New York: Oxford University Press. Guttmann, A. (1983). Roman sports violence. In J. H. Goldstein (Ed.), Sports violence (pp. 7–19). New York: Springer-Verlag. Heider, F., & Simmel, M. (1944). An experimental study of apparent behavior. The American Journal of Psychology, 57, 243–259. Hinduja, S., & Patchin, J. W. (2010). Bullying, cyberbullying, and suicide. Archives of Suicide Research, 14(3), 206–221. Indick, W. (2004). Psychology for screenwriters: Building conflict in your script. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese. Lieb, T. (2009). All the news: Writing and reporting for convergent media. Boston: Pearson. Lieberman, J. D., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & McGregor, H. A. (1999). A hot new way to measure aggression: Hot sauce allocation. Aggressive Behavior, 25(5), 331–348. Loureiro, P. R. A., Moreira, T. B. S., & Sachsida, A. (2015). Does the effect of media influence suicide rates? Journal of Economic Studies, 42(3), 415–432. Lowry, L. (1993). The giver. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Murdock, M. (1990). The heroine’s journey: Woman’s quest for wholeness. Boston: Shambhala. Schmidtke, H. H. (1988). The werther effect after television films: New evidence for an old hypothesis. Psychological Medicine, 18(3), 665–676. Signorelli, N., & Gerbner, G. (Eds.). (1988). Violence and terror in the mass media: An annotated bibliography. New York: Greenwood. Schama, S. (Producer and Presenter) & Condie, S. (Director) (2006). “Picasso – Guernica” in Simon Schama’s Power of Art [Documentary Series] London: British Broadcasting Corporation. Stovall, J. G. (2009). Writing for the mass media (7th ed.). Boston: Pearson.

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Twitchell, J. B. (1989). Preposterous violence: Fables of aggression in modern culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Van, H. (2018, April 23). Hero customer rushes waffle house killer and rips away his gun. CNN. Wilkinson, J. S., Grant, A. E., & Fisher, D. J. (2009). Principles of convergent journalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Williams, P., & Dickinson, J. (1993). Fear of crime: Read all about it: The relationship between newspaper crime reporting and fear of crime. British Journal of Criminology, 33(1), 33–56. World Health Organization. (2008). Preventing suicide: A resource for media professionals.

2 THE JOURNEYS OF BRUTAL STORIES

The process of communication deals with the path a media story takes on its journey from the person or people who compose the story to the audiences who will receive it and their responses. All types of media narratives take this journey; however, there may be situations where violent stories get special or different considerations.

Models of the Communication Process “Models are drawings, charts, diagrams, pictograms, schematics—possibly even cartoons—used to reduce complex ideas to a graphic representation” (Stone, Singletary, & Richmond, 1999, p. 26). There are several famous models that describe the communication process: The Shannon and Weaver model (1947), Schramm model (1954), Osgood model (1954), Westley and MacLean model (1957), Berlo model (1960), and Becker model (1968). Each of these might be considered a visual story, or map, emphasizing certain aspects of the journey and its challenges. These models indicate that at its most basic, communication is an interaction between people who may (or may not) share an understanding of the exchanged message. A sender will share thoughts, opinions, or information by encoding or organizing some sign or combination of signs into a message or story and send this message through a channel (media used to create and transmit the story) to the receiver, another person who will decode the story by deciding what it means. Feedback happens when a receiver responds to the original message with a new one. A continued pattern of encoding and decoding between senders and receivers results in a conversation. Even though the sequential art in this book depicts people in conversation and media use, they are more examples of incidents than the lean, highly abstract models of the process.

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Our concern is with media stories, so our focus is on stories that ultimately need interposed devices, or the tools that help create and distribute the story, such as smartphones, computers, cameras, broadcast or cable networks, websites, or any number of devices that are involved in production and delivery. Devices of interposed communication don’t require audiences to pay attention to their stories or even to be polite. A Facebook user has no obligation to read a friend’s post. Similarly, audiences need not pay attention to a television program, sit through a movie at the cinema, watch a YouTube video, or continue to play a video game. However, it is an old media industry understanding that offense, outrage, and violence will engage people regardless of media platform. The violent story is powerful in spite of and because of its interposed devices. An important contribution of the Shannon and Weaver model was the recognition of noise: a barrier any story can encounter on its journey. Noise occurs when some obstacle prevents the successful delivery of the story. Physical or mechanical noise prevents tangible delivery. If a person in a sports bar is trying to hear a televised boxing match on one of many television sets posted around the bar and if music and conversation are so loud that this person can’t hear what the announcer is saying and if other people are blocking the view of the screen, physical noise prevented successful communication. More interesting to our concern about violent messages is the issue of semantic and psychological noise. Semantic noise occurs when there is a problem with encoding and/or decoding; the sender and receiver do not share the same understanding of the story. Senders may be careless with encoding or may simply not have the skills and knowledge to capably produce a story with the intended meaning. Semantic noise also happens on the receiving end when receivers misinterpret, are confused, or don’t share the same understanding of language as the sender. Some members of an audience may not have the ability to competently interpret the story even if it had been expertly crafted. An advantage of violent solutions for a story’s conflicts is their simplicity; violence demands less originality from producers and familiarity makes violent resolutions easy for audiences to understand. Emotions like outrage or sadness can cause psychological noise, making it difficult for upset senders to compose a clear message or for disturbed receivers to pay careful attention. Because the violent story is highly emotional, it’s vulnerable to psychological noise. The explosive elements of a violent story may capture the attention of distracted audiences but the psychological noise they can create might obstruct understanding. One solution to any type of noise is redundancy: repeating parts of a story with variations and examples to help audiences better understand. A popular model of the communication process is a question: Who, Says What, In Which Channel, To Whom, With What Effect? (Lasswell, 1948). In this model the “who” is the sender, “says what” is the message or story, “in which channel” is the interposed device that helps create and distribute that message, “to whom” is

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the audience, and “with what effect?” reflects concern about the outcome or repercussions of that story once it has reached its audience. Media research has examined each part of this model, however much of the research on media violence is concerned with the question of effects, or the impact on individuals and society when audiences attempt to decode or find the meaning in the violent story.

Encoding: The Creation of a Violent Story All media stories begin with individuals compelled to create them. This is true for traditional media, where many people contribute to a story’s construction, as well as with internet or social media, where one individual might have full responsibility. Each media creation begins with an individual at the intrapersonal level, or what happens inside the mind of that person. Thinking is intrapersonal communication, that internal dialogue where messages are composed. Sematic and psychological noise can both occur here. When someone says with exasperation, “Bob doesn’t know his own mind,” it may be that Bob’s thinking includes so much internal noise that Bob doesn’t really know what he wants. Some individuals may need the help of friends or professional counseling to sort out and better understand their own thinking. As mentioned in Chapter One, this is the same context where conflicts between an individual and self can occur. This is also the context where ideas are generated, where individuals sift through inspirations from their environment and grab a camera, compose a song, report what they see, begin that script, or otherwise start crafting a story intended for others. Every story has its gestation at this intrapersonal level, developing from a tension (or a desire to communicate) into a story shaped with verbal, visual, and/or nonverbal language. Even at this intrapersonal level there may also be a bias toward aggressive and violent expressions. Emotions like fear, grief, and anger might have greater influence on those preverbal tensions than contentment, compassion, or joy, just as the violent elements of an environment may have more power to capture an individual’s attention and inspire a story. Ideas explored in later chapters examine in detail possible reasons for this bias.

Verbal Language and Problems in Encoding Verbal communication is based on words, grammar, and structure of language. The process that changes intrapersonal, preverbal tensions from sensation and experience into verbal language is both mysterious and miraculous, and often taken for granted. It’s hard to imagine how our prehistoric ancestors made sense of their world without words. It’s remarkable that someone experiencing joy, grief, anger, or fear has words to express these emotions to others, who can recall their own experiences and understand. Though phenomenal, language does have limitations and it’s these imperfections that make encoding a challenge. The founder of general semantics, Alfred Korzybski, wondered how humanity could

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progress so rapidly in science, math, and engineering and yet still fall victim to misunderstandings, bigotries, hatred, and violence in our dealings with one another. Korzybski believed the weaknesses of language and resulting difficulties for encoding and decoding were contributors. As wondrous as language can be, all language is limited, abstract, and very frequently misused (Johnson, 1975). These problems can lead to noise. Abstraction is selection: that process of choosing some details about reality to compose a story and leaving others out. Abstraction also lets people generalize and think in categories. This is useful. When a person learns that jagged slivers on the ground can painfully cut a bare foot, the ability to give the object and its condition a name, “broken glass,” makes that knowledge easier to remember, generalize to similar situations, and warn an unsuspecting person about the dangers of walking across broken glass without shoes. The colors of the glass, that it was once a vase, that it was thrown in a fit of anger, that the vase had been expensive, and that the shards make beautiful and unexpected patterns on the ground are among many details that are less important given the danger to the barefooted person innocently walking into the destructive scene. Selecting only relevant information is useful. General semantics reminds us that as useful as abstraction can be, abstraction can also cause problems, particularly when the people encoding and decoding are unaware of it. Because language is abstract, words are abstract, but some words are more abstract than others. The word “violence” is a word at a high level of abstraction; it does not evoke a particular action, or, if it does, it suggests different things to different people. Some people may visualize a shootout, others might think of a knife fight, still others might envision troops in a savage battlefield. Any number of examples might come to mind. The abstract nature of the word “violence” is one of the reasons why media researchers have been so careful to define which actions to include in research and which to leave out. Using a phrase like “interpersonal violence” might eliminate the battlefield setting for some but the phrase is still abstract. It does not fully clarify the situation. The word “fistfight,” which suggests people hitting each other with their clenched hands, is a lower, more tangible level of abstraction, more easily visualized. Even less abstract would be to name the two people involved and the specific action used: Mike and Steve exchanged angry straight jabs in a parking lot fistfight yesterday. Reducing the level of abstraction even more would eliminate words and substitute the concrete reality perceived with our senses, but even in direct experience there would be details missed. Different individuals will have a different perspective of the observed event. Human beings are not omniscient. One person might notice details another observer missed. Abstraction causes problems for encoding when people have different ideas about what the words mean. A political slogan declaring a “war on terrorism” may sound good to citizens who are ready to put an end to terrorism. Yet, the highly abstract slogan does not explain how the “war” will be conducted, what government actions

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will be used as the “weapons” in this “war,” and what these weapons will mean for the daily lives of citizens. The phrase does not explain the limitations on this “war,” where the “front” will be, and who will become the “soldiers.” A “war on terror” might mean that some people would be denied citizenship or have it revoked. Remaining citizens might need to carry identification. A “war on terror” could result in travel restrictions or deny opportunities for certain groups of people. It might result in random and aggressive searches of private homes or cause citizens to be assessed higher taxes and fees to help fund the war. These “weapons” might be acceptable to some citizens but not all of those anxious to bring an end to terrorism would be happy with these details. Stuck at a high level of abstraction, the practical consequences of a “war on terror” are vague. General semantics refers to communication trapped at one level of abstraction as “dead level abstraction” (Johnson, 1946, p. 270) and getting stuck there is problematic. Stories caught at low levels of abstraction have too many unimportant details to be useful and never get to the point. At lower levels of abstraction, people can become overwhelmed or bored with an unending list of trivial specifics. As little Martha is about to step barefooted into broken glass, how important is it for her to know that the glass was once an expensive and prestigious cut crystal Waterford vase from Ireland with a classic Lismore pattern and that the vase had been given to little Martha’s parents as a wedding present from Great Aunt Mary, who visited the site where the Waterford glass manufacturing factory was originally built in Ireland (etc.)?

More Limitations of Language General semantics explains that the useful qualities of language, which allow us to classify and generalize, also have the potential to cause categorical thinking or undue identification. Undue identification, or overgeneralization, is a lack of ability to see distinctions in the members of a group. One common type of categorical thinking is media stereotyping, where media portrayals of characters rely on commonly held beliefs or assumptions about a group, which may be wrong. These popular beliefs about the characteristics of a group may not reflect all or even the majority of the members of that group but may instead reflect the ignorance, bias, or laziness of those using the stereotype. Categorical thinking can lead to serious problems. Because American Muslims share a religion exploited by certain violent extremist groups like the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, peaceful Muslims increasingly became targets of hate crimes, vandalism, and intimidation following incidents of violence committed by extremists (Lichtblau, 2016). Attacks on all Muslims because of the violent behaviors of some are an example of categorical thinking and become a justification for prejudice. A person who is grossly addicted to categorical judgments “thinks in terms of verbal fictions or high order abstractions, rather than the extensional, or factual, sources of data and experience” (Johnson, 1975, p. 309).

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For individuals encoding a story and audiences trying to understand what the story means, additional problems of language include slanting, unconscious projection, and two-valued evaluations. Unconscious projection recognizes that things people say and the stories they create are to a large degree personal reactions. Not recognizing unconscious projections can confuse facts with judgments. When a politician brags that his party’s new gun bill is “fantastic,” citizens may interpret the hyperbole as a factual statement from a person in a position to know. The statement might instead reflect the politician’s devotion to his party rather than a careful examination of the bill, which may have serious flaws. If the politician selects only favorable details in public statements about his party’s proposed bill and omits potential harms, the politician is exhibiting what general semantics calls slanting. Slanting is a type of intentional withholding, selecting only the evidence in support of a position and ignoring anything unfavorable. Slanting is a tactic often seen in spin or propaganda. Intentionally withholding important facts from the account of a situation can be dangerous. If important testimony is withheld in a murder trial, the outcome might be a false verdict even if all the other evidence presented is factual. Two-valued evaluation is the tendency to regard problems as having only two solutions rather than a range of options. Language influences this inclination toward two-valued evaluation when it offers two opposing words to describe a situation: good or bad, success or failure, black or white, right or wrong, happy or sad, beautiful or ugly, “my way or the highway.” Most situations are likely to have an assortment of choices, spanning and perhaps extending beyond the possibilities that language offers. Because language is less dynamic than reality, words cause difficulties for understanding our constantly changing physical and social world. We might invent new words, but language fails to keep up and not everyone acquires the newest vocabulary. People may never create words describing unique or rare experiences. Because the language used to describe a complex reality is limited, experiences are difficult to put into words. General semantics reminds us that people can never say everything about anything. Some facts will always be excluded. People, objects, and experiences are not the sum of the words used to describe them. When words trigger memories and experiences, they have emotional power to influence perception. Words that threaten or humiliate can encourage violent response. Words can hurt, heal, clarify, confuse, and inspire reactions across a complicated spectrum of possibilities, including violent ones.

Visual Language and Encoding Problems In addition to verbal language, an encoder or someone producing a story might choose to use visual communication or optical language such as signs, graphics, illustrations, photographs, diagrams, maps, and videos. The sequential art or

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graphic stories in this book are a combination of visual and verbal language. Korzybski reminds us that the images of visual language are also abstractions. “A map is not the territory it represents” (1994, p. 58) but an accurate map can be useful for finding your way across real terrain. Because some visual language so closely resembles the reality it represents, people can forget that such things as photographs and videos are really abstractions that can be misused in ways similar to words. They are subject to unconscious projection, categorical thinking, slanting, and two-valued evaluation. No matter how literal they seem, even photographs can deceive when they show only one perspective, omit important elements, or have been altered in some way. Like words that are different from one language to another, visual communication is not universally understood but “culturally specific” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996, p. 4).

Nonverbal Language and Encoding Problems In addition to verbal and visual communication, an encoder might use nonverbal communication to create a story. Nonverbal communication includes visual elements such as facial expressions, gestures, and costumes. Early silent movies relied heavily on the nonverbal skills of actors. Though the silent movies also used printed titles (or intertitles) to convey dialogue or story points, movements of actors, their smiles, frowns, postures, and actions expressed the bulk of a story. Nonverbal communication can also include audio elements, such as the tone of voice, vocal pitch, volume, and intonation to help create meaning as well as sound effects or music that inspires mood. When verbal and nonverbal signs contradict each other within the same story, the tendency is to give more authority to nonverbal meanings. Sarcasm is one type of communication in which a verbal message appears to contradict nonverbal cues. After learning about a two-hour delay for a flight, the airline passenger who responds with a sigh, a roll of the eyes, and the grumpy remark, “Shoot me now, please,” does not literally want to be shot. The passenger is just annoyed with the delay. Similarly, audiences watching a movie scene showing a tranquil setting with actors in happy dialogue but accompanied by ominous music would be suspicious that this is not really a cheerful scene and something terrible is about to happen. Though verbal, non-verbal, and visual signs can each be used alone in the encoding of a media story, they are often combined. People create media stories. At the intrapersonal level, a person grapples with choosing words, visual images, and attitudes that will most effectively tell the story in the process of encoding. In the graphic story in Chapter One, the character of Marcy had to sift through the bewildering sensations of her lived experience to find the right words to compose her explanation of the events surrounding her neighbor’s murder. Some of the things she initially shared may not have been relevant to what first responders needed to know. General semantics warns that the process of encoding is challenging work, plagued with

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hazards. Audience understanding of any narrative can be no more reliable than what “abstraction, identification, slanting, and projection will permit” (Johnson, 1975, p. 315).

Encoding and Traditional Versus Internet Media Although someone encoding a story for the internet might have collaborators, it is possible for a single individual with access to the appropriate interposed devices to create and share a story on social media or websites, no elite professional training, talent, or consultants necessary. A message composed at that intrapersonal level can go directly to its audience. However, someone dealing with creating content for traditional media must contend with the additional complexities of interpersonal, group, and corporate communications. Corporations creating traditional media stories will often employ teams of experts working in specialized departments to make encoding decisions. The production of stories for traditional media usually requires training, professional skills, and employment in a place like a studio, news department, or production company for the privilege to make these stories. For this reason, traditional media are sometimes referred to as “industrial media.” They are the businesses that create or manufacture media stories as products for consumers (the audience). Traditional media are also referred to as “mass media” because their products are intended for distribution to large audiences. Mature media outlets that emerged in earlier centuries and have managed to survive into the 21st are sometimes referred to as “legacy media” or “old media.” Studies of traditional media have historically arranged them in two groups: print and electronic media. “Print media” collectively referred to books, newspapers, and magazines. “Electronic media” collectively referred to radio, television, sound recording, and motion pictures. Changing times and technologies blurred these former media boundaries. Traditional print media are now delivered in electronic form to devices like digital tablets. Some books, journals, and magazines may never see a printed form. Websites combine written text with audio, graphics, photography, and moving video. Though some people will still refer to media as either “print” or “electronic,” these forms have clearly merged. Internet and traditional media are also merging, though at this writing there are still recognizable differences. Where internet stories are more quickly produced and can be altered almost instantaneously through comments or editing, industrial media stories can take many days, even years for production to be completed. Once production is finished (or the encoding is done), industrial media stories are difficult to change. It is no minor thing to rework a chapter in a book that has already been published or modify a scene in a feature film after its premiere. Another difference is cost. Industrial media typically involve significant resources for both production and distribution. Internet media stories are comparatively inexpensive to make

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and may have more inconsistency in production quality. The social networking service, Twitter, restricts messages or “Tweets” to an economical 280 characters. Without the expenses of professional talent, homemade videos for YouTube might have flaws like blurry focus, unsteady camerawork, and the uneven audio quality associated with amateur producers. Though there are often differences between industrial and internet media in costs, production skills, and speed of production, some internet media productions can be indistinguishable from industrial media in quality, especially as more businesses, political lobbies, and professional groups turn to the internet to help circulate ideas, cultivate audiences, and sell products. The industrial media use of social media involves the efforts of media professionals working in the virtual communities of inexpensive social media to cultivate audience attention. In this case, a story created for social media distribution can have all the complexities of encoding associated with traditional media. The aesthetics of social media stories have also influenced decisions in industrial media production, when professionals intentionally mimic the rougher, “edgier” qualities of amateur productions. Media channels do not operate in isolation. While some media practitioners view other media forms as competitors for audience attention, contemporary media also tend to be symbiotic. One medium may influence another in an economically beneficial way. A film may encourage audiences to read the novel on which the film was based or a documentary may excite audiences to read a magazine article on the same subject. Similarly, newspapers and magazines often write about movies and video games. Social media platforms can draw attention to industrial media contents and industrial media often report on the activities of social media or draw inspiration from their stories. The result is that violent contents are often reproduced and promoted across platforms.

The Internet, Viral Narratives, and Mass Audiences When many users of social media share the content of another user, a social media message can reach a mass audience. The quickly shared story becomes a viral one. A rapidly spreading, viral story can also infect industrial media because of the attention it gets. On May 19, 2016 a Texas woman, Candace Payne, broke a Facebook live record with more than 160 million views after she bought a Chewbacca mask and decided, “I had to share with my friends on the internet webs.” The video this wife and mother created of herself as she put on her newly purchased mask and laughed hysterically was silly, not violent (though some might note that the mask visually references a character in the Star Wars movie franchise, which has been exploding with on-screen, intergalactic atrocities since 1977). Payne’s story is also one without serious conflict. The only conflict came from a fleeting sense of embarrassment this mother felt for buying a child’s toy, but she resisted the notion that the mask

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should be for children and not their mothers. Payne wanted the mask; she bought the mask; she enjoyed it. At a time when one of the scarcest resources of modern life is attention, Payne’s Facebook video managed to capture widespread audience interest. It became such a social media sensation that Payne was later featured on traditional media outlets, such as ABC’s Good Morning America (May 23, 2016), which brought even more attention to her video. Not only were millions of people amused with Payne’s delight in her Chewbacca mask, a fair number of those people wanted to experience her apparent joy for themselves. Hasbro, the company that manufactured the mask, reported record sales at some major retailers. The story of Candace Payne and her Chewbacca mask underscores how much America has become an attention economy. All media stories are abundant in American culture but attention is scarce (Davenport & Beck, 2001). A viral message may not be important, better, or even valid, but a viral message gets noticed against overwhelming and competing options. A viral message is one with profit potential. Emerging patterns of collective attention—or trends— can determine what new stories get generated and consumed. Social media stories need not become viral to ultimately reach a mass audience. A viral story has speed and broad reach. A spreadable story takes longer to circulate through different online groups, where the story is more likely to be altered or enhanced with new details on its journey to reach a mass audience (Jenkins, Ford, & Green, 2013).

A Story’s Path and Traditional/Industrial Media Encoding in the traditional or industrial media setting often involves specialists and experts so that the sender is not one person but multiple people making decisions about what the completed media product will be. As with internet media, encoding for industrial media also starts at the intrapersonal level but will at some point begin traveling through ever larger contexts of communication. When a story leaves the intrapersonal context to involve two people in conversation and planning, it becomes interpersonal communication and doubles in complexity. With each additional person, the possibility for noise and misunderstanding increases. However, feedback in this context is likely to be immediate, so there is more opportunity to overcome noise when people can directly ask and answer questions. Going up the hierarchy of communication contexts from the fewest to the largest number of participants, the next situation the story encounters is group communication, where several people are temporally gathered in conversation, as in a production meeting or a newsroom. The addition of more people increases the possibility for noise. The larger context also slows or reduces the capacity for feedback. Some people in a group are shy about asking questions or voicing an opinion. There may not be time in a meeting for everyone to discuss an issue and fewer opportunities to overcome semantic or psychological noise. The

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next context is organizational communication. As we said earlier, most industrial media are business organizations or institutions, where employees act in defined roles with sets of norms and rules, some of which may include ideas about what makes a story important or relatable. As with group communication, the addition of more people and even groups of people in departments creates the likelihood for more noise in the system. Again, feedback is reduced. It is no accident that the contexts of communication mirror some of the contexts for conflict discussed in Chapter One. As a media story travels through this hierarchy of contexts and situations toward a mass audience, it will encounter many other messages in interpersonal, group, and organizational settings that are intended to shape that final media product. Each site is also an arena for possible conflict, as professional differences, negotiation, and compromise can influence the construction of that finished product. The final communication context is mass communication, where the finished message or media product reaches its destination, a huge audience. Feedback at this level has historically been so uneven and delayed for industrial media that corporations have paid for ratings and other research to better determine how audiences respond to their stories. However, the goal behind audience research is often less about overcoming noise and more about knowing what to charge advertisers. Even at the very beginnings of its industrial media systems, America was already an attention economy. Though the internet can allow a person to bypass layers of corporate communication and upload a video directly to the web (without the intervention of a major corporate studio) or allow a writer to promptly publish a blog (without the intervention of corporate editors), the multiple receivers that see the work if it is promoted and shared means multiple interpretations and manifold opportunities for noise. The semantic noise that results from a breakdown of shared meaning between sender and receiver and the psychological noise that twists a story’s purpose can happen at any location on a story’s journey through layers of communication.

Gatekeeping on the Journey of a Story One concept central to the journey of stories is the concept of “gatekeeping.” Social psychologist Kurt Lewin coined the phrase to describe how ideas and information are filtered for public distribution (Donohew, 1967). Originally the term applied specifically to the decision-making process in a news organization that transmits, holds back, or shapes the information in a story. The gatekeeping process occurs at all levels of the corporate news structure—from the assignment editor, deciding which stories are important, to the reporter deciding which sources to interview and what information should be included, to the news director deciding whether the story should be published and where this story will be placed in relation to other stories.

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The concept of gatekeeping can also be applied to media industries other than news (Barzilai-Nahon, 2009). In the production of a major studio film, executive producers will decide which script should be produced (sometimes following the advice of readers and agents) and how much will go into the budget for the production. During the production process, scripts get altered, cut, and rearranged by a variety of people from directors and producers to cinematographers, designers, actors, investors, and even insurers. Sometimes decisions are such that the distribution of a finished movie will be delayed or it might not get distribution at all. In traditional media industries, the gatekeepers include such diverse roles as TV news directors, movie producers, sound editors, station managers, game developers, reporters, lawyers, and performers of all types. Each of these people can modify a final product by opening the gate, conditionally opening a gate to influence the encoding and alter the story, or shutting the gate entirely so that a media product never reaches any audience.

Controlling the Gates Media gatekeeping follows various controls: economic limitations, individual preferences, and ideology. One frequent criticism of American media is that economic control is the driving force in production. Economic control considers the profit potential of a media story and how ideas about revenue drive the investment or budget allotted for story acquisition, production, and distribution. When a studio’s executive producer significantly cuts a production budget, preventing the director from shooting certain elements of the script as envisioned or refuses financial backing altogether, closing the gate on that project, these are both economic controls. Basic production costs for motion pictures have risen at a steady rate so that financial investment in hopes of that blockbuster success is a risky business. Economic control may be a major factor in the bias toward violence in media production. The larger the investment, the more likely a media story will contain spectacular and violent visual effects. The production and distribution of movies saturated with violent content is part of a “strategy to maximize the success of the latest generation of blockbuster movie releases” (Trend, 2007, p. 86). Capitalistic motives also infect newsrooms, where concern may be less about informing a democratic citizenry and more about grabbing audience attention and advertiser dollars. Economic control occurs when a news director decides where to spend the news department’s resources and which stories get the investment of a reporter’s time. Stunning, shocking, and vicious stories may be more likely to get that investment. Anecdotal accounts from local newsrooms suggest that more violent stories are consistently selected over others, even if other stories may have more consequences for the local community. A

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murder-suicide might bump a report on a local school board out of the news lineup, even though the school board is making important decisions about the education of the community’s children and the perpetrator of a murder-suicide is no longer an active threat. My former assignments editor used to refer to board meetings as “bored” meetings, suggesting that coverage of these events makes for tedious stories that negatively impact advertiser happiness. Economic considerations have also influenced decisions about downsizing of newsrooms and closing of foreign bureaus. In addition to economic controls, personal preferences, judgments, and biases influence the gatekeeping process. Producers exercise personal judgment when they believe explicit violence is necessary for public enjoyment of a movie and demand directors include more vivid displays of bloodshed. If a successful media professional like director Quentin Tarantino develops a reputation for violent narratives, it is likely his future work will have similar violent qualities. An examination of Tarantino’s feature films revealed that on-screen deaths have increased with each subsequent release (Roeder, 2015). When an assignment editor in the newsroom decides not to send a reporter to cover a particular story because it does not resonate with his or her own interests, that editor is exercising preferential control. Bias may not be common in professional journalistic practice. One study on gatekeeping in news showed that for the mainstream press, professional considerations tended to exert a stronger force on a journalist’s decision-making than personal preferences (Shoemaker, Eichholz, Kim, & Wrigley, 2001). A third gatekeeping control is ideology. The value system of a media organization can determine which stories will be selected, how they will be produced, and when or if they will be distributed. The ultra-conservative and often bellicose ideology of the Breitbart News Network will determine what stories the tabloid website will promote and how those stories are treated.

Gatekeeping, the Internet, and Social Media Incidents of murder and sexual assault streamed live on Facebook created public concern about a lack of traditional gatekeeping controls and content supervision in the context of social media (Wamsley, 2017). Because terrorist groups, reckless individuals, and hostile governments are able to avoid industrial media gatekeeping and directly distribute their propaganda through social media, companies like Facebook and Twitter have responded to public pressure to exercise more oversight of the contents they publish (Guynn, 2017; Andrews & Seetharaman, 2017). Though it is still possible for internet producers to sidestep industrial media forms of gatekeeping, internet gatekeeping does occur. Social media outlets have systems where users or professional monitors flag or report violent and inappropriate material, serving a gatekeeping control. Outlets like

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the video-sharing website YouTube will review and remove contents that violate “terms of service” or is illegal, such as hate speech or infringement of copyright laws. Organizations, governments, and individual users can also block websites. Not all internet users who repost, share, or retweet material have equal influence. Organizations will identify and engage influential users or social mediators, who become gatekeepers when they decide what stories to emphasize and how to interact with that content. Organizations depend on these third parties to participate in content distribution in the social media hybrid of personal and mass communication (Himelboim, Golan, Moon, & Suto, 2014). Additional concerns for internet use involve the algorithmic gatekeeping that tailors web search results to an individual user’s interests. Internet applications filter messages based on an individual’s past internet use, sorting for those most agreeable and trapping the user inside a gatekeeping filter of personal bias. Like a suburban gated community blocking undesirables from access to a neighborhood, internet bubbles keep unwanted stories out. In a space guarded by gates of their own making, audiences may not be exposed to different ideas or debates important to a democracy but bloat on the media “junk food” they like best (Pariser, 2011). When the Federal Communications Commission voted to remove net neutrality protections in 2017, some critics saw this action as a way to allow Internet Service Providers (ISP) the opportunity to exercise economic control over both internet users and content providers. Net neutrality is the belief that ISPs must treat all internet data the same, without blocking or slowing some content, charging some websites more to operate, or charging consumers more to get access to certain stories. The goal of net neutrality was to preserve a Darwinian competition among every conceivable use of the internet so that only the best stories survive (Wu, 2003). Critics who opposed the concept of net neutrality considered it to be a form of consumer welfare. Some ISPs are also media companies, so removal of net neutrality caused concern that these companies would create faster lanes of delivery for their own content, making it more difficult for independent producers to reach audiences. Critics worried that economic control would effectively block some innovators from the marketplace of ideas. Others feared that in addition to economic gatekeeping, the loss of net neutrality opened the door for personal bias and ideological gatekeeping. As of this writing, there are legal challenges expected from public interest groups and a few predictions that new laws will restore at least some of net neutrality (Kang, 2017). The loss of net neutrality may not significantly influence the amount or distribution of violent stories, unless some stories become too expensive for audiences to access, ISPs decide to exercise more

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control over violent or deceptive contents, or the government decides policies are necessary for internet regulation.

Gatekeeping and Distortion Distortions occur in gatekeeping when decisions skew the media story, its distribution, or reception. Random distortion occurs through carelessness, ignorance, or chance economic factors that may not be integrated into the system. The errors that occur from random distortion are unpredictable and accidental. Systematic distortion is the result of deliberate bias. When research shows a prevalence of violent content in a media system, as the National Television Violence Study showed in its three-year research on television (1996), it suggests a systematic bias for violence in the processes of encoding at those important junctures where content decisions get made. An example of systematic distortion in social media comes in the form of bots, an algorithmic robot that generates convincing online personalities. Bots are not real people but fake accounts that can be programmed to automatically generate messages or share messages on certain topics, creating “a giant pyramid scheme” on social media where fake friends command real money (Bilton, 2014). By manipulating search results, bots can make a topic appear to be trending, spread false information, suppress other information, and influence public opinion (Finger & Dutta, 2014, pp. 156–158). Though bots violate user agreements on most social media sites, the money they earn for their creators has caused bot fabrication to become a lucrative enterprise. When they influence Google’s ranking algorithm, bots cause systematic distortion, creating the illusion that certain topics are important to the larger public. One concern raised in the 2016 American presidential election was that through systematic distortion, Russian bots helped to sway some voter opinions in favor of Donald Trump by spreading malicious and false information about his rival Hillary Clinton. The prevalence and tactics behind disruptive social media stories were as invisible to the public as they were invasive (Earle, 2017). If bots generate an illusion of support for an idea, they can create actual support when real people share what appears to be a prevalent opinion, sparking a bandwagon effect. Similarly, sockpuppets are accounts operated by real people using fake identities with goals to influence public opinion through distortion. Gatekeeping is a necessary and important function. It is such a regular part of the media production process that gatekeepers themselves are often unaware that the decisions they make not only affect the outcome of a media product but can also touch the lives of audiences. Audiences are often unaware of the gatekeeping involved in development of professional media products or of their own gatekeeping activities in selecting where to put their attention. Similarly,

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individuals on social media may be unaware of their role as gatekeepers when they share stories, alter stories, or enrich them with new material. Gatekeeping seems to have a bias toward violent stories. The economic success of some violent narratives provides an incentive for creating similar stories. Considering the numerous difficulties encountered in encoding, violence is an easily understood solution to conflict. When many people are involved in the gatekeeping process, the simple story can have advantages over more complex ones. If the goal is to export a media story to foreign markets, the violent story can overcome all manner of language difficulties, even if the story’s larger significance is misunderstood.

Agenda-Setting on the Journey The theory of agenda-setting is related to the concept of gatekeeping, dealing with which stories get selected over others for distribution to the public. Agenda-setting is usually discussed in the context of news media and is considered one of the moderate theories of media effects. Agenda-setting predicts that traditional news media may not shape audience opinions on a topic or influence behavior but will instead determine what topics dominate public conversations. Media may not be successful in telling people what to think but are “stunningly successful in telling people what to think about” (Cohen, 1963, p.  13). By prioritizing issues, the news will suggest which subjects are critical. Items not covered are judged to be less significant or may not be part of public awareness. The authors who coined the term agenda-setting, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, tested the concept during the 1968 presidential campaign. Results showed a strong correlation between media topics and topics voters believed were important, supporting the agenda-setting effect (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). This study did not show where influence originated, but later research suggested that media could be shaping the public’s agenda (Shaw & McCombs, 1977; McCombs, 2014). It is a challenge to determine the agenda-setting function in a media ecosystem where bots and sockpuppets manipulate trending topics. It is equally challenging to determine who sets the agenda when active audiences interpret, reject, and dispute the media they use (Freeman & Berger, 2011). Some research suggests that the power to get attention has been redistributed such that traditional media agenda-setting is now just one force among many competing influences (Meraz, 2009). Other research suggests that conversations existing on social media sites represent the agenda set forth by industrial media sources, when trending topics on Twitter focus on the headlines of major industrial media outlets. If this is the case, rather than setting the agenda, social media

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become a measurement of public opinion about topics industrial media put forward (Thorndyke, 2012). Simple observation shows that a powerful public figure like a president can—with a single Tweet—set the agenda for a full news cycle. As with the description of agenda-setting in traditional media, a Tweet from a powerful public figure does not necessarily change opinions of audiences nor will it influence how reporters will frame coverage of the Tweet. The Tweet may not be successful in telling people what to think but is stunningly successful in setting the topic of public conversation. There have been additional concerns about the agenda-setting function of fake news and the impact of fact checkers attempting to keep up with and debunk false stories. While fake news websites did influence the issue agendas of partisan news coverage, research showed that mainstream media resisted these agendas (Vargo, Guo, & Amazeen, 2018). Fact checkers were unable to influence news agendas, a finding consistent with research showing that corrections do not spread as widely as sensational deceptions. Two concepts sometimes grouped with agenda-setting are priming and framing. The priming effect occurs when news media focus or emphasize certain aspects of an issue. Elements that receive extensive coverage may become important for audiences, while ignored elements lose credibility (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987). Audiences note the position of a story and recognize leading stories as more important (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; Iyengar, Peters, & Kinder, 1982)). By providing a meaningful narrative or a point of view for facts, journalists can frame an issue, influencing audience understanding (Goffman, 1974; Gamson  & Modigliani, 1987). A study examining television news coverage of the Los Angeles immigration rights rally on May 1, 2007 discovered that reporting of the riots on the ground framed the events as an excessive police attack. However, on the following day, news reports reframed the event, blaming victims for violent provocation (Ana, Lopez, & Munguia, 2010). Extra attention focused on an issue strengthens audience attitudes about that topic (Kiousis & McCombs, 2004). While these ideas are sometimes grouped together, priming, framing, and agenda-setting are different theories of media effects (Scheufele, 2000).

Not on the Public Agenda: Cinder the Cat The following story was originally told as an example of media agendasetting, yet the kitten’s story was never presented in the news. Instead, this case references another case that did make the news and the public agenda and is also credited with changing North Carolina laws about animal abuse and neglect.

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Discussion: Susie and Cinder The case mentioned in “Cinder the Cat” was a news story from 2009 reporting the discovery of an abused, mixed breed puppy named Susie in a North Carolina park. Susie’s ears were burned, her jaw was cracked, and her teeth were broken. A Crimestoppers tip resulted in the arrest of Susie’s abuser and exposed North Carolina’s weak animal cruelty laws. The abuser spent a short time in jail for burning his girlfriend’s personal property. If the puppy had belonged to the abuser, there would have been no sentence. Shocked citizens developed a grassroots campaign to change the existing law, writing letters to legislators demanding stiffer penalties for anyone who would so brutally mistreat a living creature. The result was a bipartisan effort, House Bill 1690 or “Susie’s Law,” which made animal abuse a Class H felony. Knowing that Susie’s story emerged from a grassroots campaign by outraged citizens committed to changing the law, you might argue that angry citizens rather than news reports put animal abuse on the public agenda. If citizens had not lobbied legislators, news outlets might not have featured Susie’s story. But, if news media had not covered the story, lawmakers might not have been as eager to sign the bill. Dr. Holt could not get a news reporter interested in her earlier case of animal neglect, which closed the gate on that story. The vet additionally mentions the continuing problem of dog fighting. In earlier centuries, animal fighting was an established and legal sporting activity. Dog and cock fighting did not reflect negatively on a person’s character but were considered tournaments on which gentlemen gambled. However, by the 20th century, public attitudes toward animals had changed and laws prohibited animal fighting. Yet, neither laws nor media advertising that framed pet ownership as “pet parenting” stopped dog fighting, which continued into the 21st century as an underground blood sport (Izadi, 2015).

The Journey of Messages in a Saturated Ecosystem Constructing stories for industrial or social media is a complicated process, more complex than a simple linear model might suggest. Encoding is alive with semantic dangers. A media narrative may not easily flow from sender to receiver. Stories can be incomplete and can encounter barriers on their journeys that might alter some stories or stop others from reaching the intended audience. Receivers may be unaware of the “take away” that creators  intended and media producers may be unaware of some of the ideas they are inadvertently encoding into the stories they make. Biases in favor of violent stories may begin at the intrapersonal level and continue throughout the journey of a media story at every gatekeeping juncture. As a simplistic solution to conflict, violence is compelling, straightforward, and easily understood. The violent story may be easier to encode and decode and its emotional power might give the violent story the force necessary to shatter some

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gatekeeping barriers. Even though it may seem less complicated, the violent narrative is like all stories: susceptible to hazards in visual, verbal, and nonverbal languages. Because it is disturbing, the violent story may be more vulnerable to psychological noise. Historically, people lived in an environment that was communication deprived. Until Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440, the available media were expensive and rare hand-copied books. For much of human history, it was the elites of society who had access to media. Most people were not literate or affluent enough for books and pamphlets. With each technological advance, audiences for media stories grew. Moving image media required less in the way of traditional literacy. A person unable to read a book might understand a film or television show. Writing in the mid-20th century, the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan believed the technologies delivering media stories motivated human behavior. Technological determinism describes media as extensions of the human nervous system; the technologies we make and use have profound effects on how we think and organize our social lives (McLuhan, 1962, 1964). Visual media technologies make audiences less dependent on the linear logic necessary for reading, engaging emotional interpretation and response instead. Modern technologies liberated humanity from the linear world, bringing us into a new tribal collective. McLuhan considered that digital connections could reconstruct the ancient village into a global one, engaging emotional intelligence. By focusing public attention on the problems of human experience and helping people to better know and understand one another, an idealist might believe that media communication would bring an era of peace. Even the word “communication” suggests warmth, companionship, and understanding. Surely “mass” communication meant potential for international friendship and compassion—one peaceful, global community. At the time McLuhan was writing, media had limited outlets and networks. An internet infected with deceitful bots, malicious individuals, dishonest governments, and angry fringe groups had not yet become an integral part of our technological nervous system. If popular media ever had the potential to unite a troubled world, it was never realized. Instead, the information explosion expanded in the new millennium, resulting in an ever more fractured public attention. Our social and intellectual environments were subject to communication pollution, encouraging audiences to develop strategies for tuning out the vast amounts of trivial messages fighting for public recognition. The concern is that in an environment filled with story clutter, brutal stories have the power to get noticed. People may not live better lives, react more humanely, or better understand the world in an era of information pollution. Instead, the critics warn us that the popular media stories most likely to get attention increasingly invite audiences into a world of intimidation, aggression, and violence.

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References for Chapter Two Ana, O. S., Lopez, L., & Munguia, E. (2010). Framing peace as violence: Television news depictions of the 2007 police attack on immigrant rights marchers in Los Angeles. Aztlan, 35(1), 69–101. Andrews, N., & Seetharaman, D. (2017, February 11). Facebook steps up anti-terror efforts. The Wall Street Journal. Barzilai-Nahon, K. (2009). Gatekeeping: A critical review. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 43(1), 433–478. Bilton, N. (2014, November 19). Social media bots offer phony friends and real profit. The New York Times. Cohen, B. (1963). The press and foreign policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Davenport, T. H., & Beck, J. C. (2001). The attention economy: Understanding the new currency of business. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Donohew, L. (1967). Newspaper gatekeepers and forces in the news channel. Public Opinion Quarterly, 31(1), 61–68. Earle, S. (2017, October 14). Trolls, bots, and fake news: The mysterious world of social media manipulation. Newsweek. Finger, L., & Dutta, S. (2014). Ask, measure, learn. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media. Freeman, M., & Berger, L. (2011). The issue of relevance of agenda-setting theory to the online community. Meta-Communicate, 1(1), 1–22. Gamson, W. A., & Modigliani, A. (1987). The changing culture of affirmative action. In R. G. Braungart & M. M. Braungart (Eds.), Research in political sociology (Vol. 3, pp. 137–177). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. New York: Harper & Row. Guynn, J. (2017, March 27). Facebook, Google, Twitter pressured to do more to fight terrorism on platforms. USA Today. Himelboim, I., Golan, G. J., Moon, B. B., & Suto, R. J. (2014). A social networks approach to public relations on Twitter: Social mediators and mediated public relations. Journal of Public Relations Research, 26(4), 359–379. Iyengar, S., & Kinder, D. R. (1987). News that matters: Television and American opinion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Iyengar, S., Peters, M. D., & Kinder, D. R. (1982). Experimental demonstrations of the “not-so-minimal” consequences of television news programs. American Political Science Review, 76, 848–858. Izadi, E. (2015, September 30). 23 Pit Bulls, including Seven Puppies, recovered in North Carolina Dog fighting investigation. The Washington Post. Jenkins, H., Ford, S., & Green, J. (2013). Spreadable media: Creating meaning and value in a networked culture. New York: New York University Press. Johnson, W. (1946). People in quandaries. New York: Harper and Brothers. Johnson, W. (1975). The communication process and general semantics principles. In W. Schramm (Ed.), Mass communication (2nd ed., pp. 301–315). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Kang, C. (2017, December 15). What’s next after the repeal of net neutrality? The New York Times. Kiousis, S., & McCombs, M. (2004). Agenda-setting effects and attitude strength. Communication Research, 31(6), 36–57. Korzybski, A. (1994). Science and sanity: An introduction to non-aristotelian systems and general semantics (5th ed.). Englewood, NJ: Institute of General Semantics.

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Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading images: The grammar of visual design. New York: Routledge. Lasswell, H. (1948). The structure and function of communication in society. In L. Bryson (Ed.), The communication of ideas (pp. 37–51). New York: Harper and Brothers. Lichtblau, E. (2016, September 17). Hate crimes against Muslims most since post 9–11 era. New York Times. McCombs, M. (2014). Setting the agenda: The mass media and public opinion (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press. McCombs, M., & Shaw, D. (1972). Agenda-setting function of mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(20), 176–187. McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg galaxy: The making of typographic man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media: The extensions of man. New York: McGraw-Hill. Meraz, S. (2009). Is there an elite hold? Traditional media to social media agenda setting influence in blog networks. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14, 682–707. Pariser, E. (2011). The filter bubble: What the internet is hiding from you. New York: Penguin Press. Roeder, O. (2015, December 9). A complete catalog of every time someone cursed or bled out in a Quentin Tarantino movie. FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver’s Political Calculus. Scheufele, D. A. (2000). Agenda-setting, priming, and framing revisited: Another look at cognitive effects of political communication. Mass Communication and Society, 3(2–3), 297–316. Shaw, D. L., & McCombs, M. (Eds.). (1977). The emergence of American political issues: The agenda-setting function of the press. St. Paul, MN: West. Shoemaker, P. J., Eichholz, M., Kim, E., & Wrigley, B. (2001). Individual and routine forces in gatekeeping. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 78(2), 233–246. Stone, G., Singletary, M., & Richmond, V. P. (1999). Clarifying communication theories: A hands-on approach. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press. Thorndyke, J. (2012). The role of agenda setting in social media: A look at the relationship between Twitter and the mass media’s agenda. In Vasa. Carolina del Norte, USA. Trend, D. (2007). The myth of media violence. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Vargo, C. J., Guo, L., & Amazeen, M. A. (2018). The agenda-setting power of fake news: A big data analysis of the online media landscape from 2014 to 2016. New Media and Society, 20(5), 2028–2049. Wamsley, L. (2017, April 2). 14-year-old charged in sexual assault broadcast on Facebook live. NPR. Wu, T. (2003). Network neutrality, broadband discrimination. Journal on Telecom and High Tech Law, 2, 141–175.

3 HELPLESS AUDIENCES AND THE MAGIC BULLET

As media became more important to average Americans in the 20th century, some of the earliest concerns were about how powerful, persuasive, and violent media stories would affect public life. Media critics worried that audience vulnerability to government propaganda, corporate advertising, and violent entertainment, would have a disastrous effect on a free and democratic society. The concern was that newspapers, magazines, radio, film, and, later, television could have absolute power to influence audience thinking and behavior. This idea of an all-powerful media was called “direct effects theory,” “hypodermic needle theory,” “transmission belt theory,” or “magic bullet theory” (Carey, 1996). The “magic bullet” evoked images of villainous media moguls in control of the effective weaponry of media technology firing “magic bullets” (media stories) directly into vulnerable targets: the minds of audiences. Media stories were also compared to a powerful drug directly injected into the brains of helpless people who passively accepted those stories and reacted accordingly. Some critics used the metaphor of a transmission belt that transferred the force of the media engine into the actions of an audience. The obvious concern was that any media attempt to influence people would result in the immediate and direct response producers wanted. This uncomplicated narrative about direct media effects was the predominant description of media influence during the period from the late 1920s into the 1950s. Although scientists have generally abandoned the magic bullet theory as too simple an explanation, among ordinary citizens and political leaders the idea of direct media effects continues to surface in debates about the power of media in public life.

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Assumptions Behind the Bullet Underlying this theory of direct effects were several important observations about the emerging 20th century society. As people moved from farming life into bustling cities and found work in offices and factories, detached relationships appeared to replace close family connections, friendships, ethnic identities, and tight-knit community interactions. Public life seemed bureaucratic and disconnected. Although rapid developments in such things as trains, cars, and telephones had increased human contact, observers noticed that people seemed emotionally detached. Sitting next to each other but hidden behind their newspapers, commuters on trains remained strangers. Neighbors living in a large apartment building barely seemed to know the families living next door. Workers on the same job at the same company but on different shifts might not even recognize each other. People were no longer valued for their unique qualities as individuals but for their ability to complete a job or fulfill a contractual obligation. Employment became more specialized and people became more interdependent, like the various parts of a giant, interconnected machine. The narrative of direct media effects envisioned this alienated mass of people as extremely malleable because of their isolation from one another. Violent, sensational, or propagandistic media stories alarmed community leaders for the power they seemed to have to attract large audiences, while the power of family, community, and religious institutions to intervene and contradict these stories seemed to decline. Contributing to the story of direct media effects was the observation that human beings are biologically similar. Most people have two arms, two legs, a head, and one torso. We all have cells, organs, skin, bone, and blood. With the exception of sexual difference, the workings of the human body are similar from person to person. We all need to eat, sleep, and breathe. Because human beings are biologically similar, the thinking was that people are psychologically or emotionally similar as well. Sitting in a darkened film theater and observing how an audience seemed to laugh in unison at the slapstick antics of Charlie Chaplin, it would be easy to believe that all audiences would respond in a direct and predictable way to the intentions behind a carefully crafted message. This 20th century narrative behind direct media effects had some gloomy implications for American life. The theory imagined average people as weakminded and ignorant, attracted to cheap thrills and easily understood ideas. If it was true that a media story could directly influence average people, then a dictator gaining control of popular media could easily undermine a democratic society and install a totalitarian regime. This also meant that capricious commercial forces in control of popular media could be as destructive as a totalitarian regime. Not only would audiences be vulnerable to political propaganda, they would be vulnerable to the worst impulses of a greedy corporate media. With profit as the motive, commercial interests would pander to an inferior mass audience, weakening aesthetic tastes and cultural standards. Numerical dominance and

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economic triumph would determine accomplishment, not the actual artistry in a story’s construction or the qualities of the ideas it promoted. A successful radio program would simply have the highest ratings and the successful film would have the largest box office draw. Media corruption of the public mind would then lead to terrible, long-term consequences, stunting invention and crippling intellectual and artistic development for both individuals and society. Moreover, media stories that glorified crime and violence would certainly doom society to moral decline. Some assumptions about society underlying the “magic bullet theory” did not hold true. While people do have biological similarities, people also have important biological differences that determine their reactions to an environment. The peanut allergy that sends one man to the hospital might have no discernible effect on the health of his dinner partner. Just as there are important biological variations from individual to individual, there are important psychological and emotional differences. The action film that one viewer finds haunting and emotionally upsetting might only be a temporary and easily forgotten distraction for another member of the same audience. After watching a fast food commercial, a hungry viewer might immediately go purchase the advertised hamburger, but most of the audience will not be so immediately and exactly swayed. The problem of media influence is complex and the earliest notions about direct effects do not take into account all the complications. From a 21st century perspective, we know people’s reactions are not uniform, but for many 20th century observers, the magic bullet explanation seemed accurate. The metaphors describing direct effects certainly made it an easy theory to understand. It was a narrative that explained events and promised to predict future human behavior. Direct effects was also a theory that observation could test.

Support for a Magic Bullet? The effectiveness of propaganda during WWI and WWII appeared to confirm the idea that media efforts could directly and uniformly persuade whole populations. Propaganda efforts to create loyalty and love of country in citizens and a corresponding hatred for the enemy became a coordinated effort in America and Europe during WWI. In the effort to enrage citizens and unite them against the enemy, the ruling elite manipulated news reports to highlight or invent atrocities the enemy committed. With near uniformity, American media during WWII depicted the war as a battle of righteousness against evil. Radio reports were careful to glorify the heroics of America troops (Rhodes, 1976), Hollywood movies portrayed the enemy as inhuman (Doherty, 2013; Lewis, 1967), magazines showed citizens buying bonds and cheerfully supporting the war effort with endeavors such as rationing, recycling, and victory gardens (Carew, 2005), and comic books offered stories about superheroes attacking German troops (MacDonnell, 1995).

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The propaganda effort was not one powerful message but a coordinated campaign to enlist the minds, hearts, and actions of citizens to willingly sacrifice on behalf of their country. Though the war propaganda was considered successful, not every citizen bought war bonds or planted a victory garden.

The Magic Bullet and War of the Worlds One event that appeared to support the idea of a magic bullet theory was the sensational Halloween broadcast of War of the Worlds on October 31, 1938 (Pooley & Socolow, 2013a). The broadcast was a dramatized radio play based on the 1898 science-fiction novel by H. G. Wells. The Mercury Theater on the Air modified the story of a violent invasion of aliens from Mars for radio broadcast. The innovative adaptation of the novel imitated a familiar music program broadcast live from a New York hotel, which was then interrupted with simulated news bulletins reporting that a spaceship had landed. Hostile aliens were on the attack. In addition to mimicking radio news, the director and narrator, Orson Welles, applied a series of devices to make the drama seem authentic. These included using the actual names of places and real people and enhancing “live reports” with sound effects and sensational acting. Welles excitedly described Martian advances across New Jersey, destroying power lines, bridges, and railroad tracks in their effort to paralyze communications, crush resistance, and devastate human society. The introduction to the program did include an explanation that this show was fiction and not an actual event, but some audience members may have tuned in late or had not been listening carefully. Mistaking mock bulletins for actual radio news, certain listeners became convinced that bloodthirsty aliens were destroying human life. The next day newspaper reports had headlines declaring that the “Fake Radio War” had caused “terror” across the United States. These reports helped popularize a myth that nearly everyone in America was tuned to that CBS broadcast and believed what they heard, though this was not the case (Pooley & Socolow, 2013b). The War of the Worlds broadcast became an enduring and cautionary tale about the authoritative power a relatively new medium like radio could have over a mass audience to inspire their uncritical belief in a violent message. The accounts of nationwide hysteria were exaggerated (Socolow, 2008; Campbell, 2010; Schwartz, 2015). Research conducted at the time interviewed 135 listeners, who claimed the broadcast frightened them (Cantril, Gaudet, & Herzog, 1940). Some of these listeners did check the authenticity of the broadcast and learned it was a radio play. Those who did not check reached out to family and friends to warn or console them. Researchers concluded that audience panic occurred among a few individuals because they possessed the psychological traits that made them susceptible to media influence, not because the media message was a magic bullet (Cantril et al., 1940). Though accounts of the actual panic had been exaggerated and there was no indication of a uniform response from

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the listening audience, some still interpreted this event as support for the idea that a radio story could have direct and serious effects on the thoughts and behaviors of audiences.

Direct Effects and the Comic Book Scare In the years between the end of WWII and the mid-1950s, comic books emerged as a popular medium among young people. America’s youth had already been devouring comics since the mid-1930s, but, by 1948, more than 80 million comic books sold each month. By 1954, 150 million comics were published monthly, of which “30 million were essentially devoted to conveying scenarios of outlandish violence” (Twitchell, 1989, p. 136). This highly successful comic book industry offered readers exciting stories told through vivid sequential art about the adventures of criminals, superheroes, mutants, and monsters. Comic book publishers intended these more mature themes for adult readers but failed to keep younger readers away from stories with particularly gruesome and provocative titles. Though some comics contained humorous stories and romance, the brightly illustrated violence of adventure, horror, and true crime comics appeared to command the attention of younger readers. Emphasizing macabre, brutal, and deliberately sexual elements, these comics were also sold at a price many children could afford. Comic books had become the dominant cultural force in children’s lives (Hajdu, 2008). Violent elements in comics might have been inspired in part by a society that had survived two world wars. During the holocaust, Nazis had experimented on, tortured, and murdered huge numbers of the Jewish population and had additionally slaughtered Gypsies, Serbs, resistance fighters, homosexuals, and the Polish intelligentsia among others. Soldiers and citizens alike understood that the real world could be a horrific place, where good people suffer and bad people could get away with atrocious conduct. However, in the world of the comic book, a murdered corpse could come shuffling back to life, seeking out his murderer to exact a just and terrible revenge. In this cultural context, the comic book—however gruesome—offered a somewhat conservative story, cautioning readers that “violent acts call forth even more violent retribution” (Twitchell, 1989, p. 133). If an “eye for an eye” could not be extracted in real life, payback with famously bloody exaggeration was always available in a comic book. When teachers and parents began to notice and complain about the popularity of comic books among children, some communities enacted legislation restricting local sales of these comics to adult readers. A few states also passed laws limiting sales of comic books or banning them outright and schools urged students to burn their comics in celebratory mass bonfires. Concerns multiplied  that stories about murder and brutality told through

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garish illustrations would give young readers nightmares, corrupt their morals, and make children impatient with “better, quieter literature” (North, 1940). The general panic over uncensored and violent stories in comic books created public determination to obliterate the comic industry (Hajdu, 2008). This was also a time ripe with McCarthyism. On the aggressive hunt for communist sympathizers, government committees, such as the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, investigated citizen loyalties to root out any dark, subversive forces that would undermine American values. In addition to government committees, private-industry panels such as the Motion Picture Association of America investigated employees and developed blacklists. It was during this period of heightened suspicion in general and widespread criticisms of comics in particular that Senator Estes Kefauver conducted Senate hearings examining the relationship between juvenile delinquency and comic books. Dr. Fredric Wertham had spearheaded the public conversation about popular comic books. Wertham was a senior psychiatrist for the New York City Department of Hospitals and the director of a mental health facility in Harlem, the Lafargue Clinic, which he had founded in order to provide low cost treatment to a primarily black population. He was also a consulting psychiatrist for the court system. In his work with juvenile offenders, Wertham observed that many of his delinquent patients were avid readers of comics and concluded that these comics and the stories they told indoctrinated children into a life of crime and violence. Wertham condemned comics for being violent and sub-literate. He believed the brutality so vividly depicted in comics provided the instruction manual for delinquency and perversion. He considered young readers defenseless, unable to resist unsavory messages of sexual deviancy and carnage the comic books illustrated in brutal detail. Though comic books had been an enthusiastic participant in propaganda for the war effort, now that the war was over Wertham condemned comic book superheroes as vigilante thugs, glorifying Gestapo-style brutality rather than encouraging American values. National Parents Magazine, Colliers, Ladies Home Journal, Time, and other magazines popularized Wertham’s thinking, promoting the “Great Comic Book Scare” (Lowery & DeFleur, 1983, p. 237). Published in 1954, Wertham’s book, Seduction of the Innocent, coincided with Kefauver’s senate hearings and positioned Wertham as the obvious expert witness. Wertham provided the senate committee with the key argument from his book: children are the helpless victims of a vicious comic industry. Wertham described the clinical evidence for this argument as consisting of thousands of his own juvenile case studies and argued that these cases proved a direct link between violent stories in comic books and criminal behavior in young patients. His arguments followed the narrative of direct effects: comic depictions of violence with blatant references to sex and drugs directly guided Wertham’s delinquent patients to their own violent behaviors.

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However, an examination of archival material from Wertham’s files showed that in his eagerness to fully support this direct effects narrative, Wertham frequently falsified, distorted, or misrepresented statements and the thousands of cases in his clinical evidence had been exaggerated (Tilley, 2012). Rather than searching for a truth, Wertham manipulated his research to support his theoretical story. Wertham shifted the blame for his patients’ behavioral disorders away from disturbing events in their troubled lives onto the recreational escape of reading comics. Comic books did have a defender at the senate hearings in William Gains, the publisher and coeditor of EC Comics and the satirical comic, Mad, which Gaines would relabel as a magazine in order to escape regulation. Gains testified before the Senate committee, arguing that normal kids would not be convinced to commit murder just because they saw one depicted in the panels of a comic book. The hearings of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency resulted in the comic industry creating the Comics Code Authority in 1954. This was a familiar scenario for media industries faced with public concerns about the stories they published. The Motion Picture Production Code, introduced by Hollywood studios in 1930, was a forerunner of the Comics Code, “while the modern film-rating system and the Parental Advisory labels created by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1985 are all part of the same bloodline” (Cowan, 2011). Publishers created the Comics Code to police themselves and avoid government censorship. It was a comprehensive set of rules designed to inspire public confidence in the wholesome nature of comics. The first few directives of the new code concerned depictions of law and order. Stories about crime were not allowed to create sympathy for a criminal character. Under no circumstance could an evil character be presented as charming or glamorous. Police, judges, and government officials must be presented respectfully. The code banned the words “horror” and “terror” in titles along with an extensive list of other prohibitions. Any depiction of “sex perversion,” or stories with lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender characters, would not be allowed. It was a sufficiently restrictive code. When the Senate finally concluded its report in 1955, the decision was to let the comic industry do its own policing through the Comics Code Authority. The subcommittee was uncomfortable with government censorship, which was contrary to American ideals of a free press operating in a free land for a free people. Furthermore, because his research had only examined juvenile delinquents, the senate committee did not fully accept Wertham’s direct effects explanation. Werthan had not studied nonviolent children who were also comic book readers. Wertham couldn’t demonstrate that comic books had a negative impact on average children. Psychologists and social scientists criticized Wertham’s research, believing that juvenile delinquency was too complicated a problem to be blamed entirely on comic books. Already people were beginning

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to suspect that a “magic bullet” was too simple to be a useful explanation for criminal violence. Wertham likely had a genuine concern for children’s welfare and probably believed his crusade against comic books was in their best interest (Beaty, 2005), but he was not able to stop juvenile delinquency. While circulation of comic books declined after 1954 and were no longer the predominant medium for young people, all forms of violent youth crimes steadily increased (Zimring, 1979). This is not what direct effects of comics on juvenile behaviors would have predicted. Wertham’s campaign against comics would not solve juvenile crime, but it did have a major impact on the comic book industry. Circulation of all comics, even the “good” comic books, declined and thousands of writers and artists lost jobs and would never work in comics again (Hajdu, 2008).

Direct Effects and Digital Conspiracies Some similarities between the tensions in the first half of the 20th century and the tensions that greeted the beginnings of the new millennium encouraged the magic bullet theory to resurface among citizens and community leaders if not among social scientists. Destabilizing financial conditions, wars, staggering social changes, and technological advances that had challenged the 20th century reappeared at the turn of the new millennium with fresh vigor. The 21st century brought additional tensions about the dangers of terrorism, climate change, deadly communicable diseases, and new threats of nuclear confrontation. In this highly stressful environment, the narrative of an all-powerful media influence reemerged, but now video games, the internet, and social media became the starring culprits with traditional media as supporting players. Social media, which combined the viral potential to reach a mass audience with the added influence of interpersonal relationships, was a central player in concerns about the influence of brutal media stories on vulnerable audiences. The ability to interact with the internet and digital media changed a person’s media status from a passive audience member to an active user. Violent computer games, first person shooter games in particular, came under critical scrutiny because many believed these games allowed a player to vicariously rehearse for the real-life violence that the games might inspire. User interaction with social media also brought new observations about audience isolation, which seemed to echo the 20th century concerns about the vulnerability of people alienated from one another, even hiding behind screens in social settings (Hayes, Battles, & Hilton-Morrow, 2013). Although social media gave users more opportunities for emotional connection, observers noticed an increasing informational segregation. In the zeal to expose users to the things they might appreciate or buy, the internet became better at giving users what they liked, filtering out the things they might find

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objectionable. Algorithms and personal choices steered users toward contents that reflected their preferences. With this algorithmically tailored online existence insulating users from opposing views, people could become secluded inside their own prejudices, creating an intellectual isolation that left users vulnerable to the hoaxes that fed their biases (Parsier, 2011). This isolation was compounded by a growing suspicion regarding traditional or mainstream media, a “crisis of authority,” where users believed the 20th century fear that moguls behind traditional or mainstream media were manipulating audiences. No authority could be trusted. It was an environment ripe with the potential for dangerous hoaxes to spread. Hoaxes, misinformation, and conspiracies were not new developments in the 21st century; they have had a lengthy history in the saga of mass communication. However, when the internet and social media joined the media ecosystem, their unique characteristics reshaped messages of conspiracy, giving them new vitality. Because anyone with internet access could produce messages and circumvent most of the traditional gatekeeping oversights, there was increased opportunity for user-generated hoaxes to take root and spread. Because user-generated material influenced the aesthetics of traditional media and then conversely mimicked traditional aesthetics, sometimes with skilled visual precision, the distinctions between user-generated and institutionally generated material became less clear. Because social media allowed messages to be continually shared, messages spread to “substantial audiences” (Stiegler & Szuminsky, 2013, p. 174). Moreover, the old newsroom doctrine of “if it bleeds, it leads” still applied in a digital world. Dull but important material would be ignored for the violent, the sensational, and the salacious. The more outlandish and brutal the message, the more likely it was to be shared, while any corrections to those messages were not as likely to get the same viral distribution (Silverman, 2012). The new millennium had already become rancid with instances of deliberately false information and vicious conspiracy theories. However, when a story surfaced in the mainstream press in 2016 about how an internet hoax inspired one man’s determination to commit heroic violence, some suggested that this instance was a clear demonstration of how misinformation on the internet could have a direct and monumental effect on vulnerable people.

The Pizzagate Conspiracy During the 2016 American presidential campaign, the hashtag #PizzaGate spread a fictional story that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was operating a child sex ring and conducting Satanic rituals from the basement of a pizza restaurant, Comet Ping Pong, in Washington, D.C. This fake story had been promoted through social media and on the popular website and media platform InfoWars. On a cold December Sunday, an avid fan of InfoWars

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drove the eight hours from Salisbury, North Carolina to Washington, D.C., filled with moral outrage. Armed with his assault rifle, a shotgun, and a revolver, Edgar M. Welch was on a mission to investigate this child sex ring and rescue the abused children he knew he would find in a dank basement under the restaurant. A persuasive mix of “rumor, political nastiness, technological change, and the intoxicating thrill that can come from running down a mystery” motivated Welch to action (Fisher, Cox, & Hermann, 2016). He was prepared for violent confrontation and self-sacrifice, ready to fight a corrupt system that kidnaps, tortures, and rapes helpless babies. Welch arrived at the restaurant and proceeded to intimidate bewildered employees and customers, firing shots inside the pizzeria and harassing the staff. One gunshot broke the lock on a door but the door did not open to basement stairs. There was no basement under the building, no tunnels leading to Satanic altars, and no child sex ring with victimized children sniveling in the dark (Kang, 2016). Instead of the sinister horrors he had courageously come to conquer, Welch found a pizza parlor with ping-pong tables and families eating lunch. Welch surrendered to police and later pleaded guilty to a federal charge of transporting firearms across state lines and a District charge of assault with a dangerous weapon (Hsu, 2017). The real-life account of Welch’s one-man crusade to Washington was already bizarre but became distorted into a sinister, twisted lie that seemed like the plot of a true crime and horror comic combined. Some facts: •

• •

in March of 2016, the email account of John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, was compromised and his emails were stolen, in October, 2016 Wikileaks began publishing the Podesta emails, in some emails between Podesta and his brother, Tony, Comet Ping Pong was mentioned as a possible good place to host a Democratic fundraiser and the owner of Comet Ping Pong, James Alefantis, would be invited to cook.

Another coincidental event emerged in October of 2016, when James Comey, FBI director at the time, announced the reopening of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. Emails had been found on a computer belonging to Anthony Weiner, a disgraced former congressman from New York. Weiner was under FBI investigation for “sexting,” sending sexually explicit messages or photographs, to an underage girl. The FBI had seized Weiner’s laptop and discovered Clinton’s emails on it. Weiner had been married to Huma Abedin, the vice-chair of Clinton’s presidential campaign, and Abedin had the bad habit of forwarding emails to Weiner to make printed copies (Cohen, 2017).

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False claims began to emerge in the attempt to construct a sinister story. One fabrication was that while searching emails on Weiner’s laptop, the New York City Police discovered a pedophilia ring linked to prominent members of the Democratic Party. The architects of the anti-Clinton conspiracy searched the Podesta emails looking for malfeasance and speculated about the relationships between Comet Ping Pong and important Democrats. Because the words “child” and “pornography” have the same initials as “cheese” and “pizza,” the creators of Pizzagate decided these words were code for pedophilia (Fisher et al., 2016; Aisch, Huang, & Kang, 2016). Selfproclaimed investigators became devoted to trolling online for evidence that supported their claims, distorting what they discovered and then sharing their findings. The result was an elaborate but made-up story that was as shocking as a horror comic and, like War of the Worlds, impersonated news. Media personality and hoax champion Alex Jones helped to promote the sensational, counterfeit details of Pizzagate. Jones was the host of a syndicated radio talk show, a commentator on YouTube videos, and the host of the InfoWars website, all well known as distributors of false reporting and extremist opinion. Jones had famously perpetuated the hoax that the deadly Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, where children and teachers were gunned down at an elementary school, was an Obama administration ruse for justifying government overreach and destroying citizen’s Second Amendment rights to gun ownership. Although these extreme ideas were easily debunked, no amount of fact checking seemed to deter the hardcore fans of InfoWars. Jones was also an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump. Early in his presidential campaign, Trump had appeared on Jones’s radio show, giving Jones and InfoWars additional credibility as a news source among some conservative listeners. Another boost in credibility came when InfoWars secured temporary press credentials to cover White House briefings. Yet, when Alefantis, the private citizen whose restaurant had suffered under the Pizzagate hoax, threatened Jones with a lawsuit, Jones’ attorney would describe Jones not as a journalist but as a “performance artist” (Borchers, 2017). Like Orson Welles, Jones was considered an actor playing a character. To avoid exposing InfoWars to the punitive damages of a libel suit, Jones would ultimately apologize to Alefantis for his role in Pizzagate, saying the conspiracy had been based on “an incorrect narrative” (Farhi, 2017; Doubek, 2017). However, Jones continued his promotion of other hoaxes, bile toward Clinton and Democrats, and anger toward progressive ideas. It wasn’t until August of 2018 that major technology companies decided to take some action and removed Jones’s podcasts and some content from social media for violation of policies against hate speech, inciting violence, and breaching community standards (Nicas, 2018). This action happened when leaders of the Senate intelligence committee blamed major tech firms for letting American citizens become vulnerable to foreign disinformation campaigns meant to sway the

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2016 election (Mak, 2018). Jones responded by angrily claiming that conservative voices were being systematically shut down (Hicks, 2018). While some creators of Pizzagate might have been happy to fabricate or knowingly supplement a bogus story if it damaged Clinton, others might have believed they were citizen journalists involved in important investigatory work. They were on the hunt for clues to verify the rumor they already believed to be true. They had no concern about fabricating “proof ” when it didn’t exist. For people watching the developing conspiracy, like Welch, Pizzagate simply confirmed deeply held biases. The false story spread through user-generated websites and social media, where popularity and sheer crowd power can seem like authenticity. Welch was the only member of the digital audience that came to the pizzeria armed with an assault rifle, prepared to violently confront the child pornography ring, but there were others exposed to Pizzagate who were moved to different action. Alefantis said his pizzeria had been continually targeted with hostile phone calls, nasty Instagram messages, and other threats. Demonstrators came to the pizzeria with a megaphone calling Alefantis a “faggot” and a “pedophile” and other businesses in the community were also threatened (Alefantis, 2017). With so many people acting on the false story, Pizzagate might appear to be an instance of direct media effects. The direct effects theory predicts that a media story should have an immediate and uniform influence on audiences, but not everyone who encountered Pizzagate believed the conspiracy was real or, if they did believe the story, they did not act on what they thought they knew. Public Policy Polling, a political issues polling firm in Raleigh, North Carolina, found that 54 percent of Trump voters did not believe the conspiracy was true, 14  percent did believe it was true, and 32 percent weren’t sure. Belief in the conspiracy was smaller among Democrats (2016). The disturbing number of people who did believe the fake story might have more to do with the power of conspiracies than the power of media (Butter, 2014). The magic bullet theory doesn’t take into account the special characteristics of some audiences, which make them more vulnerable targets. Vulnerability to conspiracies is not due to party affiliation but to psychological traits. Research shows that believers of false stories are less trusting of other people, feel more politically alienated, and are more likely to engage in magical thinking; they are quick to believe in bizarre prophesies or the supernatural (Oliver & Wood, 2014). They are also “more accepting of violence” (Uscinski & Parent, 2014, p. 98). Pizzagate was user-generated propaganda, which may additionally explain why some believers were reluctant to abandon their false story even after mainstream press outlets and fact checkers had debunked it. Instead of discarding Pizzagate as a fabricated tale, defenders added new layers to the conspiracy. Welch was a government foil designed to mislead the public and conceal the truth. Jones was simply a sellout. Finally, Pizzagate was not a single message

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that dealt a one-punch blow to audience opinion. It was the result of multiple, recurring, and trending communications that constructed and emphasized a violent and forceful narrative. A repeated story can be a powerful story, even if it is a false story.

The Slender Man Stabbing In 2014, two 12-year-old girls from Waukesha, Wisconsin were charged as adults for attempted first-degree homicide of their friend, another 12-year-old girl, who had been invited to a birthday sleepover at the house of one of the accused. This was not a birthday party gone bad but a murder plan the girls had been scheming about for months in hopes of appeasing a fictional character, Slender Man, with a human sacrifice (Stampler, 2014; Chess & Newsom, 2015). Slender Man is an internet horror legend created and “copy-pasted” to become Creepypasta, a form of user-generated horror story. Creepypasta is the internet adaptation of urban legends or weird tales, the kind of story people might tell around a campfire. This “fakelore” is copied, pasted, and shared in a form of online storytelling that relies on voluntary participation. One of many Creepypasta anti-heroes, the character of Slender Man is a pale, lanky, faceless bogyman that developed from the Something Awful forum thread. He wears a dark suit and stalks unsuspecting individuals to corrupt or kill them (Snow, 2014). Slender Man appears in online accounts, artwork, photographs, games, and short videos distributed across multiple internet sites. The twelve-year-old girls who attempted to murder their friend believed the Slender Man stories were real and planned the murder to prove to skeptics that Slender Man existed. The girls lured their friend into the woods, stabbed her many times, and then calmly walked into the Nicolet National Forest in search of Slender Man’s fabulous mansion, where they would happily join their evil hero. Multiple media outlets reported the attack, describing the history of Slender Man, events leading up to the attempted murder, and the reaction of a horrified public (Dewey, 2016; Helling, 2014; Jones, 2014; Muir, 2015; Lovitt, 2016). When two subsequent cases materialized with connections to Slender Man, it did seem as if the internet story had magical power over people’s imaginations, goading them into “vicious behaviors” (Chess & Newsom, 2015, p. 3; Murray, 2014). ABC aired a documentary series on the case, which offered dire warnings about children’s confusion between fantasy and reality (Muir, 2015). Waukesha’s police chief blamed a powerful internet for the attempted murder and warned parents to restrict and monitor children’s internet usage. Shortly afterward, HBO premiered the documentary Beware the Slenderman (2016), cautioning the public that impressionable minds can be directly swayed to violence. Other critics blamed the violence on a media culture that romanticizes evil and turns violence into a game (Kass, 2014; Romanoff, 2016). Horror websites came under public

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condemnation. The administrator of the wiki, Creepypasta.com, responded with a long, anonymous statement, reminding users that Slender Man is not a real entity. He defended horror as a genre, emphasizing that mentally healthy people enjoy violent elements of popular culture without causing a spike in violent crime (Creepypasta, 2014). Though one girl became the victim of her friends’ dangerous fantasies, the case does not support a narrative about the direct influence of an allpowerful internet nor does it suggest that all young users are equally vulnerable, as the Waukesha police chief warned they might be. The case received public attention not only because it was violent but also because it was unusual. Yet coverage of the case implied that ordinary kids were vulnerable. Of the many fans that contributed to the Slender Man story or shared it over a five-year span, only the Waukesha case had a clear and direct connection between the Slender Man story and violent behavior. It would later be revealed that both of the young perpetrators of the stabbing suffered from mental illness (Moreno, 2018). Other media critics warned that adults should not only monitor their children’s media use but actively participate in it, as the American Academy of Pediatrics suggested in their 2013 advisory. Adults who both engage with their children and the media their children consume are in a better position to help young users understand the content, to help them determine facts from fiction, to see the differences between fiction and lies, and to know that imaginary stories are not to be confused with their lived experience. While adult involvement with their children’s media use is important, it may not be a complete cure for the problem of children’s violent fantasies. As observed in the Pizzagate case, adults are also susceptible to fantasy thinking. Research suggests that the ability to understand fantasy should be viewed as a function of continuous development rather than a discontinuous characteristic between adults and children (Woolley, 1997, p. 1009). Adults do have the advantages of experience and perspective to share with their children, which are helpful for grasping the differences between what is real and what is imaginary.

“A School Fight” The following graphic story developed from an account a young woman shared about her cousin, who was seriously hurt in a school fight. This was one of several stories people shared with me about fights in high schools and how the storytellers thought media directly encouraged this violence. The young woman believed violent movies caused her cousin’s behavior in the way bullet theory or direct effects would predict.

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Discussion: Triggering a School Fight The character of Marcus likes violent movies, martial arts movies in particular. His mother blames the movies for all the trouble Marcus gets involved in at school. However, the story also presents some evidence that the violent movies Marcus likes do not have direct and uniformly persuasive effects on all those who watch them. The narrator of this story was not inspired to commit violence, even though she often watched these same martial arts movies with her cousin. If bullet theory was an accurate predictor of media influence, the young woman who told me the story and anyone else watching these movies should also exhibit similar aggressive behaviors. One of the jobs for popular media is to bring important topics to public notice. While school violence has generally been on the decline since the 1990s, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control reported that in 2014, there were nearly half a million teens victimized on school property and, in 2013, 12 percent of students described the presence of gangs in their school. Though violent crime reached historic lows in 2014, some of the deadliest mass shootings occurred in 2017 (Westervelt, 2017) and there were media reports that 2018 had been more lethal for schoolchildren than for deployed military soldiers (Bump, 2018). Using additional artistic license, the narrative of the school fight could be reworked to make it more meaningful for examining the conflicts that inspire violence on school campuses. A reworked story might explore the values Marcus finds in his favorite movies and whether there is semantic or psychological noise in his interpretations. It might look at inspirations behind bullying behavior. Such revisions would be using a different theoretical story than bullet theory to provide the framework for constructing and understanding the story. When research suggested that direct effects was not useful for explaining media impact on most audiences, scholars began to look for a better theoretical story. What emerged were theories of limited media effects, a narrative about obstinate audiences and their power to overcome the influence of most media stories, even the violent ones.

References for Chapter Three Aisch, G., Huang, J., & Kang, C. (2016, December 10). Dissecting the #PizzaGate Conspiracy theories. The New York Times. Alefantis, J. (2017, April 20). What happened when “Pizzagate” came to my restaurant. Washington Post. Beaty, B. (2005). Fredric Wertham and the critique of mass culture. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Borchers, C. (2017, April 19). Trump called Alex Jones “amazing”: Jones own lawyer calls him a “performance artist”. Washington Post. Bump, P. (2018, May 18). 2018 has been deadlier for schoolchildren than deployed service members. The Washington Post. Butter, M. (2014). Plots, designs, and schemes: America conspiracy theories from the Puritan to the present. Berlin: DeGruyter.

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Campbell, W. J. (2010). Getting it wrong: Ten of the greatest misreported stories in American journalism. Berkley, CA: University of California Press. Cantril, H., Gaudet, H., & Herzog, H. (1940). The invasion from mars: A study in the psychology of panic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Carew, M. G. (2005). The power to persuade: FDR, the newsmagazines, and going to war, 1939–41. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Carey, J. W. (1996). The Chicago school and mass communication research. In E. E. Dennis & E. Wartella (Eds.), American communication research: The remembered history (pp. 21–38). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Chess, S., & Newsom, E. (2015). Folklore, horror stories, and the slender man: The development of an internet mythology. New York: Palgrave Pivot. Cohen, Z. (2017, May 3). Comey: Classified Clinton emails forwarded to Anthony Weiner. CNN. Cowan, J. (2011). Comics code. Canadian Business, 84(3), 25. Creepypasta. (2014, June 3). Statement on the Wisconsin Stabbing. https://www. creepypasta.com/statement-wisconsin-stabbing/ Dewey, C. (2016, June 3). The complete history of slender man, the meme that compelled two girls to stab a friend. The Washington Post. Doherty, T. (2013). Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939. New York: Columbia University Press. Doubek, J. (2017, March 26). Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones apologizes for promoting “Pizzagate”. NPR, 4:49 a.m. ET. Farhi, P. (2017, March 24). Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones backs off “Pizzagate” claims. Washington Post. Fisher, M., Cox, J. W., & Hermann, P. (2016, December 6). From rumor, to hashtag, to gunfire: How fake news and real violence collided at a D.C. Pizzeria. Washington Post. Hajdu, D. (2008). The Ten cent plague: The great comic book scare and how it changed America. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Hayes, J. E., Battles, K., & Hilton-Morrow, W. (2013). War of the worlds to social media: Mediated communication in time of crisis. New York: Peter Lang. Helling, S. (2014, June 23). Slender man stabbing: A plot to lill? People, 81(25), 61–62. Hicks, N. (2018, September 19/September 5). Alex Jones Taunts Marco Rubio outside senate hearing. New York Post. Hsu, S. S. (2017, June 22). Pizzagate gunman sentenced to four years in prison, as prosecutors urged judge to deter vigilante justice. Washington Post. Jones, A. (2014, August 13). The girls who tried to kill for Slender Man. Newsweek. Kang, C. (2016, November 22). Fact check: This Pizzeria is not a child-trafficking site. The New York Times, B1. Kass, J. (2014, June 4). The scary implications of the slender man stabbing. Chicago Tribune. Lewis, J. (1967). World War II and the American film. Cinema Journal, 7, 1–21. Lovitt, B. (2016, August 3). Slender man: From horror meme to inspiration for murder. Rolling Stone. Lowery, S., & DeFleur, M. L. (1983). Milestones in mass communication research: Media effects. New York: Longman. MacDonnell, F. (1995). Insidious foes: The Axis Fifth column and the American home. New York: Oxford University Press. Mak, T. (2018, September 5). Senate committee vents about Hijacking of big tech for information war: Morning edition. NPR, 5:00 a.m.

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Moreno, I. (2018, February 2). Wisconsin girl gets maximum 40 years in the mental hospital for slender man stabbing. Chicago Tribune. Muir, D. (2015, September 26). Out of the woods: The slender man stabbing, how some kids are able to learn about slender man, chilling video of girls’ interrogation in slender man case, season 37, episode 4. ABC News, 20/20. Murray, R. (2014, June 9). Slender man now linked to three violent acts. ABC News. Nicas, J. (2018, August 6). Alex Jones and infowars content is removed from Apple, Facebook and YouTube. The New York Times. North, S. (1940, May 8). A national disgrace. Chicago Daily News. Oliver, J. E., & Wood, T. J. (2014). Conspiracy theories and the paranoid style(s) of mass opinion. American Journal of Political Science, 58(4), 952–966. Parsier, E. (2011). The filter bubble: How the new personalized web is changing what we read and how we think. New York: Penguin. Pooley, J. D., & Socolow, M. J. (2013a). Checking up on the invasion from mars: Hadley Cantril, Paul F. Lazersfeld, and the making of a misremembered classic. International Journal of Communication, 7, 1920–1948. Pooley, J. D., & Socolow, M. J. (2013b). War of the words: The invasion from mars and its legacy for mass communication scholarship. In J. E. Hayes, K. Battles, & W. HiltonMorrow (Eds.), War of the worlds to social media: Mediated communication in time of crisis (pp. 35–56). New York: Peter Lang. Rhodes, A. (1976). Propaganda: The art of persuasion: World War II. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. Romanoff, Z. (2016, July 6). Beyond slender man: When teens use the internet for evil. Rolling Stone. Schwartz, A. B. (2015). Broadcast hysteria: Orson Welles’s war of the worlds and the art of fake news. New York: Hill and Wang. Silverman, C. (2012, March 7). Visualized: Incorrect information travels farther, faster on Twitter than corrections. Poynter. Snow, K. (Writer). (2014, June 3). “Slender man” cited in stabbing is a Ghoul for the internet age. NBC News, 5:46 p.m. EDT. Socolow, M. (2008). The hyped panic over war of the worlds. The Chronical Review, 55(9), B16. Stampler, L. (2014, June 3). Slender man internet meme inspires Two 12-year-olds to attempt murder. Time. Stiegler, Z., & Szuminsky, B. (2013). Mediating misinformation: Hoaxes and the digital turn. In J. E. Hayes, K. Battles, & W. Hilton-Morrow (Eds.), War of the worlds to social media: Mediated communication in times of crisis (pp. 168–169). New York: Peter Lang. Tilley, C. L. (2012). Seducing the innocent: Fredric Wertham and the falsifications that helped condemn comics. Information & Culture: A Journal of History, 47(4), 383–413. Twitchell, J. B. (1989). Preposterous violence: Fables of aggression in modern culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Uscinski, J., & Parent, J. M. (2014). American conspiracy theories. New York: Oxford University Press. Westervelt, E. (2017, December 27). After a vow to end “this American carnage”, a year of deadly violence. NPR. Woolley, J. D. (1997). Thinking about fantasy: Are children fundamentally different thinkers and believers from adults? Child Development, 68(6), 991–1011. Zimring, F. E. (1979). American youth violence: Issues and trends. Crime & Justice, 1(1), 67–107.

4 OBSTINATE VIOLENCE

In the years after War of the Worlds and the comic book scare, social scientists no longer believed popular media were an invincible force, manipulating a powerless public. The change began with audience research following the War of the Worlds broadcast, when it was discovered that the broadcast most affected audience members who had psychological traits that made them susceptible (Cantril, Gaudet, & Herzog, 1940). The research suggested that audience members were not helpless, isolated individuals adrift within a “mass” of humanity, easily swayed to action, but were instead people with firmly held beliefs. They also had family and friends, whose ideas and opinions could modify the persuasive power of popular media. In his work for the U.S. War Department, Carl Hovland’s research on the motivational documentaries Why We Fight (Frank Capra, 1942–1945), discovered that soldiers learned from films, but films were less effective in changing soldiers’ eagerness for combat (Hovland, 1954; Hovland, Lumsdaine, & Sheffield, 1965). Research conducted during the 1940 presidential election showed that media tended to reinforce decisions voters had already made. Radio speeches and editorials in newspapers were less powerful than other people for swaying voting decisions (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944). The newer vision of the public imagined individuals in various interconnecting groups. This new thinking became a paradigm shift; popular media were no longer considered as powerful as other factors for helping construct people’s ideas about the world and influencing their decisions. A theoretical narrative where rational people participated in active discussions about public events was a happier theoretical story, shifting power from corporate media to individual audience members. The idea that violent media stories could not directly impact a mass audience was good news for citizens’ intellectual independence and a healthy democracy.

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The Influence of Opinion Leaders Opinion leaders are individuals who advise friends and family. Opinion leaders belong to the same social groups as their followers and are individuals their followers personally know. They generally use more media, are more admired, more knowledgeable on a subject, and more motivated to improve their status within the group. They enjoy popularity. Some people might be innovators, or the first in the group to view media on a topic and adopt a new idea, while opinion leaders might be more conservative but are still among the early adopters (Rogers, 2003). Within one social group there might be different opinion leaders for different topics. Research examining the influence of opinion leadership on attitudes about a variety of subjects such as fashion, politics, and movies found that for many people, this personal influence was more convincing (Katz, 1957). Learning that friends and family could be more persuasive than media endorsements led to development of a two-step flow theory of media influence. Two-step flow added to the journey of a media story, suggesting that many people get their information—as well as their understanding about what that information means—secondhand from an opinion leader. Researchers believed “knowledge of an individual’s interpersonal environment is basic to an understanding of his exposure and reactions to mass media” (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955, p. 133). Knowing that the journey of information and opinion flows from many different directions, scholars also accepted a multi-step flow of media impact (Weiman, 1982). Advertisers and others with a persuasive mission began reinforcing their media campaigns with face-to-face social interaction. A change agent is a professional who attempts to influence public decisions, usually on behalf of a commercial client. Groups might resist the influence of a change agent if the person is viewed as “ignoring the interests of a public in favor of his employer’s interests” (Lerbinger, 1972, p. 197). So a change agent might identify and enlist the help of opinion leaders.

Influence of Subcultures The discovery of subcultures, smaller “micro-cultures” that exist within the larger or mainstream society, expanded the understanding of group influence on the interpretation of media stories. The members of a subculture share attitudes, values, beliefs, ways of doing things, and even ways of using language that are different from mainstream society and in some instances, in defiance of it. One example of such a subculture was the large fan base for the music band, the Grateful Dead. Known as Deadheads or Dead Heads, the subculture formed during the youth movement of the mid-1960s, which united in self-conscious acts of political, social, spiritual, artistic, and psychic mutiny against mainstream culture. For more than 40 years, Deadheads maintained and developed this 1960s youth

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culture into a nomadic group with distinctive mannerisms, symbols, and slang. Deadhead subcultural values included a devotion to peaceful conflict resolutions at all levels, from the interpersonal to the international. Deadheads also valued protections for the environment, individualistic self-expression, drug experience, musical trance, a colorful tie-dye aesthetic, and an ongoing critique of mainstream cultural standards (Edwards, 2010). When I was interviewing Deadheads for the documentary, Deadheads: An American Subculture (1990), I learned that many Deadheads were extremely distrustful of a capitalistic American media they believed encouraged a susceptible population to become greedier, angrier, more dependent on violent resolution to conflict, and self-righteously intolerant of difference. In addition to colorful bumper stickers with peace symbols and dancing bears, Deadheads decorated their cars with the slogans: “Reclaim your Brain; Kick the Mass Media Habit” and “Kill your Television.” Though Deadheads often declared their hatred for American media, many were surprisingly knowledgeable about the popular media culture they despised and a few could eloquently argue for all the ideological demerits they believed existed in Emmy Award winning television shows, including the glorification of violence. Deadheads are one among a variety of music subcultures. Other groups loosely organize their shared values around cultural activities like skating, surfing, and sports tailgating. Still others form around interests like cosplay, or costume play, where individuals dress like media characters. Members of a subculture can appear to have no long-term goals or desires to make any contribution to society. They may be adults but don’t seem to fully shoulder obligations of careers, families, and other mainstream pressures in a traditionally accepted way. Mainstream society often criticizes youth subcultures, believing it is dangerous for young people to become so fanatical.

Violence and Otaku Subculture One large, internationally known subculture originally developed in the 1980s from Japanese youth who were fans of anime and manga. Known as otaku, the fans are a digitally networked group of playful and obsessive “geeks,” proud outcasts, who happily reject mainstream Japanese culture. Otaku are united in their belief that anime and manga have a visual quality superior to all other art and animation forms. They additionally defied the civilities of Japanese tradition and its pressures to conform (Odell & Le Blanc, 2013). Otaku don’t reject the violence of mainstream culture like Deadheads do but enjoy supplementary gratuitous violence and sexualized material. American companies censored the most exaggerated violence when anime and manga were redistributed to the United States (Gardiner, 2003), but interest in otaku, including its violent elements, took root. With the growing import of anime and manga to America in the 1990s, the subculture spread and American fans began to refer to themselves as otaku and gather for conventions or Otakon (Tsutsui, 2008).

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It is not unusual for mainstream reporting to vilify a subculture by holding up an extreme aberrant as representative of the entire group. The discovery that a serial killer, Tsutomu Miyazaki, was an obsessive collector of anime (along with child pornography and horror films) caused the journalists reporting his crimes to dub him as the “otaku murderer” (Suter, 2016). Because this one fan had gruesomely murdered four young girls in the suburbs of Tokyo, mainstream Japanese media vilified the entire otaku subculture as one filled with maladjusted and psychologically disturbed perverts. Though clearly not representative of the larger population of otaku, Tsutomu Miyazaki came to symbolize the dangers a Japanese mainstream saw in a youth culture that scorned traditional Japanese values to become obsessed with violent animation.

Audiences and Choice The idea that tight-knit families, close social groups, and larger subcultures exist in people’s lives to supplement and contradict values portrayed in mainstream media was important to understanding the limits of popular media influence. In addition to groups and opinion leaders, there was an assortment of other ways audiences might filter for themselves the stories popular media offered. Selective exposure suggests people will choose media contents that reinforce their perception of the world and reject what does not interest them or fit with their worldview (Klapper, 1960; Sears & Freedman, 1967). The expectation of violent contents will cause some audience members to intentionally select a particular media story while others might reject that story for the same reason. When audiences cannot avoid exposure, they may choose not to pay attention, so selective attention becomes another form of control that audiences exercise over media stories. Elements like a story’s uniqueness and clarity along with an audience member’s attention span, interest in the topic, ability to understand the story, and capacity to ignore competing distractions will determine how much attention the audience member will give any story. Violent elements may have the strength to maintain or recapture flagging attention for some audiences. Another filter intervening between individuals and media influence was selective perception, or the meanings audiences assign to media stories. Selective perception explains how different audience members watching the same media story may see different things. Though a family may watch a violent television movie sitting together in their living room, each person sees a different movie streamed through the unique personal experiences that shape individual perception. One family member may approve of the story, another may mentally argue with the events on screen, while another may focus on some parts of the story and ignore others, a form of internal slanting. Because media audiences are different in their psychological disposition and have different values and perceptions, media influence will vary from person to person (DeFleur, 1970). Selective perception

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explains that viewers have the power to reject media narratives they have selected, contemplated, and fully understood. For example, while working on an assignment intended to teach college students how to conduct in-depth interviews, my students discovered two oppositional readings to the James Cameron film, Avatar (2009). In both cases the interview subject was an older white male who fully understood the intended environmental and humanitarian message in the fantasy film and rejected it. In the movie’s story, humans had invaded an inhabited moon, Pandora, in order to mine for a mineral that would relieve the energy crisis on Earth, but natives of Pandora are upset at the destruction of their homeland. The conflict between humans and the moon’s native population eventually escalates into a devastating war. One of the subjects interviewed about Avatar derisively described the movie as “Fern Gully for adults,” referencing a children’s animation film with a strong environmental message (Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest, 1992). The oppositional readings of Avatar included repulsion that the film’s protagonist, a former Marine named Jake Sully, would turn traitor to defend the Na’Vi, the blue-skinned inhabitants of Pandora, who have tails, catlike ears, and a nervous system that includes worm-like tendrils protruding from long braids. For these respondents the true hero of the movie was not Sully, the protagonist who intervenes to save the natives of Pandora, but the head of the private security force, Colonel Miles Quaritch, whose mission is to force the natives to retreat from the area where his company needs to mine, even if it means exterminating the “blue monkeys.” In this oppositional reading, a brave man sacrifices himself for citizens of Earth, while the double-crossing Jake Sully leads a violent Na’vi attack against humans. According to this obstinate interpretation, if the heroic colonel is to be criticized, it is for not eradicating the Na’Vi and allowing the traitor Jake Sully to succeed. Though Avatar released years before the showdown over the Dakota Access Pipeline, where law enforcement and private security officers used force to disperse the environmental activism of Native Americans and others gathered to stop the pipeline (Bromwich, 2016), obstinate evaluations of Avatar labeled the film as typical liberal Hollywood propaganda produced to support a political view that condemned the aggressive use of fire hoses, concussion grenades, and pepper spray to disperse the protesters who hindered American progress. For these audiences, environmentalists are “watermelons,” people who are green on the outside but red on the inside, communists in disguise, out to actively harm businesses and the American economy by using the environment as an excuse (Randerson, 2013). In addition to being selective about their exposure, attention, and perception, audiences might also be selective in what they remember, practicing selective retention and recall. For one audience member an image may be remembered as powerful, while the same image for another individual might be quickly forgotten. Recall suggests that the length of time between exposure, attention, perception, and retention can affect whether a media story will be remembered. Finally, audiences

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engage in selective behavior, choosing whether to act on what they think the media story means and further choosing the nature of the action they take, if any. A major characteristic of the obstinate audience is ability to resist media persuasion (Bauer, 1964). Audiences are likely to select stories that support their beliefs and values, but if they happen upon unsupportive stories, they can interpret, remember, or act on that content in tenacious ways producers never intended. Attempts to get past all these layers of audience selection provided challenges for commercial persuasion or a propaganda effort. Media critics still seemed to believe that violent media stories had the capacity to cut through protective layers of audience selectivity where other media narratives might quickly be rejected, ignored, misinterpreted, or forgotten.

Dissonance and Mr. Biggott The theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) helps explain why some people tend to avoid media stories that question a firmly held opinion and instead pay attention to stories that are more supportive of their preexisting ideas. According to cognitive dissonance, people experience psychological discomfort when they encounter media stories that contradict their personal beliefs. The need for internal psychological consistency motivates decisions about media choices, as audiences seek out those narratives agreeing with their values and avoid the stories that might challenge a cherished worldview (Rosnow & Robinson, 1967). In 1945, cartoon artist Carl Rose created the Mr. Biggott cartoon character to show how harmful, outdated, and un-American prejudicial thinking was for a nation that had victoriously survived WWII. Mr. Biggott was a nearsighted and prudish looking character with cobwebs hanging from his head. He would make ridiculous comments about racial purity and other prejudicial statements at the most inappropriate cartoon moments. One example panel shows Mr. Biggott tied to a chair in a ransacked room, the obvious victim of a robbery. He shouts for help toward the dislodged headset of a telephone, “Hurry, operator. This is an emergency. I want a white, native-born American policeman.” Even victimized and in dire need of help, Mr. Biggott didn’t want his rescue to come from a police officer who might be an immigrant or a person of color. Researchers used the Mr. Biggott cartoons in a study to determine if prejudiced individuals would understand the intent behind the anti-prejudice campaign and view Mr. Biggott’s intolerance as ridiculous and wrong. If the cartoons were interpreted as intended, these prejudiced readers should recognize and reject their own prejudicial thinking. Instead, the results showed that prejudiced subjects used selective perception to evade or distort the meaning behind the Mr. Biggott campaign. The researchers concluded that prejudiced subjects dodged and twisted the message in the cartoons in order to protect their own egos. Rather than admit their offenses or risk rejection from their social groups, subjects “misunderstood” the cartoon to protect their harmful beliefs (Cooper & Jahoda, 1947, pp. 15–25).

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Under a limited effects model, all psychological and sociological factors were potential variables intervening between media stories and the reactions of audiences who viewed them. Audiences were considered complex arbitrators of media stories. The meanings and significance of stories, including violent ones, would be up for negotiation and debate.

Personal Influence and Social Media There is evidence that individuals continue to rely on friends in their social media networks for news and that dynamics of these sites can shape opinions and behaviors (Graham & Wright, 2014; Bode, 2015). Consumer judgments about the stories in industrial media are readily available online. Research on television programming with accompanying social media comments showed that a few negative opinions expressed online influenced enjoyment of the show (Waddell & Sundar, 2017). These judgments may not come from opinion leaders within a traditional social circle but from other—perhaps not personally known—social media “friends,” sometimes creating the mistaken assumption that these comments reflect the popular view. The idea that a particular media story is preferred or trendy can create a bandwagon effect (Sundar, 2008). Active discussions about the television programs in social media provide opportunities for opinion leaders to intervene in the interpretation of stories (Lee & Choi, 2017). When opinion leaders advise others on social media about good entertainment choices and share their views along with links to sites, these people also perform a gatekeeping role. People commenting on programming and sharing their thoughts online or on social media may not be from the interpersonal influence of opinion leadership as traditionally envisioned, but these social media leaders or influencers do offer another filter on the effects of media stories, helping individuals decide how a story should be judged or even if it should be viewed at all. In a social media universe, the two-step flow narrative may still have validity, though it may be too simplistic. Research explains that in the online world, the two-step flow of the influence from social network friends coexists with more complex network-flows and alongside the direct flow of information from professional media voices (Hilbert, Vasquez, Ahlpern, Valenzuela, & Arriagada, 2017). In a study of how misinformation travels to the public during a violent riot, the data supported the two-step flow theory, showing that misinformation—or unintended false information—flows from opinion leaders online to others, becoming viral and making it harder to manage a public emergency. Opinion leaders could play a role in exposing false information. However, even if the original false Tweet is deleted, “second degree retweets might still live on” (Pang & Ng, 2017). In the contexts of internet and social media, users are not necessarily the helpless victims of a powerful internet but are willing participants in sharing and perhaps contributing to violent stories.

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Moving an Audience to Violence One concern for internet and social media was that if audiences walled themselves inside a prison of their own prejudices, they could be vulnerable to propaganda from a leader who could appear to be a member of the same social group, a subculture of sorts that was digitally connected through websites, message boards, and social media. When a neo-Nazi activist, Andrew Anglin, used his website, The Daily Stormer, to urge followers to harass or “troll storm” a Jewish Realtor, some followers readily obliged. Anglin used doxing, or publication of private contact information, to achieve malicious purposes. The realtor received threatening and insulting emails, letters, antiSemitic posts to her social media, and ominous phone calls (Phillips, 2017; Siegler, 2018). The harassment campaign was retribution for advice the relator had given to the mother of the white nationalist, Richard Spencer, to sell a commercial building she owned in Whitefish, Montana. The realtor warned that the building might become a targeted site for protests against Spencer’s radical views. Spencer’s mother was not happy with this suggestion, interpreting it as a form of extortion. Anglin was able to muster tribal hatred for the Jewish realtor, convincing his neo-Nazi followers to relentlessly threaten her with harassment that extended to include the woman’s family, friends, the local rabbi, human rights groups, and businesses in the Whitefish area. Some might argue that Anglin is not a true opinion leader but a minor internet celebrity. Opinion leaders are usually family and close personal friends. The traditional narrative of opinion leadership suggests that in discussions about Anglin’s website, these friends would intervene with their own judgments on Anglin’s commands for a troll storm. Some might encourage their friends to troll. Others might caution their friends not to get involved. Others might offer different advice. It isn’t likely that all followers of the website decided to act on Anglin’s call for intimidation, however enough followers responded with death threats so that for months they damaged any hope of normal or serene life for the town of Whitefish. The threats were also vague enough that police couldn’t be sure if violence was imminent. The realtor filed a lawsuit against Anglin, engaging a debate about values of free speech and credible threats of violence. One argument was that the First Amendment should be blind to ideology. The counterargument was that free speech should not protect a coordinated attack that uses private communication to cause financial and emotional harm. Internet media may be sufficiently different from industrial media if a website’s audience is isolated from alternate viewpoints, has a psychological need for group connection, and considers the leader to be a friend. Under these conditions, a website’s demand for violent activism might provoke a direct behavioral response in some followers. Yet, on January 16, 2017, when Anglin called for a neo-Nazi march with assault rifles through downtown Whitefish,

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no one showed up (Siegler, 2018). Anglin’s “James Earl Ray Day Extravaganza” in honor of the man who assassinated Martin Luther King Junior, never happened (O’Brien, 2017).

Violence, Young Audiences, and Limited Effects The limited effects model suggests that instances where popular media directly influence individuals are unusual and that audience selectivity and reliance on opinion leaders are active barricades to media influence. According to the narrative of limited effects, people have family relationships, religious affiliations, group memberships, or ties to subcultures that are more likely to influence individual values and behaviors. Even when an opinion leader is not present to guide them, people will reject a media narrative that goes contrary to the values of those interpersonal commitments. Finally, the limited effects story predicts that even when media might seem to have a direct effect, it will be a rare and isolated event. The main concern of early limited effects studies tended to be with political influence and the effects of propaganda (DeFleur, 1970). However, children are not voters and the public was not fully satisfied with the limited effects story on the problem of children’s exposure to media violence, particularly as media became more dominant in children’s lives. Yet, the limited effects model initially seemed to prevail in the early research examining television violence. A series of research studies on the effect of television from 1958 to 1960 seemed to yield no definitive answers about the damaging effects of television on young audiences: sometimes television was harmful, sometimes it wasn’t. Analysis of television stories revealed that they contained a substantial amount of crime and violence, but the effect of a television story depended on the child, the story, the child’s environment, and family conditions. Researchers advised that parents needed to supervise and counter any possible destructive messages television offered their children (Schramm, Lyle, & Parker, 1961). These findings appeared to support the limited effects narrative, suggesting that as the opinion leaders in a child’s life, adults could deflect any negative impact of violent stories. President Lyndon Johnson’s National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (1969) reported that television was not a primary cause of social violence. The public was still not convinced that violent television stories were harmless. One reason a limited effects paradigm did not seem useful for younger audiences was that the filters of selectivity were not in place for children in the same way they might be for adults. The child’s worldview is undeveloped. Children may not have discovered the self-discipline to make thoughtful choices about what media to watch or pay critical attention to the stories they viewed.

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Children are inexperienced. They may not understand accepted social rules or even the rules that govern the fantasy worlds their media stories created. Children may not yet have the “obstinacy” to mentally argue with whatever media screen they are watching. Finally, children’s behaviors tend to be more impulsive than adult behaviors. Research clarifies that the perceptions of children and teens are not only different from adult perceptions, they differ from each other on factors such as gender, developmental age, and ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy (Kundanis, 2003). Another reason limited effects did not seem to be a good fit for child audiences was the assumption behind a two-step or multi-step flow of media influence. For many children and family situations, busy adults were not participating in their children’s media experiences as opinion leaders and children were watching television alone or with young siblings and friends. By the 1960s, the idea of television as the nation’s nanny had already become something of a cliché. Television’s babysitting job would continue into the new millennium, only to be reinforced with the screens of computers, tablets, and phones. Reacting to the 2001 American Academy of Pediatrics advisory to limit children’s television viewing time to two hours or less in a day, some parents felt the limitation was a hardship. Parents were accustomed to using television as a free babysitter and restricting children’s television use was an ordeal that led to bickering (Evans, Jordan, & Horner, 2011). The flow of media influence was one-step when there was no adult sharing and helping to interpret the media experience. However, it should be remembered that direct flow doesn’t mean direct effects. Children’s reactions to the media stories they watched were still not identical or predictable.

Young Opinion Leaders Even if an adult is not present to filter the flow of media stories for young viewers, opinion leadership does exist among children. Research on children 8–12 years old as media users and consumers of products, discovered that the opinions of friends, schoolmates, siblings, and other family members had stronger influences on children’s judgments than media advertising (Hansen  & Hansen, 2005). When toymaker Hasbro wanted to introduce a new handheld video game about warriors fighting invisible “alien infectors,” the change agents in Hasbro’s marketing firm surveyed to find the “coolest” kids in Chicago. They then used the influence of the “cool kids” to successfully introduce their game. Hasboro quickly sold a million units (Mattison, 2011). An opinion leader in a child’s peer group is likely to offer influential judgments about which media stories are “cool” and which media stories are “lame.” A young opinion leader might intervene in the peer group’s desire to see a violent media story but be less useful in helping young peers understand what the violence means. Relying on the filter of opinion leadership among

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children is problematic because both young leaders and their followers are likely to have similar levels of inexperience and self-discipline. Siblings and friends may not have the emotional or intellectual development to be helpful advisors. As the younger sibling of two imaginative older brothers, I can testify that asking an older brother to clarify something about the plot on a scary episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–1965) only offered both brothers opportunities to add new layers of horror and violence without explaining my initial confusion with the plot. My brother’s supplementary material about giant wasps, invisible copperhead snakes, and murderous one-armed lunatics lived on in my childhood nightmares in ways that Hitchcock’s plots never would.

Limitations of Limited Effects In 1972, when the Surgeon General testified before Congress about the effects of television violence, the “overwhelming consensus” did not support the story of limited effects. Instead, the report suggested that televised violence could have harmful effects on children (U.S. Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory on Television and Social Behavior). A decade later the National Institute of Mental Health on Television and Behavior declared media violence to be a serious threat to public health because television inspires young people to behave in aggressive and violent ways (1982). It seemed that a limited effects model had overemphasized the impotence of media influence. After the turn of the new millennium, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the American Psychological Association reviewed the research and issued a joint statement about the impact of violent entertainment on children (July 26, 2000). Violent media stories differed in duration, intensity, and impact, but the health community reaffirmed that the overall effect was negative. The public health community also acknowledged that effects of violent entertainment are complex and some children are more at risk than others. Media stories were not the sole or even the most important factor to influence children’s behavior; family problems, peer pressures, and the availability of weapons might be more significant contributing factors to youth aggression and antisocial attitudes. Following the health community statement were additional reports about media violence with similar findings. The summary reports from the National Institute of Media Health (2003) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (2009) also supported the idea that exposure to media violence encouraged aggressive and violent behavior for some children. Children, adolescents, and some adults may not have the internal filters necessary to protect them from violent media (Anderson & Gentile, 2008). In 2013, the AAP revised

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their advisory to include newer media, declaring that all these screens are dominant forces in children’s lives. The AAP reiterated a suggested two-hour limitation on viewing, advised that no screens should be allowed in the bedroom, and recommended that adults co-view programs with their children. Limited effects models that once appeared useful for describing the influence of political media on adults seemed much less useful for describing the impact of violent media on children. There was also concern that a national focus on the effects of violent media on the developing child overemphasized children to the exclusion of adults. An examination of the “myths of media violence” recognized that older adults have as much or more exposure to violent media and it would be a “myth” to believe adults are resistant to their influence (Potter, 2003). Cognitive, emotional, and moral development does not stop after childhood but continues throughout life. Adult experience does not necessarily translate into competence. Both children and adults were susceptible to fantasy thinking and adult vulnerability to the violent media story needed recognition. All kinds of aggravations help supply the stimulus for aggression and violence in social life: sports rivalries, heat, religious zeal, boredom, competition, romantic jealousies, curiosity, physical discomfort, envy, mental illness, etc. Both children and adults are susceptible to these stresses. Even though media stories were one potential contributor to the violence problem, if children were especially vulnerable to violence as both perpetrators and victims, parents, teachers, and community leaders wanted solutions.

The Exposure Solution One early and obvious solution to the problem of media influence on children was to help adults become better gatekeepers of their children’s media. The earliest tools for television gatekeeping in the parental arsenal included violence warnings and rating systems, which were modeled after familiar movie ratings. Without having to preview a program, adults could look at its rating and decide whether the content was age-appropriate for their child. However, a Kaiser Family Foundation survey discovered that many parents did not understand the ratings or thought the ratings were misleading (2004). Research on video game ratings revealed that only 34 percent of parents understood the recommendations and concluded that ratings needed improvement (Funk, Brouwer, Curtiss, & McBroom, 2009). Compounding the problem is what seems to be an attractive “forbidden fruit” quality for media stories that carry adult ratings. Parental advisory labels on music was an unintended influence on adolescent music preferences (Christenson, 1992). With the idea that technology might help parents be more effective gatekeepers of their children’s media than ratings systems, V-Chip technology

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(violence chip or viewer control technology) became mandatory in all new television sets manufactured in the U.S. after 2000. The V-Chip was a device that allowed parents to block programming they thought was unsuitable for their children. Cable operators also provided subscribers with technology to block unwanted programming through their digital cable set-top boxes. However, an FCC report revealed that the V-Chip was not widely used. Parents either did not know the technology existed, were not sure how to activate it, or simply did not want to use it. The report concluded that blocking technology was not sufficient to protect children’s well-being (2007). Research on internet blocking revealed that many parents did not know about blocking or filtering software, and in some cases “clean” sites that discussed controversial topics with important information were also blocked when younger students needed access for research (Meeder, 2005).

The Perception Solution Another solution for children’s media viewing was to become more assertive in helping young people to develop their own internal filters. Since parents could not be uniformly effective gatekeepers, the job would fall to schools to develop children’s skills both to critique and to create media through media literacy programs. The thinking was that if children understood how media manipulated images, if they could critically deconstruct media stories, and if they understood how to construct their own stories, children were less likely to become the emotional and intellectual victims of media violence. Media literate children with critical internal filters would eventually become media literate adults, less vulnerable to harmful media, and more critical thinkers as a whole. Media literacy has as its optimistic goal a nation populated with a new breed of “obstinate” audience, citizens not easily seduced by attractive propaganda, salacious conspiracy theories, or the easy solutions to conflict that violent media stories seem to recommend. Having a media literate population would be important for a democratic society, making censorship and boycotts of violent media stories unnecessary. The most optimistic dreamed of media consumers whose critical preferences would drive the market toward better and more artfully challenging media stories. There is some evidence that media literacy programs do have an impact on children’s understanding of media stories and it is encouraging to know that children are capable of intellectually discussing what they see (Buckingham, 1993, 1996). One study on the effects of a media literacy program found that children learned to evaluate the violence as often glorified, unrealistic, and dangerous (Bickman & Slaby, 2012). Other research showed that sixth graders were more sophisticated and critical of media violence after a media literacy program (Scharrer, 2006). Children have also demonstrated that they can learn

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the skills to make thoughtful video productions (Gauntlett, 1997, 2005). A review of the research suggests that adult intervention using comments before or during a program screening could reduce the effects of media violence on children’s aggressiveness but warns about unanticipated “boomerang” effects, which include a young person’s resistance to adult guidance and sometimes direct opposition to adult commentary (Cantor & Wilson, 2009). Boomerang effects were more common in research studies of older teens, whose attitudes are too firmly set for media literacy programs to influence. These teens were already obstinate audiences. Another essay outlined the challenges to the design and implementation of media literacy curricula, which include resistance from school administrations, an already overloaded classroom curricula, and underresourced teacher training (Fedorov, Levitskaya, & Camarero, 2016). Another review of the scholarship on the effects of media literacy characterized the emerging curricula as a response intended to combat unhealthy media effects and concluded that media education was still in transition (Potter, 2010). One assessment of media literacy discussed the cultural lag in the nation’s educational system. “Because young people are generally social media savvy, it is often assumed they are media literate” (Jolls & Johnsen, 2018, p. 1394). This is not the case. Because an educated citizenry is critical to a democracy, the research calls for making media literacy a high priority within school curricula. A subsequent essay suggested that media literacy should be more than a defense against violent and detrimental media or the promotion of particular viewpoints. Media literacy should instead be viewed as key to critical thinking (Hobbs, 2011). Others observed that media literacy could have a vital role in a “postfactual” society but warn that merely teaching how to critique a message or detect false information is an oversimplified answer to the problem. As earlier research suggests, the difficulty with obstinate audiences is they may not be particularly good listeners when their egos or ideology are threatened. Accuracy may not be a priority for people who would rather see media stories that are personally satisfying and supportive of their worldview. If media literacy only taught individuals to “question, critique, and inquire about the credibility of media, it seems as if this technique can justify those who felt compelled to investigate the #pizzagate story in the first place” (Mihailidis & Viotty, 2017, p.  450). Scholars called for media literacy curricula that could function in a climate of spectacle and post-fact culture and not eliminate adults as potential students in media literacy education. The ideal goals would be to connect people, embrace differences, enable caring, support everyday engagement, and intentionally focus on civic impact. The extensive literature on media literacy has hope for what media education programs might do for both children and adults, but these programs have not yet solved concerns about media violence or realized the larger promise of developing a more thoughtful and critically engaged population.

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Moderate and Powerful Effects The amount of research that linked aggressive behaviors to the violence of media stories seemed to indicate that the limited effects model was not as predictive as researchers would have liked. Too many summaries of media violence research advised that effects were more than merely limited. Even if the research showed tiny statistical results, these were enough to arouse concern. A summary of the media violence research for the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues maintained that violent media had the potential to negatively impact viewers’ emotional state (affective effects), their beliefs about the world in which they lived (cognitive effects), and what actions they decided to take ( behavioral effects) (Anderson et al., 2015). The data suggested that moderate effects models or perhaps powerful (but not direct) effects models would be more useful for describing and predicting the influence of violent media stories on populations. Moderate effects models, which include the theory of agenda-setting discussed in Chapter Two, stop short of predicting any specific behavioral responses audiences have to a violent media story but recognize that continued exposure to violent media might have consequences for some people over longer periods of time. The moderate media effects position is generally more concerned with the indirect influence of media stories on determining the topics audiences think about, the ways audiences consider those topics because of media emphasis and framing, and how this effects behavior. The powerful effects model suggests that under certain circumstances media could overcome the filters of audience selectivity. The observation that news stories tend to be similar in content, difficult to escape, and just pile up and repeat over time led to the consideration of a more powerful media effect. The assumption behind powerful effects is that media stories share the characteristics of consonance, ubiquity, and cumulation, which combine to override audience selectivity. The narrative of powerful effects was originally concerned with the influence of news stories on people’s opinions, however the violent contents in fictional media stories have also been described as redundant, cumulative, and inescapable. Effects research using the powerful media narrative suggests that violent media stories are relentlessly repetitive, monotonous, and enduring; therefore, audience thoughts and behaviors cannot help but be influenced. The spiral of silence is a related theory that suggests that media are powerful because they can suppress viewpoints. When media stories suggest to individuals that theirs is a minority opinion, these individuals tend to remain silent in order to avoid social isolation (Noelle-Neumann, 1973, 1980). The result is that a dissident opinion is silenced if an individual is afraid to share it. Some internet era studies seem to support the idea that individuals maintain a spiral of silence in an online context. A Pew Research Center study revealed that

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social media didn’t seem to provide an alternative forum for people who were reluctant to discuss an issue in person. As the theory predicted, people were more willing to join a conversation when they believed others in the group shared their opinion (Hampton et al., 2014). A study involving a hypothetical scenario of gay bullying found the spiral of silence theory useful to explain why users of Facebook would self-censor in an online discussion if the user judged the environment to be hostile. When online contents became threatening but were also deemed significant, the spiral of silence was less predictive. Individuals who considered the issue to be important would risk revealing a minority opinion, even if they thought the online environment was unfriendly (Gearhart & Zhang, 2014). Ideas like opinion leadership and audience selectivity remain useful contributions to the theoretical story. Moderate and powerful effects models do not deny the influence of opinion leaders, groups, and audience selectivity or other personal and environmental influences on the effects of media violence, but suggest that popular media have more muscle to overcome audience resistance than limited effects suggested. Furthermore, interpersonal influences may not always be good ones. A limited effects narrative about reasonable people in a meaningful debate over the significance of media stories may have been too optimistic about the role of opinion leadership and group behavior. When the opinions of violently inclined friends reinforce the messages in violent media stories, the result could be dangerous. Violence may be too deeply ingrained in human history and the human psyche to fully eliminate, even if rigid media limitations were in place and all popular media were “G” rated, or appropriate for even the youngest and most potentially vulnerable audiences. Critics of calls for tougher media policies remind us that audiences are drawn to violent media stories in the same way spectators were drawn to violence in folklore, ballads, and gladiatorial style entertainment in eras long before modern media emerged. The true obstinacy of audiences may exist in a stubborn fascination with violence.

Opinion Leadership and “The Heist” The following story was created from several different accounts in which the storytellers knew individuals from middle school or high school who schemed to commit armed robbery of classmates or neighbors for video games and sports equipment and then acted on that plan. In all of these stories, the boys involved in planning a robbery were friends but not members of a recognized gang. Opinion leadership predicts that the boy with the most influence will have the persuasive power to determine the group’s behavior.

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Discussion: The Opinion Leaders and Peer Pressure Among the several accounts that contributed to “The Heist,” only one ended with an arrest and an appearance in juvenile court. All the other storytellers shared narratives where the robberies were either successful or were botched but police did not catch the young perpetrators. There was a concern that including mention of an arrest in the sequential art might lead readers to believe that police usually solved juvenile crime. This would be a distortion. The Pew Research Center reports that most violent crimes in the United States go unsolved (2017). Many are never reported. Even though the narrative’s ending contradicts the reality, a version that included an arrest was more satisfying for volunteers reading the early walkthroughs than a version where the boys escaped with a stolen console and games. The storytellers who inspired “The Heist” wanted to explain their understanding of opinion leadership, or peer pressure, showing how an influential individual could have persuasive power over friends. In all these stories there was at least one boy, usually the storyteller, who opposed the idea of committing armed robbery. Some who resisted the plan felt pressured into participating and eventually reframed the event in their minds as more of a dangerous and exciting prank than a crime. “The Heist” mentions the comic book character of Judge Joseph Dredd, who inspired two action films Judge Dredd (1995) and Dredd (2012). Judge Dredd is a law officer in a futuristic, crimeridden wasteland. Dredd protects citizens from ruthless criminals by being an even more ruthless enforcer of the law as police officer, judge, and executioner. When Geer ridicules Big Boy for his fearful admiration of the comic book character, Geer dismisses a media story that emphasizes a draconian respect for law and order. As the opinion leader for the group, Geer’s scorn persuades Big Boy to think it’s silly to respect Judge Dredd or the law. Ultimately, not all the boys participate in the robbery, suggesting there are influences other than opinion leadership at work. Most stories about violence are also stories about power: who has it and who doesn’t. Part of the power story in “The Heist” is economic. The boys resent the fact that a classmate’s family can buy the newest console and games, a situation Geer believes is unfair and could be remedied with armed robbery. The sequential art doesn’t show the boys actually playing the violent video games they admire, but in addition to being a game the boys coveted to the point that they were willing to commit armed robbery for it, the violent story in Grand Theft Auto (GTA) may have contributed to Geer’s decision. GTA rewards players with points for stealing and killing. Much of the public discussion about video games is concern that players will become addicted to game violence and bring those violent behaviors into social life (Nizza, 2007). Chapter Six further examines ideas about violent video games and their influences on aggressive behaviors. While the limited effects perspective looked to opinion leaders and audience selectivity as the managers of audience attitudes and behaviors, theories based on moderate and powerful effects had more resonance in discussions about the potential effects of violent media. Scholars began to view popular media as a significant mentor, helping people to understand their social life as well as showing them how to live it.

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References for Chapter Four American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, American Psychological Association, American Medical Association, & American Academy of Family Physicians and American Psychiatric Association. (2000, July 26). Joint statement on the impact of entertainment violence on children. Congressional Public Health Summit. Anderson, C. A., Bushman, B. J., Donnerstein, E., Hummer, T. A., & Warburton, W. (2015). SPSSI research summary on media violence. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 15(1), 4–19. Anderson, C. A., & Gentile, D. A. (2008). Media violence, aggression, and public policy. In E. Borgida & S. Fiske (Eds.), Beyond common sense: Psychological science in the courtroom (pp. 281–300). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Bauer, R. A. (1964). The obstinate audience. American Psychologist, 19, 319–328. Bickman, D. S., & Slaby, R. G. (2012). Effects of a media literacy program in the U.S. on children’s critical evaluation of unhealthy media messages about violence, smoking, and food. Journal of Children and Media, 6(2), 255–271. Bode, L. (2015). Political news in the news feed: Learning politics from social media. Mass Communication and Society, 19(1), 24–48. Bromwich, J. E. (2016, November 21). 16 arrested at North Dakota pipeline protest. The New York Times. Buckingham, D. (1993). Reading audiences: Young people and the media. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Buckingham, D. (1996). Moving images: Understanding children’s emotional responses to television. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Cantril, H., Gaudet, H., & Herzog, H. (1940). Invasion from Mars. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cantor, J., & Wilson, B. J. (2009). Media and violence: Intervention strategies for reducing aggression. Media Psychology, 5(4), 363–403. Christenson, P. (1992). The effects of parental advisory labels on adolescent music preferences. Journal of Communication, 42(1), 106–113. Cooper, E., & Jahoda, M. (1947). The evasion of propaganda: How prejudiced people respond to anti-prejudice propaganda. Journal of Psychology, 23(1), 15–25. DeFleur, M. L. (1970). Theories of mass communication. New York: David McKay. Edwards, E. D. (2010). The transgressive toke: Culture, subculture, and pop culture in deadhead imagery. In R. Weiner & J. Cline (Eds.), From the arthouse to the grindhouse (pp. 223–243). Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Evans, C. A., Jordan, A. B., & Horner, J. (2011). Only two hours? A qualitative study of the challenges parents perceive in restricting child television time. Journal of Family Issues, 32(9), 1223–1244. Fedorov, A., Levitskaya, A., & Camarero, E. (2016). Curricula for media literacy education according to international experts. European Journal of Contemporary Education, 17(3), 324–334. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Funk, J. B., Brouwer, J., Curtiss, K., & McBroom, E. (2009). Parents of preschoolers: Expert media recommendations and ratings knowledge, media-effects beliefs, and monitoring practices. Pediatrics, 123(3), 981–988. Gardiner, D. (2003, January). Anime in America. Japanese Magazine: J@pan Inc. Communication.

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Gauntlett, D. (1997). Video critical: Children, the environment and media power. Eastleigh, UK: John Libbey Publishers. Gauntlett, D. (2005). Moving experiences: Media effects and beyond (2nd ed.). Eastleigh, UK: John Libbey Publishers. Gearhart, S., & Zhang, W. (2014). Gay bullying and online opinion expression: Testing spiral of silence in the social media environment. Social Science Computer Review, 32(1), 18–36. Graham, T., & Wright, S. (2014). Discursive equality and everyday talk online: The impact of “superparticipants”. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 19, 625–642. Hampton, K., Rainie, L., Lu, W., Dwyer, M., Shin, I., & Purcell, K. (2014, August 26). Social media and the “spiral of silence”. Pew Research Center: Internet and Technology, 12–26. Hansen, F., & Hansen, M. H. (2005). Children as innovators and opinion leaders. Young Consumers, 6(2), 44–59. Hilbert, M., Vasquez, J., Ahlpern, D., Valenzuela, S., & Arriagada, E. (2017). One step, two step, network step? Complementary perspectives on communication flows in Twittered citizen protests. Social Science Computer Review, 35(4), 444–461. Hobbs, R. (2011). The state of media literacy: A response to potter. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 55(3), 419–430. Hovland, C. I. (1954). Effects of mass media on communication. In G. Lindzey (Ed.), Handbook of social psychology (pp. 1062–1103). Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley. Hovland, C. I., Lumsdaine, A. A., & Sheffield, F. D. (1965). Experiments on mass communication. New York: Wiley. Jolls, T., & Johnsen, M. (2018). Media literacy: A foundational skill for democracy in the 21st century. Hastings Law Journal, 69(5), 1379–1408. Katz, E. (1957). The two-step flow of communication: An up-to-date report on an hypothesis. Public Opinion Quarterly, 21, 61–78. Katz, E., & Lazarsfeld, P. F. (1955). Personal influence: The part played by people in the flow of communications. New York: Free Press. Klapper, H. T. (1960). The effects of mass communication. New York: Free Press. Kundanis, R. (2003). Children, teens, families and the mass media: The millennial generation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Lazarsfeld, P. F., Berelson, B, & Gaudet, H. (1944). The people’s choice: How the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce. Lee, J., & Choi, Y. (2017). Shifting from an audience to an active public in social viewing: Focusing on the discussion network. Computers in Human Behavior, 75, 301–310. Lerbinger, O. (1972). Designs for persuasive communication. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Mattison, B. (2011, January 1). Do we listen to opinion leaders? Yale Insights. Retrieved from https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/do-we-listen-to-opinion-leaders Meeder, R. (2005). Access denied: Internet filtering software in K-12 classrooms. TechTrends: Linking Research and Practice to Improve Learning, 49(6), 56–78. Mihailidis, P., & Viotty, S. (2017). Spreadable spectacle in digital culture: Civic expression, fake news, and the role of media literacies in “post-fact” society. American Behavioral Scientist, 61(4), 441–454. National Institute of Mental Health. (1982). Television and behavior: Ten years of scientific prgress and implications for the eighties, Vol 1: Summary report. (DHHS Publication No. ADM 82–1195). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Nizza, M. (2007, July 5). Tying Columbine to video games. The New York Times. Noelle-Neumann, E. (1973). Return to the concept of the powerful mass media. Studies of Broadcasting, 9, 68–105.

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Noelle-Neumann, E. (1980). Mass media and social change in developed societies. In G.  C. Wilhoit & H. de Bock (Eds.), Mass communication review yearbook (Vol. 1, pp. 657–678). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. O’Brien, L. (2017, December). The making of an American Nazi: How did Andrew Anglin go from being an antiracist vegan to alt-right’s most vicious troll and propagandist and how might he be stopped. The Atlantic. Odell, C., & Le Blanc, M. (2013). Anime. Harpenden, Herts, UK: Kamera Books. Pang, N., & Ng, J. (2017). Misinformation in a Riot: A two-step flow view. Online Information Review, 41(4), 438–453. Phillips, K. (2017, December 3). Founder of neo-Nazi Site Daily Stormer argues troll storm against Jewish woman is free speech. The Washington Post. Potter, W. J. (2003). The 11 myths of media violence. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Potter, W. J. (2010). The state of media literacy. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 54(4), 675–696. Randerson, J. (2013, September 11). Why a watermelon tells you what’s wrong with the climate debate. The Guardian. Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of innovations (5th ed.). New York: Free Press. Rosnow, R. L., & Robinson, E. J. (1967). Experiments in persuasion. New York: Academic. Scharrer, E. (2006). “I noticed more violence”: The effects of a media literacy program on critical attitudes toward media violence. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 21, 69–86. Schramm, W., Lyle, J., & Parker, E. (1961). Television in the lives of our children. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Sears, D., & Freedman, J. L. (1967). Selective exposure to information: A critical review. Public Opinion Quarterly, 31(2), 194–213. Siegler, K. (2018, January 23). Descending on a Montana Town, neo-Nazi trolls tests where free speech ends. Morning Edition. NPR, 5:03 a.m. ET. Sundar, S. S. (2008). The main model: A heuristic approach to understanding technology effects on credibility. In M. J. Metzger & A. J. Flanagin (Eds.), Digital media, youth and credibility (pp. 72–100). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Suter, R. (2016). Reassessing manga history, resituating manga in history. In N. Otmazgin & R. Suter (Eds.), Rewriting history in manga: Stories for the nation (pp. 175–183). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tsutsui, W. M. (2008). Nerd nation otaku and youth subcultures in contemporary Japan. Education about Asia, 13(3), 12–18. U.S. Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior. (1972). Television and growing up: The impact of televised violence. (DHEW Publication No. HSM 72–9086). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Waddell, T. F., & Sundar, S. S. (2017). #Thisshowsucks! The overpowering influence of negative social media comments on television viewers. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 61(2), 393–409. Weiman, G. (1982). On the importance of marginality: One more step into the two-step flow of communication. American Sociological Review, 47, 764–773.

5 LEARNING VIOLENCE The Drama of Aggression

Some of the oldest ideas we have about dramatic storytelling come from the fourth century B.C., when Aristotle recognized that spectators experience strong emotions while watching the idealized hero of a serious drama endure the challenges of his story. Aristotle describes the art of drama as an imitation of action and “events inspiring pity and fear” (Butcher, 1923, p. 39). Pity is the emotional response while watching a tragic character endure sometimes undeserved troubles that mistakes, villainy, and bad luck can put in a hero’s path. Fear is the emotional reaction when spectators recognize themselves in the suffering hero and believe their protagonist is facing severe danger. The proper function of tragedy is to stir these emotions and produce katharsis, a purging of pity and fear at the end of the story, when emotions the tragedy produced are not gone forever, but relieved. Dramatic stories provide a “harmless and pleasurable outlet for instincts which demand satisfaction, and which can be indulged here [in the theater] more fearlessly than in real life” (Butcher, 1923, p. 245). Translations of the Poetics tell us that Aristotle thought it was harmful to starve the emotional part of the human psyche. We should instead rejoice in our emotional lives, including our ability to experience empathy and concern through art. The emotion that appears missing from the discussion of katharsis is the anger that might also translate into aggressive action. As with fear and pity, anger isn’t a disorder. Aristotle argues that anger can be healthy and honorable. The virtuous person must be angry, but at the right time and place and in the right way (Bommarito, 2017). Anger might be virtuous or vicious and, for some people, difficult to manage, but occasional anger is okay. Perhaps, like pity and fear, spectator anger over events might fade once the drama’s major conflict is resolved. An essay attempting to better clarify katharsis for modern audiences warns that the process is not simply emotional training; the response to art is not what

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a person would or should feel in the reaction to a real-life counterpart (Lear, 1992). Yet, spectators learn from the emotional experience of drama. A powerful performance convinces audiences that tragedy could also happen to them. Within the safety of watching, audiences imaginatively live life to the full, facing danger but risking nothing. There is relief at the story’s end, realizing that the worst has happened; there is nothing more to fear. Through the excitement of art, fear and pity are replaced with pleasure in a surge of human sympathy. The real world “remains a rational, meaningful place in which a person can conduct himself with dignity” (Lear, 1992, p. 335). By vicariously experiencing the passions in stories and seeing the disastrous consequences of uncontrolled emotions, spectators learn the terrible costs of tragic conflicts that explode in violence. For “in the spectacle of another’s errors or misfortunes, in the shock and blows of circumstance, we read the doubtful doom of human kind” (Butcher, 1923, p. 262). Aristotle admired Sophocles’s drama, Oedipus Tyrannus, a story filled with tragic violence and the supernatural prophecies that human arrogance helps fulfill. If only Oedipus’s father, Laius, had not abducted and raped a prince, he never would have triggered the terrible curse on his family and then attempted to dispose of his infant son, Oedipus, in order to escape that curse. (The ancient Greeks had no problem with homosexuality. Laius’ kidnap and rape of a royal son while a guest in the palace triggered the curse.) If only the adult Oedipus had not brawled with a stranger at a crossroads over whose chariot had the right of way, he would not have thrown the arrogant old Laius from his chariot and unknowingly killed his own father. If only Oedipus had not outwitted a monstrous Sphinx threatening the city of Thebes, he might not have become its ruler and married his own widowed mother. If only Oedipus could have stopped playing detective, he would never have learned the terrible truth. If only Oedipus had not gone roaring through the palace looking for his mother and wife in order to plunge his sword into her womb, he would not have found that Jocasta had already denied him this satisfaction with her suicide. If only he had not seen the brooches on Jocasta’s robe, Oedipus might not have gouged out his own eyes. And if only Laius had murdered the infant Oedipus instead of handing him off to a servant to do the gruesome job, Oedipus would have been spared his tragic life. Aristotle’s work is essentially a critique and guide for dramatic artists. Modern storytellers would likely agree that the purpose of drama is to excite spectators, not to tranquilize them, though Aristotle’s ancient instructions might not inspire contemporary media producers eager to push the creative envelope, particularly with the artistry of violent spectacle. Aristotle’s katharsis requires the ability of a spectator to become emotionally involved in a story, which also depends on the storyteller’s skill to pull audiences into the narrative and keep their attention. A clumsily told story might result in a frustrated rather than fulfilled audience, which would impact the kathartic experience as well as any cathartic function, if such a function existed. What

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distinguishes contemporary catharsis from Aristotle’s katharsis is the idea that watching the brutal actions of others arouses and vents a spectator’s personal aggressive feelings and may even act as an odd vaccine, inoculating against future aggression that might arise in the spectator’s real-life situations. Katharsis deals with the pressures within a fictional story experience, while modern catharsis attempts to project outward to the frustrations of a spectator’s life experience.

Catharsis as Healing Fast forward a few centuries and “katharsis” becomes “catharsis” or the aggression catharsis hypothesis, which suggests the healing effects that violent media stories could have on real-life aggressive tendencies. The idea behind catharsis is that exposure to media violence vents aggression and reduces risks of aggressive behavior. Spectators would find aggressive moods eased after viewing violent media stories; players would come away from their first person shooter games drained of hostility, digital bullets spent. Like limited effects theories, catharsis was a happier theoretical story, advising that there is nothing to fear from violent media. On the contrary, media violence could be considered a form of homoeopathic treatment, curing potentially harmful human emotions by expelling them through a safe activity, like watching violent movies or playing violent video games. Even Aristotle acknowledged that emotions purged through katharsis are not gone forever; they might be resurrected with the next dramatic story. Because I don’t read Greek, I am relying on others’ interpretations of Aristotle (most notably Butcher), but it seems Aristotle didn’t consider human emotion a disease that needed curing. The spectator’s ability to become submerged in a story, willingly transported to the protagonist’s world and emotionally concerned with the outcome of events a protagonist encounters, is an achievement for both artist and spectator. As a pure media experience katharsis seems reasonable. Anyone who has experienced the thrill of white knuckling the theater seat while watching a scary movie scene or had a good cry when a poignant film has ended understands that the spectators’ emotional involvement in a media story is not so strange. However, the drives that build dramatic tension belong to the story as do the dramatic actions that ultimately bring about katharsis.

The Inhibition Container It may help explain the thinking behind the aggression catharsis hypothesis to describe the emotions of anger, frustration, and aggression as a swirling, volatile liquid held under pressure in a fragile container composed of social inhibition (Buss, 1961). Anxieties about punishments for bad behavior, the scorn of friends and family, and a person’s own values and conscience are the raw materials that create this internal container. When emotion builds or heats up, this container

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strains under the pressure. If force on the container isn’t released but continues to build, the container will eventually explode, spewing a catastrophe of violent action. Venting pressure supposedly helps to avoid that disaster. It sounds reasonable. An early experiment on college-aged men seemed to offer some scientific evidence that catharsis might soften aggressive attitudes. Subjects who saw a brutal prize fight after having been harshly insulted seemed less aggressive than those who saw a neutral film (Feshbach, 1961). A subsequent experiment using subjects from a group home for preadolescent boys restricted half of the boys’ television viewing to nonviolent programs while the other half were allowed to watch more violent television. The boys who had been allowed to see violent programs scored lower on measures for aggression (Feshbach & Singer, 1971). Another study found that people with strong fantasy skills might be able to vent personal anger while watching a violent film, but cautioned that people without imaginative skills might miss that cathartic experience (Biblow, 1973). In spite of these early studies, other empirical evidence supporting catharsis as a strong theoretical story is largely missing. Studies showed benefits for therapeutic catharsis in a clinical setting, however watching violent media did not provide that same cathartic release (Gentile, 2013). Discharging tension through behavior could reduce aggression (Buss, 1961; Schafer, 1970; Verona & Sullivan, 2008), but watching violent media didn’t seem to have this effect. Summaries of aggression catharsis literature indicated that spectators watching media violence will experience a surge rather than a drop in aggressive feelings (Geen, 2001; Gentile, 2013). As an explanation for the effects of violent media, catharsis has not had much support in the research or in general observations of behavior. A former student provided anecdotal evidence in a story about playing a violent video game with his friend. As the game progressed and the friend was losing, he became increasingly agitated. When my student won the game and stood to perform a smug dance of victory, his friend picked up a chair and pummeled him with it, breaking my student’s nose. The violence in the video game didn’t purge his friend’s aggressiveness and my student’s own unsportsmanlike gloat over the win likely added inspiration for a painful attack.

Mimesis and Media Modeling Aristotle discussed another concept important to modern media theory: mimesis or the imitation of reality through performance. For Aristotle the real world was already an imitation of that ideal, archetypal world that gave birth to our material existence. Therefore, the artist should not be limited to our experienced reality; the artist could draw from imagination to “imitate things as they ought to be” (Butcher, 1923, p. 122). People are naturally mimetic creatures with a drive to create art that reflects and comments on our reality and our imaginative impressions of it. Mimesis is also important for audiences to be able to recognize

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and respond to art. The ancient Greek spectator watching a tragedy unfold on stage could recognize the action but understood that nothing painful or destructive was happening to the actors. The actor playing Oedipus didn’t really gouge out his own eyes. Spectators took pleasure in the performance when mimesis deceived emotionally if not intellectually. If art can imitate life, surely the reverse can happen and life can imitate art. Oedipus’s solutions to conflict were not particularly helpful if audiences were inspired to mimic them. Modern critics worried that audiences for modern media would mimic violent performances. Since the early days of television, people understood that the moving image can teach viewers how to do something. Cooking programs such as James Beard’s I Love to Eat (NBC, 1946–47), Julia Child’s The French Chef (PBS, 1963–1970), and Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen (Fox, 2005-) show viewers how to assemble, bake, fry, and sauté their food. This ability of visual media to demonstrate is particularly useful, enabling people to learn all manner of skills. Imitating actions of visual media is economical learning, more efficient than trial and error methods. However, if visual media can teach us how to do useful things, they might also teach potentially harmful behaviors: how to build a bomb, make a fatal poison, perform the dirty tricks of lethal boxing, convert a semiautomatic firearm into a fully automatic weapon, etc. Researchers additionally worried that visual media might inadvertently teach audiences violent behaviors through stories never intended to be instructional.

The Bobo Doll Experiments In 1961, psychologist Albert Bandura used films he produced of an adult hitting a Bobo doll in his experimental research on social learning theory, the idea that people learn behaviors by watching others model them (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963). The Bobo doll was an inflatable plastic clown designed to be punched; the doll defiantly swayed back to its upright position whenever it was hit down. Bandura used both real-life adult models and films of adults hitting Bobo to see if preschool children would copy those aggressive behaviors. In one film, a “cartoon” version, the adult model wears an animal costume. In real life, on film, and in costume, the children watched an adult hitting, kicking, beating, and throwing Bobo in the air in aggressive ways. Young subjects in a control group did not see the aggressive models. The children who witnessed the adult acting belligerently toward the doll later mimicked those behaviors when they were allowed to play with Bobo, but children in the control group didn’t imitate those novel aggressive behaviors (Bandura, 2010). A three-part documentary narrated by Dr. Michael Mosley, The Brain: A Secret History (BBC, “Emotions,” 6 January 2011), shows original footage from Bandura’s experiment: a boy with his young face contorted in rage as he hits

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Bobo and a determined girl, who also mimics aggressive actions. Mosley remarks while watching the film, “he’s got a very aggressive expression on his face.” The boy in the film continues to pummel the clown with a mallet, finally shooting and hitting Bobo with a toy gun, behaviors that had not been modeled in the film. Young subjects learned from watching mediated action, mimicked what they learned, and also invented new ways to intimidate poor Bobo. In his own narration over similar footage from his experiment, Bandura explains, “It was once widely believed that seeing others vent aggression would drain the viewer’s aggressive drive.” As a young boy mercilessly beats Bobo, Bandura adds, “As you can see, exposure to aggressive modeling is hardly cathartic. Children who had been exposed to the aggressive modeling showed an increased attraction to guns, even though the adult model never used them.” Watching a different clip showing a little girl wildly swinging her baby doll at Bobo’s head, Bandura remarks, “Children in the control group, who had no exposure to aggressive modeling, never exhibited the novel forms of aggression. Here is a creative embellishment. A doll becomes a weapon of assault” (2010). The conclusion was that children would mimic the behavior they witnessed but children were also inspired to invent new forms of uninhibited aggression. In subsequent research, Bandura added variations, examining the effects of rewards and punishments. Preschool subjects were assigned to three experimental groups. One group saw a version of the film where the adult aggressor is rewarded for savage behaviors against Bobo, described as a “strong champion,” and given treats. The second group saw a version of the film where the adult aggressor is punished for being a bully and “spanked” with a magazine for mean behavior. The third group saw a film where the adult is neither rewarded nor punished for hitting Bobo. Afterward, when all the children were allowed to play with Bobo, the children who had seen the version of the film with the “strong champion” imitated more of the aggressive acts (Bandura, 1965; Bandura, 1977). Not everyone believed the Bobo experiment proved that children would become violent after watching violent media. Criticisms of Bandura’s research generally complained about the problems inherent in laboratory experiments. In the zeal to control all variables and isolate the cause of behavior, laboratory experiments introduce new problems, measuring unnatural responses to artificial stimuli and situations (Buckingham, 1993). Imagine the mystified preschoolers, removed from familiar settings, brought to a university laboratory, and asked to watch a strange film where an adult repeatedly hits a clown doll, which appears to come to no real harm. Film clips from the original experiment do not make it clear why the adult is so angry with Bobo. The meaning behind the adult violence in the experimental films is largely absent; “research subjects are likely to be shown selected or specially recorded clips, which lack the narrative meaning inherent in everyday TV

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production” (Gauntlett, 2006, p. 59). By showing children the aggressive film, the experimenter gives them implicit permission, perhaps even encouragement, to imitate the violence they had seen (Ballard, 1995). Children might have concluded that it was the lot in Bobo’s plastic life to be the survivor of human abuse. If the young subjects suspected that they were being watched afterward as they played with the toys, their actions might also have become a performance of play for the benefit of the adult researchers rather than the imaginative play that allows children to experiment with roles and makebelieve events. For all its problems, Bandura’s research became support for the idea that people learn behavior from media stories, specifically suggesting that children can learn aggressive behaviors. The research supported a claim that viewing violent behavior in a film (and by extension on any media screen) could lead to social violence. A subsequent field study conducted in Israel seemed to reinforce the outcome of the Bobo doll experiments. The study showed an “epidemic” of playground injuries because children were imitating the violent moves made by wrestlers when the World Wrestling Entertainment programs became available to them (Lemish, 1997).

Learning Aggression Bandura’s social learning theory explains that individuals learn behavior by watching other people and then adapting what they see others do to situations in their own lives. However, learning a behavior does not necessarily mean an individual will perform it. There are several steps before a potentially violent person acts out behaviors observed in violent media. Spectators must first choose to give the violent story their attention, then remember what they have seen, be capable of reproducing the violent behavior, and finally be motivated to perform the violent action when an opportunity arises. If these steps seem familiar, it is because they are filters of audience selectivity: selective exposure, attention, perception, retention, recall, and behavior. Perception, or the meaning and judgment a spectator gives to the violent media story, may seem to be missing from the social learning model but is implied in the motivational step. Perception is certainly implied in the research showing that when aggressive behavior is rewarded, it is more likely to be imitated than if it is punished (Bandura, 1965). Showing the harmful consequences to victims of violence might also deter a spectator from imitating violent media actions (Wotring & Greenberg, 1973). Related to the idea of social learning or modeling is the imitation hypothesis, which predicts that people will learn distinctive forms of violence from violent media stories and then reproduce that exact behavior. One well-known example followed the broadcast of a television movie Born Innocent (1974). This was a story about violence in a girls’ juvenile detention center and reform school. The

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filmmakers wanted to demonstrate the cyclical nature of violence, showing how the cruelty a teen runaway suffers from her brutal father and later within a harsh juvenile justice system converts the protagonist into a vengeful person, ready to perpetrate violence she had endured. This was clearly a topic that interested viewers; Born Innocent was the highest rated television movie in 1974. The dramatized exposé of conditions in the juvenile justice system included a controversial scene in the bathroom of a detention center, where other female inmates commit sexual assault on the protagonist with a plunger handle. A few days after the movie aired, a group of young people attacked a nineyear-old girl in a manner similar to a scene from the movie. By portraying this peculiarly vicious act, the movie had added a distinctively cruel performance to the behavioral repertoire of the young culprits. The girl’s parents filed a lawsuit against the National Broadcasting Company (Olivia N. v. NBC. 74 Cal. App. 3d 383. 1977), claiming that with the broadcast of Born Innocent the network provided both the inspiration and instructions for the violence against their daughter. However, the California Supreme Court declared that the movie was not liable for the criminal acts of the young people who acted out the violence they had seen. The court ruled that entertainment, like political and ideological speech, is subject to First Amendment protection. Born Innocent was a drama intended to expose problems in the juvenile justice system. It wasn’t the producers’ intention to teach violent behavior. The portrayal was not a promotion of violent behavior but a condemnation of it. The controversy surrounding Born Innocent reminds us that dramatic media stories commenting on social violence are as vulnerable to audience misunderstanding as stories where violence is purely for entertainment. This case and other unsuccessful lawsuits show that courts have been unwilling to hold popular media responsible for aggressive reactions of some audiences.

Priming, Disinhibition, and Desensitization Research seems to indicate that indulging angry emotions through savage media depictions only stokes the aggressive fires social inhibitions might not be able to control. Rather than lessening the pressure, media effects studies suggest that violent media stories weaken social inhibition, so that the delicate internal container becomes more fragile and unstable, less capable of suppressing aggression in real-life situations. Effects research has used several related theoretical stories to explain the dangers of violent media on that internal container. Priming effect, which we mentioned in Chapter Two, is the opposite of catharsis. Instead of harmlessly venting aggressive thoughts, the priming effect predicts that violent media stories awaken them. Watching violent stories could trigger audience thoughts about related lived experiences (Jo & Berkowitz, 1994). The primed brain takes note of its environment and psychologically prepares individuals for action. Data showing a connection between the priming of

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aggressive thoughts and aggressive behavior is weak but becomes stronger when the spectator identifies with the aggressive character, believes the aggression is justified, believes the media story is credible, and the story activates real memories. As people watch more violent media, they may begin to consider aggression as a cultural norm. Disinhibition predicts that enough exposure to media violence undermines the internal inhibition container. Media stories in which a heroic protagonist uses bloodshed to achieve goals may reinforce the idea that violent solutions to conflict are acceptable. If the intrepid protagonist of a media story settles conflict viciously and multiple stories repeat similar violent solutions, viewers might believe that violent solutions are normal, honorable, and gratifying. Research subjects who saw a media depiction of a knife fight were more willing to increase levels of a painful shock they gave another person than those subjects who witnessed a nonviolent scene (Doob & Clime, 1972). Electric shocks are not the same as a stab wound but researchers interpret a subject’s eagerness to give painful shocks as aggressive behavior. In another example, researchers found that after watching a violent television program, children playing a game in which they could be helpful or aggressive toward other children were more willing to be aggressive and uncooperative than those who watched a neutral show. Children who had seen the violent television program were also more likely to choose violent toys, such as toy guns and knives, over neutral toys, like a slinky (Liebert & Baron, 1972). Researchers additionally discovered that violent media inspired people to be less civil and more willing to say inappropriate things in a class or a meeting (Zillman & Weaver, 1999). The research implies that we can expect a growing public callousness because popular media stories convince audiences that it’s acceptable to break the rules of civility. The perception that an environment is favorable to violence, whether or not this view is accurate, could encourage some individuals to openly express hostility that had been previously suppressed. Since 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center catalogued a growth of hate speech and intimidation on social media and more hate-fueled attacks, vandalism, and graffiti in real life. Though the spread of hate speech and threatening memes could have been bot enhanced, disinhibition predicts that some formerly silent individuals may have been persuaded to believe that aggression is the new normal. Desensitization is a “well-known psychological phenomenon that takes place from the cellular level to the highest cognitive level . . . if you touch the gills of a sea slug once, they reflexively react. If you gently touch them twenty times in a row, they stop reacting as a result of a chemical change in the nerve cells” (Eitzen, 2014, p. 170). Media desensitization proposes that repeated media performances of violent actions deaden responses so that spectators become less and less shocked or outraged. Desensitization predicts that repeatedly viewing media brutality for entertainment weakens the normal emotional

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reaction to violence. Over time and with continual exposure, violent images become less emotionally disturbing (Cline, Croft, & Courrier, 1973; Greenberg, 1975). Graphic violence portrayed in a humorous situation is especially associated with desensitization (Gunter, 1985). One prediction of desensitized audiences for an attention economy is an escalation or intensification of violent portrayals. In order to awaken dulled audience sensibilities, the next media explosions would need to be bigger, the fights will need more guns, more blood, more cruelty, and more pain. Another concern is that violent media stories may reduce people’s compassion for real-life victims. One research study seemed to show that spectators of violent films are less likely or are at least slower than spectators of nonviolent films to help an injured person (Bushman & Anderson, 2009). Researchers interpreted this slowness to mean that spectators of media violence were “comfortably numb” to the pain and suffering of others. In a study of violent video games, researchers asked a sample of college students to play either a violent or nonviolent video game for 20 minutes. They were then asked to watch a 10-minute news event of real-life violence. The violent news was less troubling for those who had been playing the violent games (Carnagey, Anderson, & Bushman, 2007). Research does seem to support the idea that exposure to media violence may desensitize viewers to additional media violence. However, research showing desensitization transferring to real-world violence has been weak (Savage, 2004). A former comics writer argues that reducing people’s sensitivity to real violence has social utility. First responders, doctors, soldiers, social workers, war reporters, and disaster cleanup crews are among some of the many people who cannot be paralyzed with squeamishness or shock upon encountering the grislier realities of life. “The people who are best able to act in the face of violence are those who are least horrified by it” (Jones, 2002, p. 106). He suggests that violent media conditioning is helpful in this regard. My own experience with first responders and others who deal with real-life carnage is not that they are necessarily less sensitive because of exposure to media violence, but that an overwhelming concern for other people or a pragmatic devotion to their mission allows these individuals to emotionally push past their sensitivity to get an important job done. It could also be that routinely dealing with the shocking truths of their work has taught first responders to temporarily shutdown or compartmentalize sensitivities. Media may be more important for people whose jobs deal with dreadful realities by telling these people that their duties in a crisis are highly valued, a message that popular media stories consistently reinforce. News media frequently show public leaders thanking first responders and the military for their service and sacrifices, while fictional media often reserve these roles for their most heroic protagonists.

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Symbolic Interaction and Frame Analysis George Herbert Mead (1934) and his student Herbert Blumer (1969) are credited with the idea of symbolic interactionism, one of the early theories that uses a dramaturgic approach to explain human behavior. This concept assumes that people are purposeful and creative in the way they use communication and culture, rejecting the idea that people can be conditioned to behave like animals in a laboratory. Instead, people internalize social rules and create meaning. The use of symbols in our verbal and visual languages structures how we perceive and interpret social encounters. People will notice and respond to those things culture celebrates as valuable and important. Symbols are also important to the ongoing process of creating and understanding the self. Symbolic interaction would not predict an automatic reaction to violent media stories but does predict that audiences might use these and other stories to better understand their lived experience. Our actions in life’s many stages respond to the social understanding of reality that our culture provides and that our symbols help create. “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts” (Shakespeare, As You Like It, 1623). In addition to Mead, Blumer, (and Shakespeare), Erving Goffman was another scholar who described the real world as a stage on which people acted. According to Goffman, the individual is both a character and a performer (1976). The attributes of performer and characters are different, but both sets of qualities “have their meaning in terms of the show that must go on” (1976, p. 70). Character is that combination of values, traits, dispositions, and mental and moral capabilities that are unique to an individual. The qualities of a person’s character generally predict the individual’s actions, though perhaps not always. Deplorable characters can find their moral center and respectable characters can lose it by “breaking bad.” The performer is what others see when a person is in the process of action and knows others are watching. Performances can be both public and private. The process of socialization is the creation of a skilled performer in that lifelong process of building character. Goffman’s frame analysis is not the same as media framing discussed in Chapter Two. Instead, frame analysis predicts that an individual’s interpretation of a real environment is similar to an actor entering a scene in a play. Social life is composed of spontaneous actions based on how a person (or actor) understands social cues within a setting or frame. Because life is constantly evolving and shifting, people are always checking each new social environment for cues as they move between frames (social scenes or stages). Media stories become important to an individual’s understanding when they teach social cues or contribute to ideas about how the world works, helping a social actor interpret and react to people and situations encountered in each new setting. There could be serious consequences for life performances if cues learned from violent media stories encouraged a misreading of life’s social cues.

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Dramatism and Life We are all protagonists in our own life story. By inspiring people’s decisions about the type of character they want to be in their personal story, popular media contribute to character building. According to the literary theorist and the originator of dramatism, Kenneth Burke, life is not like a drama, life is a grand improvisation performed across a social stage by symbol using actors (1966). Building on symbolic interaction, Burke notes that much of what we believe to be reality is manufactured through our symbols. Other than what someone personally experiences, most of what any individual knows is based on our symbolic systems. A person is a “symbol using, making, and mis-using animal, inventor of the negative, separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy, and rotten with perfection” (Burke, 1966, p. 16). As media screens dominate our lives, more of our lived experiences are replaced with mediated ones. Contemporary individuals may be users and spectators of media first and actors living out their social lives a distant second. Media worlds and media experiences are the ones we know best, where we spend a substantial amount of our time. The social stages on which we act out our lives are in many ways echoes of these media creations just as media creations mimic life. If social reality is dramatically created, it can also be dramatically transformed. The curse, or rigid determinism, that led a character like Oedipus to his unavoidable doom is something the scriptwriter can change. This is true for media scripts but is also true for an individual’s life story. While circumstances such as poverty, gender, race, and misfortune draft the general outline for lived experience, individuals do have some power to create the characters they wish to become and whether they will respond to an event with violence. The graphic narratives in this book took people’s experiences based on their oral stories and changed them into sequential art. This process transformed real people into fictional characters. But, it is possible our storytellers had already made themselves into characters, playing out the roles they were busy constructing for their lives. Marcy from Chapter One reassessed her role as the tidy, happy-go-lucky girl-next-door and chose a more somber role as an eyewitness to a crime and narrator of the violence that invaded her neighborhood. From Chapter Two, Amy’s internal script casts her as a compassionate person and responsible pet lover. She is willing to rescue a wounded kitten, shouldering the considerable expense of its care, cleaning up the violent damage others created. Marcus from Chapter Three likely sees himself as a brave and competent karate expert, a person who should be respected at school rather than insulted and humiliated. Some of the storytellers who informed “The Heist” may think it is cool or impressive to be the “badass” or darker hero of their own life stories. It’s feasible that media contribute in significant ways to the internal rehearsal of

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possibilities for real decisions and actions people might make as social actors improvising their way across the stages of life. Human beings are more complex than media characters. A real person’s character in lived experience undergoes constant development and change. A man at 60 is a different person from the boy he was at 18. As General Semantics explains it, reality is a process, even though the languages we use to describe reality are more fixed and static. An individual’s survival and success depends on the ability to adapt to change, writing, rewriting, and adjusting internal scripts to fit situations, events, and a person’s ever-evolving character. Dramatism does not predict how individuals will construct their characters to be heroic or virtuous. Moreover, the way an individual defines virtue is a matter of personal interpretation. The police officer who sees his professional work so publicly praised in media accounts may view private acts of domestic violence or child abuse as completely justified. (Spare the rod, spoil the child.) Actors in life imaginatively rehearse for the performances they believe they might encounter. On the stage of lived experience, actors have the power to ad-lib and improvise in that search for a definition of self. They have the power to realize the social role to be performed and set the internal limits of decision and action. The explosion of anger, of violence, or of disobedience is traced outward from an internal theater. “In this sense we choose the point at which we no longer can choose but merely irrupt” (Natanson, 1976, p. 54).

Script Theory Related to the dramatistic idea, script theory suggests that people learn and create predetermined programs or internal cognitive scripts that guide their social behavior (Huesmann, 1986). A script suggests what events are likely to happen in a setting, how the person should behave in response to these events, and what the likely outcome of those behaviors will be. People develop their internal scripts beginning in childhood as family routines show them what should happen at dinner time or bedtime and what is appropriate behavior for different places like cars, grocery stores, restaurants, and playgrounds. As children develop internal scripts from family, they also develop scripts inspired by other institutions such as school, religion, government, culture, and, of course, popular media. The rituals of daily life create expectations, so like an actor on a stage the child takes cues from the environment and other people to select and play out these internal scripts (Siegler, 1998). Because of its focus on learning specific cues and scripts to be enacted when a situation arises, the narrative behind script theory bridges ideas about modeling and social learning to the larger work of character development and life work that dramatism suggests.

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According to script theory (or schema theory) people use experiences from real life and combine this information with what they learn from media stories to manage expectations and to react to situations they encounter. People who are repeatedly exposed to media stories where violence is the successful solution to conflict may construct internal scripts that are more aggressive (Bushman & Huesmann, 2012). Script Theory predicts that spectators are likely to remember, fantasize, and mentally rehearse media actions that are impressively violent until these are easily recalled in situations where a social problem triggers individuals to act out that violent behavior. The dramatic contexts in violent media stories provide cues or signals about when violence is appropriate for life situations (Anderson & Huesman, 2003). Script theory predicts that aggressive individuals will have aggressive scripts fixed in their memories, where they are easily recalled. These individuals construct and maintain internal scripts that emphasize antagonism and, once established, “these cognitive structures may be extremely resistant to change” (Huesmann & Eron, 1989, p. 104). Aggressive individuals might perceive hostility where there is no hostility, acquire normative beliefs that approve of aggression, and “do not expect that their own aggressive behaviors will have bad consequences for them” (Huesmann, 1998, p. 101). The people who fracture their inhibition containers and engage in aggression may use cognitive devices to excuse themselves for bad behaviors, even if these actions violate their own values (Bandura, 2009). Some individuals may internally and euphemistically reinterpret the aggressive behavior so it doesn’t seem so bad. A person may decide that aggressive behavior is justified because it served a higher, more important or noble purpose. Others might blame an influential individual for causing the aggressive behavior. Some might disregard or distort the consequences of their behavior, mentally minimizing any harm the aggressive behavior caused. They may dehumanize or blame victims for creating their own suffering. Others might act destructively without bothering to think about it. Like the prejudiced viewers of Mr. Biggott cartoons who “misunderstood” the meaning of the cartoon, people can choose to “misunderstand” their own aggressive actions. Individuals who allow themselves to act against personal values can have many ways to justify the awful things they have done.

Play Theory Play theory is another concept that has connections to a dramaturgical approach, particularly as it involves pretend, mimicry, and fun. William Stephenson developed the play theory of mass media from Johan Huizinga’s (1950) suggestion that play is a necessary condition for the development of culture. Play theory takes a subjective and psychological approach to the way spectators use media stories as an interlude from stress. Play is pretending, a stepping outside of the world of obligations and responsibilities. Basic forms of play include: physical

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games and sports, games of dice, board games, video games, play involving pretend and mimicry, and play that engages physical exhilaration such as swings or rides. Some play is carefree, uncontrolled fantasy and other play requires rules and skills. Media stories can include multiple forms of play. Stephenson’s perspective on media stories is that they fall into a continuum between communications-pain (which deals with work) on the one end and communicationspleasure (which deals with play and fun) on the other. No matter how much society and individuals gain from jobs well done, work inhibits the vital selfdevelopment that comes from play. Acknowledging that some people work for the fun of it and others work hard at having fun, Stephenson believes media stories involve “convergent selectivity” or playful activity that falls outside of the painful restraints of social control. Our media stories in their play aspects may be “the way a society develops its culture—the way it dreams, has its myths, and develops its loyalties” (1967, p. 48). When people become absorbed in fictional media stories, they engage in a form of play, a complex intrapersonal use of fantasy and imagination. One important implication of play theory is that media stories that are not presented for pleasurable impact may ultimately fail. The media story that has instruction or persuasion as its purpose must first be entertaining. Play theory assumes that audiences are extremely active and engaged in their selection and consumption of media. Stephenson explains that a person’s daily and purposeful withdrawal into media stories is a step in an existential direction. Media stories allow spectators to lose a sense of self, falling into a kind of trance. This absorption, the decreasing self-consciousness, and omniscient mental roaming that dramatic media stories inspire in audiences are what Stephenson believes to be vital to achieving individual development. Through watching media stories, an individual participates in the creation of personal identity that describes communications play. Stephenson doesn’t offer much explanation as to why violent media, which may appear at first glance to be communications-pain, seem to be so important to “play.” Stephenson does suggest that the sensational satisfies audience needs. “People may have to see something of the sordidness and crudities of life in order to be free individuals and self-respecting selves” (p 203). Play theory does not explain why so many audiences seem to find violent media stories entertaining beyond suggesting that there is an aspect of the violent story that is significant to existential play, imagining your own response when faced with a protagonist’s wretched dilemma.

Media Effects and the Dramatistic Idea Dramatism and Play Theory contribute to ideas about how individuals use media for diversion and to help generate meaning for their personal lives. In this way, Dramatism and Play Theory indirectly inform how violent

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media might have meaning for audiences but make no predictions about resulting aggressive behaviors. Script theory is a more vibrant part of the media effects story, where it is believed audiences will observe the aggressive actions in popular media and mentally rehearse these actions for potential use in social situations. Scripts (or schemas) are mental blueprints that guide someone’s expectations about events, objects, and other people. Though the ideas of dramatism, symbolic interactionism, play theory, script theory, and aggressive cues seem related through their theatrical analogy, a cultural or humanistic approach that doesn’t easily lend itself to quantitative research may be more difficult for some social scientists to accept as useful theoretical stories.

Meta-Analysis and Violence Research Meta-analysis will combine the data from many studies to come up with one grand finding. An early meta-analysis examined the research from 1957 to 1990 and found moderate links between violent TV and film stories and aggression (Paik & Comstock, 1994). Another review of the effects research concluded that many decades of studies suggest that violent media stories do increase the risk of violent behavior for both children and adults (Huesmann, 2007). Another meta-analysis of six decades of media effects research reports that the evidence is convincing enough to declare violent media a national risk factor that needs public policy intervention (Anderson et al., 2015). However, another meta-analysis could not find support for the conclusion that exposure to media violence causes criminally violent behavior (Savage & Yancey, 2008). Meta-analysis does not come without criticism and concern. One critique of meta-analysis advises that even though the statistics in meta-analysis may be sophisticated, if individual studies used in the meta-research are flawed, then the grand finding will be flawed as well. “Garbage in, garbage out” (Kutner & Olson, 2008, p. 81). There is additional mention of the “file drawer problem,” where only research finding statistically significant results is likely to get published. The publication bias is such that research not supporting a relationship between media violence and aggression is likely to remain unpublished. The zealous desire for results that support a hypothesis has even been blamed for data irregularities or “inappropriate data manipulation” in the research (Flaherty, 2017).

Criticisms of the Media Effects Story Media effects theories offer ideas about the ways media might supply models and scenarios for aggressive behaviors that could inspire aggressive actions in lived experience, while additionally helping to desensitize and reduce internal

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resistance to aggression. Along with other environmental factors, violent media stories can contribute to a network of ideas, emotions, and behavioral tendencies people select from when responding to actual situations. Internalized routines and repertoires of media-inspired scripts might influence how a person interprets and reacts to life circumstances. The ways we envision our own characters, how we want to see ourselves, and how we want others to see us determine our choices and when those choices might turn aggressive or violent. Some critics of media effects research believe investigators may have exaggerated the influence of violent media stories on audience inclinations to learn violent actions and then enact what they learn (Ferguson & Kilburn, 2009; Freedman, 2002; Savage, 2004; Fischoff, 1999). These critics describe the evidence connecting violent media to violent behavior as thin, telling us that small correlations can be explained in other ways. Violent children seek out violent entertainment, and children are temporarily aroused (but not permanently affected) by action-packed footage (Pinker, 2002). Two studies comparing media violence rates with societal violence suggest that the general public’s increasing consumption of media violence is not predictive of increased rates of violence in the real world (Ferguson, 2008, 2015). In fact, there has been an inverse relationship; as more and more violent stories saturate the media marketplace, actual crime has decreased. A summary of some of the concerns critics have with media effects research identifies problems with methodologies, inadequate definitions for objects of study, inability to distinguish between “aggression” aimed at causing real harm to another person and “aggressive play” in which two individuals (usually children) pretend to engage in aggressive behavior consensually for mutual enjoyment, and attitudes toward research subjects, casting them as inept victims, potential savages, or actual fools. Additional objections are that a concentration on media violence underestimates other causes of aggression, such as genetics, personality, poverty, or exposure to family violence, all of which may offer better explanations for why some people become violent. “Criminologists, in their professional attempts to explain crime and violence, consistently turn for explanations not to the mass media but to social factors such as poverty, unemployment, housing, and the behavior of family and peers” (Gauntlett, 2005, p. 144). Research also tends to ignore the meanings of violent actions within the context of a story. Another review of the research observes that when investigations go beyond the laboratory to examine real-world crime, there are fewer studies. The review concludes that there is little evidence that government policies restricting media would remedy the problem of violent crime (Savage, 2004). In addition to criticizing the methods and outcomes of media effects research, some criticism maintains that research supports a barely concealed conservative ideology, where researchers disapproving of screen violence often show

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themselves to be worried about challenges to the status quo, disrespect for authority, and antipatriotic attitudes. Terms in effects research such as “antisocial” and “prosocial” express ideological value judgments. “The opportunistic mixing of concerns about the roots of violence with political reservations about the content of screen media is a lazy form of propaganda” (Gauntlett, 2005, p.  147). This criticism is interesting since some of the most violent media stories tend to support conservative ideas. In the horror genre, any change that threatens tradition typically unleashes a bloodbath of disaster, punishing any characters who challenge the dominant ideology or violate taboos. Horror stories often depict a skeptic or a progressive character as woefully misinformed. A character who promotes scientific progress, intellectual curiosity, acceptance of others who are different, the questioning of taboos, sexual freedom, or progressive thinking is typically the character who will be killed in a painful or gruesome manner. Television in the 1980s tended to portray scientists as smart characters who should be viewed with suspicion; their work was considered a source of anxiety about unrestrained science and technology (Gerbner, 1987). The stereotype of the smart and violent supervillain is so pervasive in comics and superhero films that the character of Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) on the television series Big Bang Theory remarks in Season Two, “You know, it’s amazing how many supervillains have advanced degrees. Graduate schools should probably do a better job of screening those people out” (Lorre & Prady, 2008). If there is a consistent conservative ideological stance in the effects research agenda, it might be in the emphasis on regulating media stories rather than supporting public policy efforts such as job training, affordable health care, better mental health systems, stronger gun control, secure housing, vigorous public education, media literacy programs, or other forms of public assistance that might have a better result in reducing violence in people’s lived experience.

The Playground An elementary school teacher provided the following story as an example of how children impersonate favorite media characters during play. It does bear some resemblance to field research that noticed children hurting each other as they imitated the moves of television’s pro wrestlers. The story is a reminder of  the ways that children reenact media stories in their play. The question is whether these children learn violence from popular media to reproduce in their everyday lives when they are not on the playground.

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Discussion: Playing With Violence The young boy slashing the air with sharpened pencils between his fingers knows the pencils aren’t knives and that he isn’t really Wolverine; the girl who runs screaming from her classmate knows her fellow student isn’t an evil clown; the child who deliberately hurts a friend in a chasing game may be upset by his own failure to control his aggressive impulses. While children mimic things they see in popular media, unless this violent behavior becomes routine, it seems unlikely children will mimic violent actions without first assigning some sort of internal meaning to what they do. The question becomes: how do media heroes and scoundrels contribute to the internal scripts of children and adults? What does it mean when a child becomes so engrossed in chasing his classmates and pretending to be a monstrous fiend that he actually hurts another child? The teacher who provided this story told me that she could usually predict which students would cause problems based on their past behaviors. Script theory would suggest that aggressive internal scripts may already dominate the core repertoire of those aggressive children. When a child pretends to be a media villain and chases classmates growling and scratching the air but not actually hurting anyone, that game could contribute to the development of the child’s social character. Playing with the despicable persona may be important to the work of developing an honorable social self. The teacher explained that children on the playground took turns being the evil “It.”

Violence on the Larger Social Stage If we accept that individuals create their characters and develop internal scripts for the ongoing improvisation of living, we might also recognize how people collaborate in the creation of that larger public drama. Our social reality is “precariously perched on the cooperation of many individual actors or .  .  . acrobats engaged in perilous balancing acts, holding up between them the swaying structures of the social world” (Berger, 1976, p. 39). Social institutions and national customs shield us from brutal reality and constrain us from our worst impulses. But, the impresarios of history invented these institutions and their rules; they are fictions. Popular media are complicit in helping construct and maintain these fictions. As people act out their social dramas, they pretend that these institutions, customs, and principles are eternal truths rather than human creations. Future leaders may tear these fictions apart and replace them with new fictions. Ours is an inauthentic existence if our roles are played blindly. Entire nations can react in scripted ways, particularly in the face of violent national tragedies. In response to the October 1, 2017 massacre in Las Vegas, columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. described the staleness of our national script in its reaction to gun violence. Writing in an editorial, Pitts describes the national response as “like a favorite movie, you can recite the lines by rote. Politicians pronounce themselves ‘shocked and saddened.’ The left demands new gun-safety measures, the right says, ‘now is not the time’ for that debate. Landmarks all over

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the world dim their lights. People say, ‘we are all Las Vegas—or Newton or Aurora or Orlando-today. And everybody offers thoughts and prayers for the victims’” (Oct 5, 2017). Pitts stressed his frustration over our shared script for national tragedy, noting that there is something both morally and spiritually bankrupt in the idea that thoughts and prayers conclude our obligation. The following chapter continues discussion about the contributions and controversies of media effects research and how popular media stories, including the active stories created for video games, contribute to the popular imagination, the construction of our social world, and the real dramas of social aggression.

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Huesmann, L. R. (1998). The role of social information processing and cognitive schema in the acquisition and maintenance of habitual aggressive behavior. In R. Geen & E. Donnerstein (Eds.), Human aggression: Theories, research and implications for policy (pp. 73–109). New York: Academic Press. Huesmann, L. R. (2007). The impact of electronic media violence: Scientific theory and research. Journal of Adolescent Health, 41(6), S6–S13. Huesmann, L. R., & Eron, L. D. (1989). Individual differences and the trait of aggression. European Journal of Personality, 3, 95–106. Huizinga, J. (1950). Homo ludens: A study of the ilay-element in culture (Paperback ed.). Boston: Beacon Press. Jo, E., & Berkowitz, L. (1994). A priming effect analysis of media influences: An update. In J. Bryant & D. Zillmann (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Jones, G. (2002). Killing monsters: Why children need fantasy, super heroes, and make-believe violence. New York: Basic Books. Kutner, L., & Olson, C. (2008). Grand theft childhood: The surprising truth about violent video games and what parents can do. New York: Simon & Schuster. Lear, J. (1992). Katharsis. In A. O. Rorty (Ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s poetics (pp. 315–335). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lemish, D. (1997). The school as a wrestling arena: The modeling of a television series. Communication: European Journal of Communication Research, 22, 395–418. Liebert, R. M., & Baron, R. A. (1972). Some immediate effects of televised violence on children’s behavior. Developmental Psychology, 6(3), 469–475. Lorre, C., Prady, B. (Writer), & Cendrowski, M. (Director). (2008, September 29). The codpiece topology [Big Bang theory]. Los Angeles: CBS. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Natanson, M. (1976). Man as an actor. In J. E. Combs & M. W. Mansfield (Eds.), Drama in life: The uses of communication in society (pp. 46–56). New York: Hastings House. Paik, H., & Comstock, G. (1994). The effects of television violence on antisocial behavior: A meta-analysis. Communication Research, 21, 516–546. Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern Denial of human nature. New York: Viking. Savage, J. (2004). Does viewing violent media really cause criminal violence? Aggression and Violent Behavior, 10, 99–128. Savage, J., & Yancey, C. (2008). The effects of media violence exposure on criminal aggression: A meta-analysis. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 35, 1123–1136. Schafer, R. (1970). Requirements for a critique of the theory of catharsis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 35, 13–17. Siegler, R. S. (1998). Children’s thinking (3rd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Stephenson, W. (1967). The play theory of mass communication. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Verona, E., & Sullivan, E. A. (2008). Emotional catharsis and aggression revisited: Heat rate reduction following aggressive responding. Emotion, 8(3), 331–340. Wotring, C. E., & Greenberg, B. S. (1973). Experiments in televised violence and verbal aggression: Two exploratory studies. Journal of Communication, 23(4), 446–460. Zillman, D., & Weaver, J. B. (1999). Effects of prolonged exposure to gratuitous media violence on provoked and unprovoked hostile behavior. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29(1), 145–165.

6 MEAN WORLDS AND REMORSELESS STRANGERS WITH GUNS

Writing decades before television and internet media, newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann realized the power traditional media professionals have to select and shape the contents of stories for the public. Media stories influence public perceptions about the world because our real environment is too immense, complex, and ephemeral to experience directly. Lippmann labeled media representations of our environment “fictions” (1922, p. 10). They aren’t intentional lies, but media stories are human creations, subject to human judgment, errors, and misconceptions. These fictions include everything from a scientist’s schematic model to the screenwriter’s imaginary fabrications. Instead of reacting to the full flood of bewildering sensation in the real environment, people respond to a pseudoenvironment made of the sometimes-distorted imagery and information popular media provide. From elements of casual fact, creative imagination, and the will to believe, people compose a counterfeit reality to which we respond as powerfully as if it is real. Our reactions to the pseudo-environment don’t happen in an imaginary space but in the actual world, where we feel the painful consequences of bad decisions. Lippmann’s observations anticipated the ideas behind powerful and moderate effects theories, which also expect media stories to impact public perception. Important concepts from a limited effects perspective might still operate: the people in an individual’s social circles might continue to be effective opinion leaders and the ideologies of groups and subcultures could remain influential. However, media stories could have a powerful but indirect effect on behavior through their ability to shape norms. The steady drumbeat of violent stories might overcome audience inattention and unique interpretations. When violent stories are so available, repetitive, and consistent, they become a primary architect of pseudo-environments, shaping our pseudo-worlds and influencing the choices we make in the real one.

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Cultivation Theory and the Mean World Hypothesis Cultivation Theory originally focused on television. In the 1960s and 1970s, television was America’s national storyteller, showing and telling audiences what to expect from life. The three major broadcast networks (NBC, ABC, and CBS) commanded the attention of the American public well into the 1980s, even as cable began to grow and print media declined or fragmented into specialized publications. Because of its dominance over other popular media, critics condemned television for a number of social problems, but particularly blamed television for problems of social violence. The founder of cultivation theory, George Gerbner, was interested in what people understood about their world, so his theory concentrates on what television audiences think rather than what they do. Cultivation theory predicts that what people believe, because of what television tells them, will ultimately influence their behavior. Gerbner was involved in two important national research projects examining the effects of television: The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (1967–68) and the Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior in 1972. Gerbner developed the Cultural Indicators Research Project to record trends in television content and to examine how these trends influence viewer perceptions. This work included the creation of an annual Violence Index, which used the method of content analysis to count the number of violent acts in weekly prime-time television programming from season to season. Content analysis is a research technique for examining media stories in order to look for specific types of incidents and then totaling the number of times these occur. It involves a careful definition of what constitutes a violent incident so researchers could accurately recognize and record how many times these appeared. A key assumption behind content analysis is that a repeated story is a powerful story. After counting the violent incidents on television, cultivation research compared the frequency of violent crimes in the real world with the frequency of violent crimes on TV and found big discrepancies. Violence was ten times more widespread in the television world than in the real one (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1982). Television’s pseudo-environment was a brutal place, yet for heavy viewers, the television world was the neighborhood where their imaginations lived. Gerbner believed that the more television people watched, the more those television stories influenced their understanding of social norms. Television “cultivated” or helped develop audience expectations. “We live in terms of the stories we tell—stories about what things exist, stories about how things work, and stories about what to do—and television tells them all through news, drama, and advertising to almost everybody most of the time” (Gerbner et al., 1978, p. 178). Gerbner argued that because television was constantly on in American homes—sometimes for up to seven hours a day—the perpetual stream of violence could bypass audience powers of selective exposure and

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attention to convince viewers that they lived in a dangerous world filled with malicious criminals (Gerbner, 1990). In order to know what spectators were actually thinking, Gerbner and his associates followed content analysis of television programming with surveys of audiences to create a viewer profile. They calculated how much television their subjects watched as well as subjects’ attitudes about the prevalence of real-world violence. The Mean World Index measured viewer perceptions about the dangers in their environment, determining if subjects believed strangers were trustworthy or if they thought people only looked out for themselves and would exploit others. It additionally measured subjects’ estimates of crime and likelihood of being victimized (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan & Signorielli, 1980). Researchers then compared the attitudes of those who watched a lot of television with those who watched moderate or light amounts. The comparison found that heavy television viewers overestimated how much violence and crime actually occurred in their communities and in the rest of the world. This effect became known as the mean world syndrome or mean world hypothesis (Gerbner & Gross, 1977). People who watched less television had a more realistic idea about the violence in their actual environment. Well-educated and wealthier people generally believed the world was a friendlier, more sociable place than those who were financially needy and less educated. However, heavy television viewing offset the effects of better education and financial stability, so that more advantaged individuals who were heavy television viewers also believed their world was dangerous. Cultivation theory considered television the homogenizing agent in our culture. At the time Gerbner began this research, three commercial television networks dominated American media use. A housewife living in the Deep South would be watching many of the same programs as an electrician living in Texas, a plumber in the Midwest, a real estate developer in New York, or a single father living near the Pacific coast. Cultivation theory assumes that television forms a common symbolic environment for these different viewers, a concept researchers called mainstreaming (Signorielli & Morgan, 1996). When dominant patterns of beliefs and practices are consistently reflected in popular media stories, those stories socialize very different individuals into accepting standardized roles, behaviors, and perceptions (Gerbner et al., 1986). Television drama offered a diverse audience a steady pattern of “facts” about life, cultivating heavier television viewers to share these mainstream views. In addition to a violent world, content analysis of television programming revealed a world where men dominate (Signorielli & Bacue, 1999), where fast food is healthy (Russell & Buhrau, 2015), where materialism is valued more than the natural environment (Good, 2007), and where stereotypes prevail (Dixon & Azocar, 2007; Ramasubramanian, 2011). Another important concept in cultivation theory is the idea of resonance, or when an event in the real environment seems to confirm the distorted image of reality presented on television. The real person who inspired the character of

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Marcy from the graphic narrative in Chapter One is not a heavy television viewer; Marcy rarely watches TV. However, Marcy’s mother is a heavy television viewer and a fan of programs such as Cops (1989–), Justified (2010–2015), and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (1999–). Cultivation theory predicts that as an intense viewer of television crime dramas and reality programs, Marcy’s mother has a distorted understanding of her daughter’s personal safety. Even though the city’s crime statistics and her own experiences while visiting her daughter suggest that Marcy’s neighborhood is relatively safe, when the next-door-neighbor is murdered, television’s violent lessons become reinforced. Real violence resonates with television violence, so Marcy’s mother believes television’s crime-ridden world is accurate. She becomes increasingly worried about the safety of her daughter, a single woman living alone in a neighborhood where a terrible crime happened. Cultivation research discovered that watching crime-saturated television news was related to an increase in viewer concerns about crime and victimization, even when overall crime declined (Romer, Jamieson, & Aday, 2003). The more attention viewers give to violent stories and the more accurately they remember what they see, the stronger the cultivation effect. When subjects were asked to describe a violent scene they remembered from watching a film or television story, subjects who provided more vivid descriptions of violence were more likely to overestimate the prevalence of real-world crimes (Riddle et al., 2011). Women were more likely than men to have these vivid memories of violent scenes. Content analysis of crime dramas in the 2010–2013 seasons of basic cable programming in the U.S. indicated that persistent exposure to stereotypical stories where white female characters were victims of sexual assault or murderous attacks promoted skewed perceptions of a vicious world that victimizes women (Parrott & Parrott, 2015). A meta-analysis of 37 independent studies found a small to moderate correlation between exposure to violent media and hostile interpretations of situations, with the researchers concluding that people who “view the world as a hostile place are more likely to behave in a hostile manner themselves” (Bushman, 2016, p. 611). It is not only entertainment programming that contributes to cultivation. A review of the research dealing with children watching news broadcasts suggests that violent news on television is especially troubling for children who understand that news stories are reports about events that actually happened (van der Molen, 2004). News reports of violent incidents cause nightmares for some but could also be cultivating long-term fears of victimization. Exploring the cognitive processes that might trigger cultivation, the heuristic model of cultivation effects proposes that television stories influence some opinions by reducing the mental effort involved in arriving at them (Shrum, Burroughs, & Rindfleisch, 2004). People base judgments on a continuum, from concentrated mental effort and deliberation on the one end to intuitive judgments made with more ease and less intellectual sweat on the other. When people are asked to make

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a judgment about the risks of real-world crime, they probably won’t have the statistical answer stored in memory. People who don’t quickly Google an answer might instead base their judgments on easily recalled memories of television crime dramas, though they are probably unaware of how they arrived at this view. Cultivation theory inspired decades of research, examining the pseudo-worlds of television and measuring viewer attitudes about the real one. A review of the research found that, “The amount of television viewing is consistently related to all kinds of cultivation indicators across all kinds of people and a wide variety of cultures and countries. However, the degree of that relationship is consistently weak” (Potter, 2014, p. 1031). Though the statistical evidence supporting the cultivation effect is low, researchers believe the impact over time might be substantial (Morgan, Shanahan, & Signorelli, 2009). Violent stories become a constant drip in a television pseudo-environment that eventually floods the viewer’s mental landscape.

Critiques of Cultivation Cultivation theory is not without critics. Some say cultivation theory incorrectly condemns popular media for delivering a violent and uniform story into the fearful minds of vulnerable viewers (Murdock, 1994). The idea that popular media present viewers with a mainstream story of violence or any unified, standardized story, is flawed; “no singular set of political or other values could be identified as receiving consistent support” (Gauntlett, 2005, p. 119). Other critics object to the depiction of a mindless, heavy TV-viewing couch potato the cultivation research seems to present and point to the growing use of specialized channels and video recording devices as evidence of audiences who are selective and deliberate consumers (Mareike, 2017). Others felt that violent performances on television are not as uniform as content analysis suggests, adding that individual viewers will have unique interpretations. The criticisms of cultivation research include: imprecise content measures (Gunter, 1994), spurious causation (Cook & Campbell, 1979), and selective reporting of findings (Newcomb, 1978; Hirsch, 1980; Hirsch, 1981a; Hirsch, 1981b). Gerbner and his associates debated these criticisms (1981) and cultivation theory continued to attract new research. Cultivation’s mainstreaming argument is harder to support in an era where media screens offer more viewing options from broadcast, cable, and streaming services. Partisan news programs interpret the world differently than the mainstream press. The worlds presented in cable channels dedicated to science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres are different worlds than those presented by home improvement, cooking, and comedy channels. The use of portable multimedia offers a larger variety of media stories, including those that are user created and specifically examining the cultivation effect of social media found little connection between use of social media and fears about the real world (Intravia, Wolff, Paez, & Gibbs, 2017).

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A review of the “State of Cultivation,” emphasized the theory’s potential to unite research from widely divergent perspectives, regardless of attacks from critical and quantitative researchers. “If the field of media effects research has any paradigms at all, cultivation must be one of them” (Morgan & Shanahan, 2010, p. 349). With the growing fragmentation of audiences, the macro-level idea of cultivation theory seems less useful, but based on 2009 Nielsen reports, television continues as a dominant storyteller. As long as there are “popular storytelling systems and purveyors of widely shared messages, Gerbner’s main ideas are likely to persist” (p. 350). A later review of cultivation theory adds that, even if distribution methods for media stories change, actual stories keep their mainstreaming effects. Industrial media industries “still follow established formulas for appealing to commercially desirable groups, despite a surface of novelty and innovation. The result is less diversity in content than meets the eye” (Morgan, Shanahan, & Signorelli, 2015, p. 686). The use of violence in media stories is one obvious area of consistency. All forms of media appear to be busy finding, creating, and supplying the public with violence and a tendency to revisit similar violent stories across platforms. Media breederism is the tendency for popular media to produce and reproduce violent stories in a shared, economically beneficial relationship. Breederism is an ingrained, symbiotic feature of gatekeeping where “media feed upon each other’s negativism like a food chain operating in the open sea” (Haskins, 1984, p. 13). It’s not hard to find examples where negative stories create a media feeding frenzy. Among news organizations there’s a suspicion that without a breeder reaction, the journalist’s exclusive scoop was really an insignificant event. Media breederism in news can also infect entertainment. As an example, the violence of serial killer Aileen Wuornos resulted in many news stories, several documentaries, a feature film, a TV movie, an opera, episodes in a TV series, songs, and a stage play, among other popular culture products.

Mainstreaming, Cultural Hegemony, and the Dominant Ideology The older idea of cultural hegemony has assumptions similar to mainstreaming: primarily that cultural institutions such as popular media consistently present (or mainstream) a dominant ideology to the public as what people should naturally expect from the world. Though cultivation and cultural hegemony share similar assumptions about the contribution of media stories to the popular imagination, cultural hegemony is more focused on ways media support ideological domination, where powerful groups have their worldview accepted without scrutiny as universal truth. Ideology is a collection of beliefs about reality that guide an individual’s perception and behavior. The dominant ideology is a pseudo-environment that prevails over all other understandings about how the world works. Television would be considered just one of the cultural

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distributors of this dominant ideology, as it mainstreams the dominant view of the world. Other popular media screens also contribute to cultural hegemony, showing audiences what they should consider to be normal, deviant, important, beautiful, destructive, and valuable. Popular media do not act alone. Media industries join with institutions such as religion, education, politics, and law to help maintain the status quo and the power of the state. In this way cultural hegemony has a broader perspective than cultivation theory, crediting all cultural institutions with functioning together to maintain a dominant ideology. For hegemony to work, citizens, institutional leaders, and media producers must agree that the intellectual and moral leadership of the ruling class and their dominant ideology is natural and right. Hegemony has its roots in ancient Greece, where hegemon describes a combination of military supremacy and cultural prestige (Ives, 2004, p. 63). The architect of modern hegemony, Antonio Gramsci, used this concept to explain how the ruling capitalist class, or the bourgeoisie, maintain their authority without resorting to the heavy hand of force, though the state might reinforce hegemony with coercion in the event of a crisis (Gramsci, 1971, p. 33). Italy’s Fascist Party dictator, Benito Mussolini, imprisoned Gramsci for much of his life, but Gramsci’s prison notebooks, written between 1929 and 1935, survive to describe his thinking about hegemony and the role of media in reproducing the dominant ideology to support a ruling authority. Hegemony is neither force nor conspiracy. Police and courts of law do not need to coerce media industries into creating and distributing stories that benefit the dominant ideology. Instead, media stories produce a definition of reality conforming to the status quo, often without producers realizing their compliance. Just as native speakers of a language are oblivious to the grammar and form of their language, media producers may be unaware of their own bias toward the status quo. They may not consider that the media companies they work for are an integral part of the wealthy capitalist class, deeply rooted in the dominant belief system. The dominant ideology just appears as the instinctive, unpolitical circumstance of the world that everyone accepts as natural, takenfor-granted, common sense values. Gramsci’s ideas followed those of Karl Marx, who believed that popular media, the press in particular, worked to maintain a capitalist ideology, keeping workers unaware of their exploitation. Because Marx’s thinking is associated with communism or socialism, his ideas are sometimes viewed as hostile to American values and a dominant cultural narrative where individuals are responsible for their own achievements or failures. In a land of bootstrap opportunity, this narrative blames the poor for their own misery and congratulates the rich for their inherited wealth and opportunity. Marx believed media stories generally support a capitalist system, but he also believed they have potential to be “instruments of education” about the real conditions people experience (Altschull, 1990, p. 177). Media stories could rip open a seam in the hegemonic blindfold, enabling

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audiences to see their true situation. Critical theory originates from this neoMarxist ideal. With the goal of liberating beleaguered people from the hegemony that blinds them, critical theory examines that taken-for-granted perspective, investigating media stories to expose a dominant ideology masquerading as truth.

Removing the Hegemonic Blindfold One of the founding ideals of American journalism has been to keep the public awake and aware of actual conditions, even if that truth might be awkward for some political leaders. The potential for popular media to remove the hegemonic blindfold, to circulate stories unfavorable to those in power, creates an adversarial relationship between the press and government in the United States. When their search for truth exposes manipulation, greed, and violence of autocracy, investigative journalists rip open the hegemonic blindfold, looking past the easy version of events a dominant ideology offers to discover complexities in the violent story and what they mean. Citizen movements also become actively involved in attempts to challenge dominant perceptions. The “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) movement began in 2013 with the goal to change a public narrative that had cast people of color as criminal, violent, and disposable. It was a reaction to police profiling and hostility toward black citizens. BLM wanted recognition that black lives have endured hostility and ostracism throughout the history of the United States, where white lives have always mattered more than black ones. BLM stands for “the simple proposition that black lives also matter” (Cohen, 2016). Though the story of BLM was most enthusiastically shared on social media, industrial media also distributed stories about the movement, particularly when these stories involved sports celebrities or violent spectacles following peaceful demonstrations (Sebastian, 2015). White Lives Matter (WLM) was a response to BLM with the goal to preserve a perceived status quo organizers believed was under attack. WLM was designated as a hate group for its use of harassment in a mission to maintain the power, prestige, and purity of the white race (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2018). Fictional media also have potential to make the public aware of oppressive circumstances when their stories illustrate real conditions, serve as a warning, offer an ideal, or even create a fantasy world where narratives help to clarify existing relationships between power and violence, oppressor and oppressed. When fiction includes the perceptions of people who have been marginalized, abused, and neglected, the larger public can experience lifestyles and struggles that are often ignored. However, if the ambition of popular media in a capitalistic system is first to make money, they are far less likely to be honest, adversarial, or free (Cagé, 2016; Frank, 2000). Instead, critics blame media industries for too often producing redundant stories with similar themes and repetitive, thoughtless violence, thickening, rather than removing, the hegemonic blindfold. Politicians

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and social leaders can then point with outrage to examples of meaningless media violence and claim that these stories will lead the population to moral ruin. Meanwhile, media industries that exploit violence for capital gain help exacerbate all manner of fears, including those fears driving effects research on the impact of media violence. In this circular fashion, violent media may help ruling classes maintain control by inviting media critiques that divert attention from other important contributors to the violence problem, which are complex, troublesome, costly, and embarrassing to authorities and the dominant ideology.

Video Games and the Violent Sandbox When video games became popular, concerns about violence that had once been associated with movies, radio, comics, and television were now transferred to the newer medium of digital games. As they had been convinced of a causal connection between older media and viewer aggression, some media critics were certain that playing violent video games would condition the player (or user) to become aggressive, training them for real-world violence. The ability of a user to manipulate game characters, or avatars, was considered a more robust experience than the passive consumption of visual images. While television might simply be noisy wallpaper in households where individuals can ignore the programming, video games require a user’s active selection, attention, and understanding of the game’s rules, as well as behavioral interaction in order to play. For these reasons, video games were considered more dangerous than traditional media (Lin, 2013). Many of the effects theories mentioned in Chapter Five would be reapplied to video games to see if they taught violent behaviors, primed, desensitized, removed inhibitions, or provided aggressive cues and violent scripts. There is no doubt that video games are popular. The Entertainment Software Association reports that in 2014, Americans spent over 21 billion dollars on video games, with the most popular games being those featuring violence. Analysis of video games showed 90 percent of games rated as appropriate for children ages ten and older contained violence (Gentile, 2008). Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, which increased the ubiquity of television, also expanded the spread and mobility of digital gaming. Violent games appeared to meet the criteria for powerful media influence: they seemed to be everywhere, with a repetitively violent story that routinely respected violent solutions to problems. In a resolution advocating for reduction of violence in digital games, the American Psychological Association stated that the prime lesson many video games teach is one about violence as the effective solution to conflict (2005). Complaints about violence in video games began to grow with popularity of first person shooter games and other games that created virtual worlds for gamers to casually explore in the digital sandbox. Also known as open world or free-roaming, sandbox games allow players to roam digital environments. Some sandbox games, like those in the Grand Theft Auto series (2001), have a structure

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with rules, points, and storylines; however, minimal limitations allow gamers to ignore the rules and meander inside the game’s environment, committing mayhem at will. When the family of a murdered motorist in Tennessee filed suit against the makers of Grand Theft Auto because two bored teens decided to shoot randomly at cars on a busy highway and another lawsuit was filed in Alabama because a young fan of the game went on a murderous rampage, both incidents seemed like more examples of media-inspired violence (Leung, 2005). Critics believed freewheeling first person shooter games encouraged players to become digital versions of Alex DeLarge (Clockwork Orange, 1971) and additionally motivated them to leave their consoles and the digital sandbox to look for new kicks by spilling actual blood. Researchers observed that perpetrators of mass shootings also tended to profile as young men fascinated with violent games (Anderson & Dill, 2000). My first experience with violence in a digital sandbox came when my friend Carol wanted to show me the avatar she created and the location she was exploring in Second Life (2003). Second Life is a massive digital sandbox, where users develop a personal identity and interact with others in a variety of virtual environments they help construct. Carol was attracted to Second Life because of her curiosity about this digital world and what she would find there. She was still new to Second Life when she showed me her avatar and a charming beachside landscape, which initially seemed deserted. Her avatar strolled along the beach while we watched and discussed virtual possibilities. Suddenly, a handsome male avatar wearing a tuxedo appeared on the horizon between sand dunes. Carol had her avatar give a friendly wave and call out, “hello,” as the tuxedo-wearing avatar approached. I noticed he carried a machine gun. The male avatar suddenly lifted and fired his gun, slaughtering Carol’s avatar. We were both shocked. The tuxedo-wearing avatar calmly turned and walked away. Carol could not revive her avatar. She was upset; murder was against the terms of service in this virtual world. She told me later, Anytime you are on the receiving end of aggression, even if it’s just your avatar, it’s unnerving. I don’t know that I ever reported it, but I never went back. My avatar may still be lying on the beach. Do they even bury the dead in Second Life? (Keesee, personal interview, 2017) My friend had been victimized by a troll (or a griefer), a disruptive virtual resident who commits abusive behaviors for laughs and to annoy other users (Giles, 2007). Carol was not alone. The sandbox originally meant for creative play had become a place of vile hate speech and harassment, virtual assault, murder, and even digital rape (Bugeja, 2010; Simpson, Boys, Rose, & Beck, 2012). Cultivation predicts that when an avatar is violated in a virtual world, the violence will resonate for the player in real life. Carol remained generally

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optimistic about humanity, even after her avatar was murdered in a virtual world and she had been mugged at a real-world bus stop. Carol may be a unique case, but other anecdotal reports also suggest that people separate digital experiences from lived ones, even when virtual worlds are grim. A former student, who also had an avatar victimized in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), explained his continued optimism this way. “When you have family and friends who care about you, when you occasionally get the large size pizza with all your favorite toppings, and when you have a dog who is ecstatic to see you every time you walk in the door, then it doesn’t really matter what happens to you in World of Warcraft. You shouldn’t take a game too seriously.” He went on to tell me that, “Some people do take the game too seriously, even using real dollars to make purchases in the digital world, buying swords and other game advantages. That’s where I draw the line. I’m not spending my rent money in World of Warcraft” (Andrew Bannigan, personal communication, November 13, 2017). Perhaps one of the attractions of digital worlds is that they offer gamers the opportunity to brandish their worst possible behaviors without actually hurting anyone or suffering any real-world consequences. There is no expectation that players will behave like proper ladies and gentlemen in Grand Theft Auto. There may be a sense of accomplishment about surviving in a cruel world, though it is hard to imagine gamers would wish to live there. Concerns about the possible negative effects of video games mounted as visuals in the games became more realistic, screen sizes became larger, game controllers began to operate like real guns, and more games involved violent content. A study of realistic gun-shaped controllers in shooter games seemed to show a relationship between playing these violent games and self-reports of aggressive behavior (Farrar, Lapierre, McGloin, & Fishback, 2017). Playing with a gun-shaped controller also increased user perceptions of the game’s realism and larger screens enhanced feelings of immersion into the game (Kim & Sundar, 2013; McGloin, Farrar, & Fishlock, 2015). The anxiety was that in a realistic looking virtual world where violence thrives, players might be conditioned to see violence as a valid solution to real-world problems or at the very least experience a general decline in optimism and trust in people in the real world because grievers, trolls, and other players are out to hurt you online.

Effects Research and Violent Video Games The last few decades have seen a fair amount of research dedicated to possible effects of video game violence on players. These studies include cross-sectional studies showing correlations between violence and gaming, longitudinal studies examining violent game participation over time, and controlled laboratory experiments suggesting that video games cause participants to feel more aggressive. As with effects research on other media, the research looking at the question of whether violent video games influence aggression has been a battleground over

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what this research means. One position is that not only are the worlds of digital games mean ones, they encourage aggressive behaviors that make the real-world vicious (Anderson & Dill, 2000). Other research suggested that when games depict violence against targets that are cultural or ethnic “others,” increased aggressive behavior becomes pronounced; the games might encourage prejudice (Greitemeyer, 2013; Behm-Morawitz & Ta, 2014). The use of alternative blood or the substitution of digital monsters for digital humans as victims did not appear to dampen the impact of game violence the way developers and moral guardians hoped. Instead, substitutions appear to justify the slaughtering of an “Other.” Games that applied alternative blood schemes “echo long-standing propaganda strategies that have been used to justify real-world violence against marginalized groups” (Kocurek, 2015, p. 88). Minority males seemed stereotyped in games as sinister, unattractive, violent, and cruel (Burgess, Dill, Stermer, Burgess, & Brown, 2011). Yet some studies failed to find that violent video games cause aggression (Ferguson et al., 2012). A long-term study of online fantasy violence in video game play found that exposure to the violence had no impact on real-world aggression (Williams & Skoric, 2005). The researchers concluded that video game play was complicated and could actually be teaching teamwork and management skills. The comparison of violent and nonviolent video games suggested that it was competition among players and not the violent content that contributed to aggressive behavior (Adachi & Willoughby, 2011). Another study found no effects of violent video games on hostility, depression, or visual-spatial cognition (Valadez & Ferguson, 2012). A comprehensive metaanalysis of these effects studies reported definitively that playing violent video games can increase aggressive thoughts, hostile fears, and aggressive behaviors (Anderson et al., 2010). A reanalysis of these meta-data found violent video game exposure had a very small effect associated with aggression in children that actually might “represent no association” (Furuya-Kanamori & Doi, 2016, p. 413). This reanalysis also found that video games had no effects on reduced academic performance, symptoms of depression, or attention deficit disorder. A later meta-analysis claimed there is no consensus that violent video games have an impact on real-world aggression, suggesting that other predictors of violence such as family relations, demographics, and violent home environments were all stronger predictors (DeCamp & Ferguson, 2017). One problem for the general public in understanding the debate is that sometimes the reanalysis of the same data can deliver different results. A study examining players of violent and sexist video games offered that these games might reduce empathy for female victims of violence in the short term and reinforce long-term hegemonic masculinity, where men must be aggressive, dominant, competitive, and tough (Gabbiadini, Riva, Andrighetto, Volpato, & Bushman, 2016). The reanalysis of the data didn’t seem to support the earlier conclusion, questioning whether these games were a causal factor in reducing empathy toward girls and women. This new finding didn’t claim that moral

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concerns about sexism in games are unimportant but reminded researchers that science should be value free. “Our concern is that claims about the power of scientific evidence to support moral agendas may backfire, especially when the evidence is equivocal” (Ferguson & Donnellan, 2017, p. 2457). In an assessment of video game research prepared for the Interactive Digital Software Association, an industry researcher advised that too many studies about video game violence imply that correlation is causation (Goldstein, 2000). These studies additionally suffer from unclear definitions, confusing aggressive play with aggressive behavior. Other reviews of the effects research on video games complain about similar problems that plagued effects research on other media: invalid measures, the potential effects of variables other than violent media, small effect sizes, and citation and publication bias (Ferguson, 2015). Several of these studies have additionally experienced retractions, corrections, failed replications, and statements of concern (Markey & Ferguson, 2018). When the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011) that video games represented protected speech under the First Amendment and that research used to support regulation was unpersuasive (Ferguson, 2013), supporters of policies that would criminalize sales of certain video games declared that the Supreme Court decision was “political opinion that tells us nothing about the scientific validity of violent video game studies or their effects on children” (Bushman & Pollard-Sacks, 2014, p. 307). In 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement on “Virtual Violence,” asserting that it was unfortunate when findings of research scientists were paired with industry experts or contrarian academics to present a false equivalency, when the research often links virtual violence and aggression. A year later the American Psychological Association’s psychology division advised reporters to stop suggesting there was a connection between violence in video games and real-life brutality, claiming there is scant scientific evidence supporting the connection and these claims are a distraction from issues known to contribute to real-world violence (Ferguson et al., 2017). After reviewing the literature and conducting their own research, the authors of Grand Theft Childhood, Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson, advised parents to shift their focus away from violent video games to those issues that are more likely to cause their children to be bullies or victims (2008). Their advice to parents was to limit children’s exposure to real-life aggression. Because violent and victimized children were most likely to come from abusive environments, parents should know their children’s friends and where their children visit for sleepovers or play dates. They strongly recommended restricting access to weapons, keeping guns properly stored and locked. They also advised parents to be alert to behavioral changes in their children. Video games may not cause mental health problems but can aggravate them. Finally, they advised parents to relax. “While concerns about the effects of violent

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video games are understandable, they’re basically no different from the unfounded concerns previous generations had about the new media of their day” (229). In 2018, the World Health Organization did recognize gaming disorder as an addictive disease that can also involve nonviolent games. The people most at risk for addictions were those who had other psychiatric disorders (Healy, 2018). Though the debate following the 2018 high-school shooting in Parkland, Florida seemed focused on gun control, concern that video games, the internet, and popular movies were doing “bad things” to young minds also entered public discussion. Some critics believed that curtailing Second Amendment rights couldn’t reverse a mind media stories had already conditioned to be murderous. “The attention of gun-control advocates is focused on the ability to buy a gun, which in fact represents the tail end of a homicidal journey” (Abernathy, 2018). The White House hosted a meeting on March 8, 2018 with members of congress, representatives of the video game industry, and outspoken critics of video games to discuss violence in the games and aggression in children. Some news reports suggested afterward that popular media were no longer considered the prime cause behind mass shootings (Salam & Stack, 2018). A global analysis of video game spending and deaths from firearms found that for countries other than the U.S., there was an inverse relationship between spending on video games and gun violence (Bump, 2018). Furthermore, mass shootings in 2017 and 2018, though disturbing, were not indicative of overall crime rates. Over the past quarter century, as the video game industry expanded and more violent games entered the marketplace, violent crime statistics declined sharply in the United States (Morris, 2008; U.S. Department of Justice, 2014).

The General Aggression Model The General Aggression Model or GAM is an integration of ideas such as priming, social learning, script theory, desensitization, and disinhibition into one grand unified model of how aggressive thoughts prompt impulses that can result in aggressive behaviors. GAM acknowledges that a single cause for aggressive behavior will never be found, so a model with multiple and distinct risk factors like GAM is necessary (Anderson, Gentile, & Buckley, 2007). In addition to the potential role of violent media, GAM includes personality, biological, and situational variables as contributors to aggressive behavior. The use of violent media does not occur in a vacuum, so co-occurring factors contributing to aggressive behaviors are critical considerations (Glackin & Gray, 2016). GAM has been applied to media other than video games, but the model has also stimulated a fair amount of research on video games. GAM-inspired research tends to examine ways that violent video games disturb a person’s internal state,

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which are expected to influence how gamers will perceive and interpret lived experiences and might motivate some gamers to behave aggressively when a situation or trigger arises. GAM explains that violent video games and other violent media influence hostile thinking in which aggression is considered an acceptable response. According to GAM, if we want to create people who are predisposed to violence, the recipe is to: • • • • • •

deny people resources for basic needs, provide them with many examples of violence and aggression, desensitize them to the horrors of violence, remove their inhibitions, encourage beliefs that dehumanize victims, and inspire thinking that dismisses bad outcomes of violent behaviors. (DeWall & Anderson, 2011)

When added to other risk factors, violent media increase the threat that a person will behave violently. Other risk factors include poverty, drug or alcohol use, access to weapons, being bullied or abused, and having antisocial friends. GAM developers believe the model not only predicts short-term effects of playing violent video games but could also predict long-term negative effects, informing prevention programs for problems of intimate partner violence, inter-group violence, suicide, and the violent effects of global warming (DeWall, Anderson, & Bushman, 2011). Advocates of the model might apply GAM to explain the behaviors illustrated in the graphic narrative from Chapter Four. Assuming the boys from “The Heist” have already played Grand Theft Auto and are familiar with its virtual world, GAM would predict that the game’s violence and encouragement of antisocial behaviors contributed to the boys’ willingness to commit armed robbery, especially when an environmental factor like a gun became available to them. The game is not just the prize these boys covet but teaches the boys to admire theft and hostility. GAM would predict that as the boys plan their robbery, the violent video game further discourages worry about possible bad results from criminal behavior. Some of the boys might scorn hesitation as the reluctance of a “wuss” because caution is not championed in the world of Grand Theft Auto and Judge Dredd does not police its streets.

Critical Response to GAM A critical overview of the General Aggression Model argues that the theory ignores why the vast majority of people resist violent impulses to focus on why a few surrender to them (Eitzen, 2014). Though GAM already has breadth, what is missing from the model are those things that contribute to

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individual inhibition and self-control regardless of exposure to the violence found in games like Grand Theft Auto. Knowing what elements keep that internal inhibition container from cracking and how those elements might be reinforced could be essential for solving social violence. Another concern about GAM is that architects of this theory seem focused on media as the prime contributor to aggression. Among possible solutions to social violence, the researchers do acknowledge the importance of education and media literacy programs but emphasize stricter limits on the contents of media stories, claiming that “media violence is one of the few known risk factors that parents, caregivers, and society in general can reduce at very little cost” (Anderson et al., 2015, p. 15). The implication being that responding to people’s basic needs is too expensive but “the problem of media violence is severe enough to warrant serious action” (Anderson & Gentile, 2008, p. 297). Another critical assessment outlines the model’s underlying assumptions: aggressive behavior is universally bad, the human brain has difficulty separating reality from fiction, aggression is learned, aggression is cognitive, and aggression is automatic (Ferguson & Dyck, 2012). A problem with the GAM view of aggression as dysfunctional is that this is “a moralistic rather than an empirical assessment” (p 223). There may be occasions when aggression is useful and proper. On the assumption that the human brain has few defenses against media violence and children have difficulty distinguishing between reality and fiction, the “data have not been supportive” (p 224). Other evidence suggests that genetic, neurobiological, and other biological elements along with stress and environmental conditions are more robust predictors of aggression. Some critics questioned the usefulness of GAM, citing the lack of validity in the measures that assess aggression and the failure to test other variables that do predict aggression (Gauntlett, 2005; Ferguson & Dyck, 2012; Przybylski, Ryan, & Rigby, 2010). This critical conclusion is that GAM may not be useful for predicting real-world behaviors. Other critics suggest that the proponents of GAM have allowed their admirable desire to protect children from media violence to cloud good science. Critics calling to retire GAM believe other variables can explain the small relationship between aggression and video game play (Ferguson & Dyck, 2012; Puri & Pugliese, 2012). In one overview of effects research, a professor of clinical psychology argues that the findings related to video game violence have been exaggerated to the point of undue “moral panic” (Ferguson, 2010, p. 70; Markey & Ferguson, 2017).

Violence, Media, and Moral Panic Sociologist Stanley Cohen explained moral panic theory as a partnership among politicians, moral authorities, news media, and the public to reinforce a distorted media campaign that creates public fear about the violent behaviors of folk

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devils or marginalized groups (2011a). When Cohen was originally writing in 1972, folk devils tended to come from minority groups or youth subcultures. Folk devils were ostracized people that defied a society’s dominant customs or acted in ways the state considered threatening. Moral panic theory predicts that media cooperate with state officials and community leaders to exaggerate the violence of folk devils because scary news attracts audiences and advertisers. The sheer volume of people who play violent games in the United States makes it difficult to marginalize them as folk devils. Instead, it is the games themselves that critics portray as the folk devil, with the players and the public as victims. Examinations of moral panic theory in a multimedia era show that some folk devils can push back, using skill to engage the media and challenge dangerous stereotypes or popular misconceptions. The Black Lives Matter movement is an example of pushback against stereotyping people of color as folk devils. For other folk devils, such as youth subcultures, and for certain products of the culture industry, such as video games, controversy can be good business. “Rather than alienating everyone, it will be attractive to a contingent of consumers who see themselves as alternative, avant-garde, radical, rebellious or simply young” (McRobbie & Thornton, 1995, p. 572). Knowing that adults and policy makers consider certain video games to be dangerous may add an extra thrill for some young players. Looking at the hidden and not-so-hidden political dimensions of moral panic theory, Cohen notices the ease and speed with which moral panics are constructed and transmitted in a digital era and how quickly the righteousness of some moral panics can fade (2011b). If people looking to stop new gun-control legislation also enjoy their first person shooter games, any moral panic following mass shootings will need to blame the violence on a folk devil other than violent video games. In 2011, Cohen predicted that an important devil for future moral panics would be anything connected with immigration, migrants, multicultural absorption, border controls, and asylum seekers because “others” are “more political, more edgy, and more amenable to violence” (2011b, p. 242). It’s worth noting that five years after this prediction, moral panics concerning immigration threatened established governments in Europe and became a political rallying tool in America.

The Mean World of Video Games If there is continuing debate about the impact of video games on aggressive behavior, there might be better consensus examining the cultivation effects of video games. The media cultivation story stops short of predicting specific behaviors like aggression but expects violent video games to mainstream a consistently cruel story to the user’s imagination, creating the perceptions of a scary, vicious world.

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It is tricky to conduct a content analysis of video games. The number of times a violent action occurs in a game depends on the player, who has some control over the game’s story. A study comparing the cultivation effects of watching television with video game play found cultivation effects for television but the cultivation effect of video game play was unclear (Van Mierlo & Van den Bulck, 2004). The researchers believe this result is due to the nature of game play. In order to measure cultivation effects using content analysis and surveys, researchers would need to better understand the meta-narrative that games mainstreamed to players. Though content analysis of video games is difficult, mainstreaming might occur to the extent that game worlds are similar to each other with repeated themes and violent stories. Studies that managed content analysis of video games revealed a digital world in which violence consistently dominates (Smith, Lachlan, & Tamborini, 2003; Schmierback, 2009). The violence in a game’s fantasy world could influence ideas about similar crimes the players might actually experience, but only crimes specific to the games have encouraged concerns about comparable crimes in the real world. The more time players spent with a violent game, the more likely they were to believe the violent actions in the game occurred in life (Dmitri, 2006; Williams, 2006). A laboratory experiment conducted in Singapore investigated cultivation effects of Grand Theft Auto and found that players had higher estimates of realworld car accidents, deaths, and drug overdoses than those in a control group but the game didn’t seem to influence judgments about serious crime or physical assault. Although car theft is widespread and easy in GTA, players believed that actually stealing a car was difficult, a result the theory wouldn’t predict. Researchers explained the findings as due to low crime rates in Singapore. Because the players’ judgments about car theft were based on lived experience and not the game, players judged this aspect of the game as unrealistic (Chong, Teng, Siew, & Skoric, 2012). The finding suggests that if there is a significant contradiction between virtual and lived experience, lived experience will dominate people’s perceptions.

“The Gun” The following graphic narrative developed from the story a woman told me about a family she knew and her thinking that cultivation theory could explain the decision that led to tragedy. In this story, the conflicts are imagined rather than actual, but, as Gerbner and his associates warned, the cultivation of imaginary fears can convince worried individuals to do something they might not do otherwise (1986).

FIGURE 6.1

“The Gun”

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Discussion: Guns, Fears, and Safety “The Gun” illustrates a grandfather’s reaction to a perceived mean world, causing him to believe a gun was necessary to protect his family. Cultivation theory expects violent media stories to nurture fears that could inspire gun purchases and resistance to safe storage legislation. The tragedy in “The Gun” is not uncommon. In 2015, the Washington Post reported that people were “getting shot by toddlers on a weekly basis” (14 October, 2015). In South Carolina, a two-year-old riding in the back seat of the family car found a gun and accidentally shot his grandmother. The report added that in 2015, 13 toddlers killed themselves and 18 injured themselves because of improperly stored guns. Yet gun owners often oppose safe storage, complaining that a “properly stored” gun, unloaded and locked away in a cabinet, cannot serve its purpose when a murderous criminal comes busting through the door (Luo & McIntire, 2013). As of this writing (August 1, 2018), the ability to buy a gun and walk out of the store with it on the same day varies depending on state laws. In a state like Nevada, a person can purchase a gun and go home with it, while in other states there is a waiting period. I am not certain of the state where this story originated; it is possible the purchase and possession of the gun took longer than the sequential art implies. It is also possible that the renewed debate on gun control following publicized shootings will have a future impact on all gun purchases. The ability to print a plastic gun on a 3D printer may add newer dimensions to the debate about national safety (Cullinane & Criss, 2018). Not all gun owners make their gun purchases out of fears for personal safety. In the Deep South where I am from, there is a vibrant gun culture and a long tradition of hunting and shooting, often considered a rite of passage to manhood for preadolescent boys as important as the driver’s license. Gun purchases can be an established and prized tradition rather than reactions to violent media. Other people may have very different responses to media-inspired fears. Perceptions of a mean world might prompt sales of home surveillance systems. Mean worlds may cause some to live in gated communities. Fears could push public demands for security technology in schools. Some might avoid public events where crowds gather or be suspicious and unfriendly toward strangers in general. Others might worry but do nothing. When heavy media use dominates the public imagination with violent stories, cultivation theory predicts that people will believe their real world swarms with criminal intent. In a culture of fear, politicians who promise to strengthen the army, pass stricter laws, or hire more police might attract support from anxious voters. During the 1980s and 1990s, politicians blamed perceptions of rising crime on immigrants entering the U.S. from the south. They delivered on tighter border controls, passing harsh laws to punish undocumented workers even though economies of border states depended on these workers to take hard labor jobs for low wages. “Eventually it became evident that the economic

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and social problems were not caused by immigrants and many of the laws were repealed” (Trend, 2007, p. 68). Similar arguments blaming immigrants for violent crimes were revisited in the 2016 presidential campaign, when then candidate Donald Trump blamed Mexico for sending rapists and thugs to America and promised to stop the influx of illegal immigrants and their criminal habits. Research at the time contradicted these claims, showing that violent crime tended to decrease in cities with higher numbers of foreign-born residents, possibly due to ambitions of immigrants to work hard to support their families and fears of attracting police attention and possible deportation (Press, 2016). Still, some worried voters seemed anxious to have tighter borders, aggressive deportation of undocumented immigrants, and repeal of the DACA program, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Hard-liners were convinced that foreign-born “others” were threats to personal safety and economic security (Ball, 2017). Gerbner and his colleagues warned that political, religious, and fanatical groups can easily deceive a fearful public. This nervous public “may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities and other anxieties” (1986, p. 15). With violent media stories cultivating thoughts about criminal felons, terrorists, and remorseless strangers with guns, a fearful public may happily surrender freedom or values in a tradeoff for personal security. Experiments in social psychology show that concerns for safety and survival can subconsciously influence attitudes, and fear is a powerful emotion, easily manipulated (Bargh, 2017). Violent media stories also draw public attention away from more complicated problems. Distracted with violent media stories, the public might ignore less dramatic threats to health and well-being. Fearful citizens concerned about murderous criminals may be oblivious to budget and staffing cuts in research and regulatory departments also designed for their protection. With regulatory departments cut, surveillance reduced, and the public preoccupied with brazen violence, industries that view government oversight as economic infringement may feel empowered to continue toxic practices. The real person who inspired the character of Marcy from the graphic story in Chapter One doesn’t view the world as a scary place, but her mother does. Yet Marcy’s mother does not own a gun nor is she interested in getting one. She doesn’t particularly want Marcy to have a gun either. She does nag Marcy about “settling down with somebody nice,” which is far more complicated than simply embracing a patriarchal view that her daughter would be safer in this world if she were married to a good man. In the meantime, Marcy’s mother continues to watch crime dramas. If paying attention to violent media stories results in more fearful citizens, it would seem that people might avoid these stories in order to reduce their anxiety. The continuing popularity of violent content suggests that this is not the case. The next chapter examines ideas about why so many people seem attracted to violent media stories, even when these stories might be upsetting.

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References for Chapter Six Abernathy, G. (2018, February 19). After the latest mass shooting, we’re focusing on the wrong amendment. Washington Post. Adachi, P. J. C., & Willoughby, T. (2011). The effect of video game competition and violence on aggressive behavior: Which characteristic has the greatest influence? Psychology of Violence, 1(4), 259–274. Altschull, J. H. (1990). From Milton to McCluhan: Ideas behind American journalism. New York: Longman. American Academy of Pediatrics. (2016). Policy statement. Virtual Violence: Council on Communications and Media. American Psychological Association. (2015). Resolution on Violent Video Games. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/about/policy/violent-video-games.aspx Anderson, C. A., Bushman, B. J., Donnerstein, E., Hummer, T. A., & Warburton, W. (2015). SPSSI research summary on media violence. Analysis of Social Issues and Public Policy, 15(1), 4–19. Anderson, C. A., & Dill, K. E. (2000). Video games and aggressive thoughts, feelings and behavior in the laboratory and in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(4), 722–790. Anderson, C. A., & Gentile, D. A. (2008). Media violence, aggression, and public policy. In E. Borgida & S. Fiske (Eds.), Beyond common sense: Psychological science in the courtroom (pp. 281–300). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Anderson, C. A., Gentile, D. A., & Buckley, K. E. (2007). The general aggression model: Violent video game effect on children and adolescents: Theory, research, and public policy. New York: Oxford University Press. Anderson, C. A., Shibuya, A., Ihori, N., Swing, E. L., Bushman, B. J., Sakamoto, A., . . . Saleem, M. (2010). Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in Eastern and Western countries: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 151–173. Ball, M. (2017, August 31). How immigration hardliners are forcing Trump’s hand on DACA. The Atlantic. Bargh, J. (2017). Before you know it: The unconscious reasons we do what we do. New York: Touchstone. Behm-Morawitz, E., & Ta, D. (2014). Cultivating virtual stereotypes? The impact of video game play on racial/ethnic stereotypes. The Howard Journal of Communications, 25, 1–15. Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 131 S. Ct. 2729. (2011). Retrieved from www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/08-1448.pdf Bugeja, M. (2010). Avatar Rape. Inside Higher Ed. February 25, 2010. https://www. insidehighered.com/views/2010/02/25/avatar-rape Bump, P. (2018, February 22). No, there’s no link between video games and real violence (even if Trump says there is). Washington Post. Burgess, M. C. R., Dill, K. E., Stermer, S. P., Burgess, S. R., & Brown, B. P. (2011). Playing with prejudice: The prevalence and consequences of racial stereotypes in video games. Media Psychology, 14, 289–311. Bushman, B. J. (2016). Violent media and hostile appraisals: A meta-analytic review. Aggressive Behavior, 42(6), 605–613. Bushman, B. J., & Pollard-Sacks, D. (2014). Supreme Court decision on violent video games was based on the first amendment, not scientific evidence. American Psychologist, 69, 306–307.

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realism, immersion, and outcome aggression. Journal of Communication, 65(2), 280–299. McRobbie, A., & Thornton, S. L. (1995). Rethinking “moral panic” for multi-mediated social worlds. The British Journal of Sociology, 46(4), 559–574. Morgan, M., & Shanahan, J. (2010). The state of cultivation. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 54(2), 337–355. Morgan, M., Shanahan, J., & Signorelli, N. (2009). Growing up with television: Cultivation processes. In J. Bryant & M. B. Oliver (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (3rd ed., pp. 34–49). New York: Routledge. Morgan, M., Shanahan, J., & Signorelli, N. (2015). Yesterday’s new cultivation, tomorrow. Mass Communication and Society, 18, 674–699. Morris, N. (2008, January). Risk of becoming a victim of crime at 27-year low. The Independent, p. 18. Murdock, G. (1994). Visualizing violence: Television and the discourse of disorder. In Mass communications research: On problems and policies: The art of asking the right questions. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing. Newcomb, H. (1978). “Assessing the Violence Profile Studies of Gerbner and Gross: A Humanistic Critique and Suggestion.” Communication Research, 5: 264–283. Parrott, S., & Parrott, C. (2015). U.S. television’s “mean world” for white women: The portrayal of gender and race on fictional crime dramas. Sex Roles, 23(1–2), 70–82. Potter, J. W. (2014). A critical analysis of cultivation theory. Journal of Communication, 64(6), 1015–1037. Press, E. (2016, September 2). Trump and the truth: Immigration and crime. The New Yorker. Przybylski, A. K., Ryan, R. M., & Rigby, C. S. (2019). The motivating role of violence in video games. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(2), 243–259. Puri, K., & Pugliese, R. (2012). Sex, lies, and video games: Moral panics or uses and gratifications. Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society, 32(5), 345–352. Ramasubramanian, S. (2011). The impact of stereotypical versus counter stereotypical media exemplars on racial attitudes, causal attributions, and support for affirmative action. Communication Research, 38(4), 497–516. Riddle, K., Potter, J. W., Metzger, M., Nabi, R. L., & Linz, D. G. (2011). Beyond cultivation: Exploring the effects of frequency, recency, and vivid autobiographical memories for violent media. Media Psychology, 14(2), 168–191. Romer, D., Jamieson, K. H., & Aday, S. (2003). Television news and the cultivation of fear of crime. Journal of Communication, 53(1), 88–104. Russell, C. A., & Buhrau, D. (2015). The role of television viewing and direct experience in predicting adolescents’ beliefs about the health risks of fast-food consumption. Appetite, 92, 200–206. Salam, M., & Stack, L. (2018, February 23). Trump blames video games for mass killings: Researchers do not. New York Times. Schmierback, M. (2009). Content analysis of video games: Challenges and potential solutions. Communication Methods and Measures, 3(3), 147–172. Sebastian, S. (2015, October 1). Don’t criticize Black Live Matter for provoking violence: The civil rights movement did, too. The Washington Post. Shrum, L. J., Burroughs, J. E., & Rindfleisch, A. (2004). A process model of consumer cultivation: The role of television is a function of the type of judgment. In L. J. Shrum (Ed.), The psychology of entertainment media: Blurring the lines between entertainment and persuasion (pp. 177–191). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

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7 WHAT AN AUDIENCE WANTS Selection, Gratification, and Violence

“What can I say? I enjoy the shock.” Hank is 34. He drives an eight-year-old economy car and does other people’s tax returns. He is soft-spoken, an environmentalist, and a lean man with rounded shoulders, a shrewd face, and close-cut hair. You would never know it to look at him (nor does he want it advertised here), but Hank is a rabid fan of horror movies. “I love a good jump-scare,” he confesses sheepishly. “They almost never catch me, but I love that rare moment when a worthy jump-scare snatches me by surprise and lurches deep in my eye-sockets” (Anonymous personal interview, March 27, 2015). Hank is not alone in his enjoyment of horror or violence in entertainment. If we assume it is human nature to choose pleasure and avoid pain, it should follow that traditional happiness results in avoiding violent media stories that are painful for both characters and audiences. Hank should be an anomaly. But, as we have already indicated, violence is a popular feature in media stories. Amid the scramble for audiences in an attention economy, media producers have come to believe that gore and violence will deliver. The question becomes: why? The champion of 18th century utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, observed that nature put humanity under the thumb of two “sovereign masters, pain and pleasure,” and that any attempt to question or undermine their authority will learn that we are all “fastened to their throne” (1787, p. 85). For those questioning the pleasures or the moral utility of violence, Bentham hinted that pleasure and pain are complicated. It would need the input of later researchers to see how truly complicated and interrelated pains and pleasures can be, particularly as they inspire audiences to choose violent media. Bentham also suggested that the morally correct action is the one that results in the most good for the most people. Bentham equated good with pleasure. He appeared impartial about the

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good pleasures people seek. Everyone’s happiness has equal value. Bentham’s cornerstone question for policy discussions is to ask: what use is it? If everyone’s good pleasure has equal value, the policy answer in terms of regulating violent media stories may be difficult if some stories have individual utility or perhaps a greater good.

Uses and Gratifications for Violent Media While considerable research focused on the impact of violent media stories on audience attitudes and behaviors, other research was interested in this question of why audiences are attracted to them. Some of this audience-driven research considered effects theories to be one-sided. Instead of measuring the effects of violent media stories on individuals, an audience-driven approach asks, “What motivates people to choose these violent stories? What possible pleasures or benefits do such stories provide?” It was a move away from a research focus that seemed fixated on the harmful influence of media violence to a question of how these stories served the audiences that seemed to seek them out. Broadly known as uses and gratifications, this audience-centered approach doesn’t ask how powerful media overcome audience abilities to be selective. Instead, the research investigates audience choices, asking about preferences, expectations, the scrutiny audiences give to their selections, how they respond to those stories, what they found satisfying (Katz & Foulkes, 1962; Palmgreen, 1984). In the 1940s, researchers were already wondering what functions radio served for their listeners (Herzog, 1944). To understand how and why people selected certain programs, investigators developed questionnaires and survey techniques to directly ask them. Some critics of uses and gratifications research disparaged these initial studies for being unsophisticated about examining audience needs and for having too heavy a reliance on subjects’ self-reporting. There was concern that research was not critical of audience responses and didn’t recognize that some needs might be dysfunctional for both audience members and society at large (Blumer, 1979; Ruggiero, 2000). These criticisms are a reminder that research often occurs within a normative, even judgmental context, where audiences and researchers are aware of common social values that create a hierarchy for media stories in which some genres are routinely dismissed as harmful or that media use in general is a pathetic waste of time. During the 1950s and 1960s, more cross-disciplinary work involved media scholars and psychologists examining ways that audiences interact with media. By the 1970s, uses and gratifications research had become more formalized with a framework to guide research, understanding that audiences had expectations for the media stories they selected and judged stories against their expectations. Critics of uses and gratifications still objected to an approach that seemed too individualistic, making it difficult to predict beyond the actual research subjects to the larger implications of media use. The critics complained that uses and

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gratifications was not a real theory with a unifying narrative explaining the data. Despite criticisms, uses and gratifications evolved to embrace all forms of media and different types of stories, with a special focus on audience attraction to violent stories. Part of the continued appreciation for this audience-centered approach was a belief that studying why individuals selected certain media stories would create better understanding of human needs, their origins, and how media stories gratify those needs (Lull, 1995). The uses and gratifications perspective rests on several important assumptions: • • • • •

audiences make intentional choices regarding their media use, audiences connect their own needs to the media stories they choose, media stories compete with alternatives for satisfying needs, audiences are self-aware, able to report reasons for their choices, and researchers should avoid judgments “while audience orientations are explored on their own terms. (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1974, p. 22)

Personal circumstances and psychological dispositions shape media habits. Audience evaluations of their media experience will then impact expectations and future choices.

Models of Media Use Media scholars developed several models to explain how audiences make their media choices. Information-seeking predicts that audiences select media stories because they believe information in them is necessary to fulfill some personal goal. Audiences may have private reasons to satisfy curiosity or need specific information for work or social conversation (Donohew & Tipton, 1973). The person who inspired the character of Marcy from Chapter One usually gets her news from social media, but when her neighbor is murdered, Marcy actively sought news about the murder from traditional media. Coverage of the murder on television news and in the local newspaper helped Marcy better understand her own experience, plus she could copy and paste links to these stories in her social media posts. (Marcy was also curious to see if she appeared in any of the footage or photographs published in traditional media and how she looked in them.) Research showing that audiences view traditional media as a supplement to online media, and that traditional media can be perceived as more credible would predict Marcy’s more active use of traditional media during the neighborhood tragedy (Johnson & Kaye, 2015). The key ideas behind the dependency model are that media stories can help create needs, that people consistently turn to media stories to satisfy these needs, and some audiences will view these media stories or the devices that deliver them as “friends” (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976). Dependency argues that

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some audiences are so attached to their media, they feel deprived if the stories and the devices that deliver them are absent in their lives. Social stability also impacts the dependency individuals can develop for media. When change in society is rapid, tensions rise. People may be forced to reevaluate their choices, their roles, and their beliefs about established institutions. During times of great social change, reliance on media increases. As some observers recognized during the turbulence of the Trump era, even as Donald Trump attacked, mocked the press, and threatened journalists with libel laws, news organizations that covered Trump controversies and the violence polemics provokes discovered that viciousness was good for business (Pickard, 2016).

The Morbid and the Violent In the late 1970s, media researcher Jack Haskins began examining the problem of morbid curiosity. The violence in popular media stories was upsetting Haskins to the point that he was avoiding the news, which was worrying. Haskins did not want to be an uninformed citizen. This personal reaction to the violence in news led Haskins to examine motives for watching or avoiding violent media stories in general, leading to a review of the available literature on the topic of hyper-negative messages, or extremely bad and violent stories, and why these stories seemed to be so pervasive and prominent (Haskins, 1981). The research eventually focused on understanding the needs (or motives) that drive some audiences to seek out media stories with predictably morbid and violent contents, a typical uses and gratifications approach. Morbid media stories include violent material but under Haskins’s definition the morbid story is more vivid, graphic, and extreme. Morbid media stories are those considered “noxious, gruesome, frightening, punishing, repugnant, shocking, unwholesome, unhealthy, and exceptionally negative” (Haskins, 1984, p. 5) and include excessive and exaggerated violence. In addition to violence, the morbid story might also emphasize or linger on the perverse, rotting, painful, and disturbing details that surround violent actions or are left behind when the violent act concludes. Though decaying zombies shuffling into a scene may have deadly and violent potential, these characters may seem more visually morbid than brutal; yet audiences know a whiff of a living character will trigger a violent frenzy. The sinister elements in morbid stories that linger on the agony of a character in the aftermath of carnage may not support a concern for the story’s minor characters or a moral lesson about the damage violence does but may be a celebration of the gruesome instead. The horror genre in particular is known for meticulous visual attention to the mechanics of brutal death and vivid mutilation. This is in contrast to “clean violence” common to adventure genres, where the heroic protagonist blithely dispatches enemies as the plot moves forward, making little comment, visual or otherwise, on the agony of those fallen minor characters or the grisly remains of their bodies. The physical damage of

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violence, the financial expense of it, and the emotional harm it does to victims, their friends, and families is rarely explored. It is also rare for the protagonists to mourn their culpability in the deaths of minor characters, especially when a story suggests that violent actions are necessary. It wasn’t until the sequel trilogy released in 2015 that the Star Wars franchise asked audiences to consider the agony endured by Empire soldiers (Stormtroopers) forced to fight in support of a brutal and power hungry military regime. When FN-2187, or Finn, a Stormtrooper in The Force Awakens (2015), turns traitor to the Empire (or the First Order) to become a major character and a champion of the resistance, audiences see behind the robot-like uniform to the conflicted character underneath. Initially Finn just wanted to escape the regime that had conscripted him, but his defection raises questions about the thoughts of other conscripted Stormtroopers, about how Finn is able to know “the right thing to do,” and how he is then able to turn his guns on his former colleagues and fellow Stormtroopers, blowing them up with stolen weaponry. In the earlier films in the franchise, Stormtroopers fighting for the Empire were killed without concern for their pain or individual sacrifice. Stormtroopers were simply obstacles in the protagonist’s path, which they also become for Finn once he has discovered and dedicated himself to the resistance.

Morbid Fascination Attraction to violence has never been completely absent from human culture, suggesting that the contemporary problem of morbid curiosity is a human problem predating the relentless spread of popular media, not necessarily caused by it. Generations before industrial and internet media became readily available, spectators were drawn to spectacles of public hangings, crucifixions, and decapitations. More contemporary examples of this behavior include the practice of rubbernecking at highway accidents, groups standing in long lines to see a museum display of human cadavers, and the growth of “morbid tourism,” those sightseeing attractions based on locations where violent tragedy occurred (Blom, 2000). While many memorial sites are sanitized thanatourism, “venues often include displays of gruesome photos, mountains of abandoned shoes and suitcases, and even stacks of skulls” (van den Berghe, 2006, p. 245). The easy examples of what might appear to be morbid curiosity are more prevalent in relation to media stories: active participation in “Creepypasta,” the use of computer games filled with hyper-realistic brutality, fandom for popular movies and television programs depicting gruesome carnage, and internet accounts of murder and savagery so that “little by little we are becoming inured to death online” (Miles, 2011, p. 18). Horror films are among the most profitable for studios, making the genre a solid investment (Murphy, 2017). The attraction of media genres with predictably violent and morbid contents suggests that audience interest in this material is widespread. It additionally suggests that morbid curiosity, if not inherited, might

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be effortlessly acquired. Yet, morbid curiosity is not normal curiosity, though a person with normal curiosity can be lured to morbid contents.

Defining Normal Curiosity Normal curiosity is a deliberate search for information, a natural inclination for new experiences and knowledge. Human beings are not unique in their curiosity; animals also have the urge to investigate new objects and situations. The need to explore the unknown seems common to most species. Curiosity might kill the cat, however the cat’s attraction to a new object involves a hint of fear and concern for self-preservation, so that the unknown is both scary and interesting. When facing something strange, people will also act to solve uncertainty even if they are afraid something awful might happen (Hsee & Ruan, 2016). A young woman alone in her house at night hears odd noises coming from her basement. Not knowing what is causing these noises, the woman gets a flashlight and goes down the dark basement stairs to investigate. This is normal curiosity. The engine behind normal human curiosity is a biological readiness to respond to new and perhaps dangerous situations. It is a deliberate rather than a reflexive action. A person can have normal curiosity about a morbid subject if that subject is significant to the person’s life. It is within the range of normal curiosity for someone to carefully examine violent war footage if that person has a loved one about to be deployed. Elements of morbid media violence resonate with a person’s lived experience, creating a particular interest in that content. It is also within normal curiosity for someone to watch a violent feature film that has been the subject of considerable debate, praise, or derision on social media in an attempt to understand what all the fuss is about. Occasional interest in morbid media is part of normal curiosity. One week after a murder on a college campus, researchers discovered a puzzling student preference for a movie about murder among those students who lived in the same dorm as the murder victim (Boyanowsky, Newston, & Walster, 1974). Once the feelings of personal vulnerability had subsided, researchers believed it was possible that a narrative film about murder could relieve some normal curiosity students felt about the violence that had happened on their campus. Psychology offers a neurological distinction between two kinds of exploratory behaviors: specific exploration and diversive exploration (Berlyne, 1960; Litman & Spielberger, 2003). While an unanswered problem or mystery creates an overstimulated or anxious curiosity, boredom inspires a different kind of curiosity. The woman who heard odd noises in her basement was not bored but overstimulated. What is making those noises? A broken pipe? A rat? A serial killer? The overstimulated person pursues specific explorations for those answers that will solve the problem and reduce arousal to a more tolerable level. A state of boredom (or under-stimulation) motivates diversive exploration, causing the bored person to look for any sort of new, surprising, or complex experience just to increase arousal

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to a more pleasant condition. A woman alone at night without the excitement of strange noises knocking around in her dark basement might be motivated by sheer boredom to watch a horror movie or play a violent video game. Perceptual and epistemic curiosity add to the broader understanding of curiosity (Berlyne, 1966). Perceptual curiosity is an attraction to events and things that are part of a person’s environment and directly lived experience. A confusing situation might cause someone to examine conditions for new information. The woman going down her basement stairs to investigate strange noises demonstrated perceptual curiosity. In another example, encountering a shark while boating might cause a person to have perceptual curiosity about the shark, motivating a need for closer inspection and the experience of deep sea diving in a shark cage for underwater shark encounters. Epistemic curiosity is a response to unusual questions, complex ideas, or baffling problems that cannot be understood or satisfied with an individual’s existing knowledge or perceptual inspection. Instead of a physical experience in a shark cage, the epistemically curious person looks for information about sharks in a book, a Google search, or perhaps in the fictional film Jaws (1975). Epistemic curiosity is desire for new information that encourages a deeper search for facts, materials, and the acquisition of knowledge. Normal curiosity has positive survival value. It alerts people to potential dangers and helps them to identify and better understand potential problems. No matter how vicious, nasty, and scary the subject matter of a violent media story might be, an interest in something that might have bearing on an individual’s comfort and security would be considered normal and sensible.

Defining Morbid Curiosity In contrast to normal curiosity, morbid curiosity is “an enduring and unusually strong attraction to information about exceedingly unpleasant events and objects that are irrelevant to the individual’s life” (Haskins, 1984, p. 8). There are several distinguishing features of morbid curiosity. Morbid curiosity is a continuing trait rather than a temporary condition. Morbid curiosity is an unusually strong obsession, a preference for vicious, painful, or disgusting topics. Morbid curiosity is not the same as being highly curious about a great variety of topics, where an interest in the morbid might not be unusual. Morbid curiosity also involves an active search for morbid material, which distinguishes it from passive, involuntary, or forced exposure to the morbid. It is a fascination with morbid events rather than a desire for participation, though it is possible that morbid curiosity could be a substitute for physical action. Finally, and importantly, in order to be defined as morbid curiosity, the selected morbid content must be irrelevant to the individual’s life. A person’s morbid curiosity about the violent and perverse elements in media stories is a continuing fandom, involving diversive exploration and epistemic curiosity. The opposite is the morbid aversive, an individual whose sensitivities to violent and morbid stories are so severe that these stories must

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be avoided, even if the information in these stories is important or has relevance to personal well-being. Four motivational states, diversive exploration, epistemic curiosity, morbid curiosity, as well as normal curiosity, might drive audiences to seek out violent and morbid media stories, while morbid aversiveness would keep them away (Haskins, 1984).

Reasons for Choosing Violent Stories Decades of research have catalogued some of the many reasons audiences provide for their media choices and a fair amount of this research involves audience expectations about violent content. One study offered that people frightened by violence will select violent media stories in order to master their emotions (Orbach, Winkler, & Har-Even, 1993). Other audiences may be seeking a just resolution or retribution for violent actions (Bryant, Carveth, & Brown, 1981). Several factors combine to provide audience gratification from violent media: exhilaration (created through suspense, gore, and shock), relevance (which can be universal, cultural, or personal), and the knowledge that the events on screen are not real (Walters, 2004). A meta-analysis using 40 years of research reveals that the audience expectations for violence in a media story will increase selective exposure to it, though the violence might detract from actual enjoyment (Weaver, 2011). One study noted that college students who would pay to watch fictional characters disemboweled in an orgy of horror movie carnage could not stomach violent documentary footage showing cows at the slaughterhouse, a live monkey killed and eaten at a dinner party, or surgery on a young girl’s face (McCauley, 1998). Researchers observed that students turned away from both the slaughterhouse documentary and the monkey documentary, but they believe the reason was not concern for animal welfare because students also turned off the documentary featuring surgery on a child. They concluded that inability to watch the documentaries was not because of distress for the subjects but revulsion for actual violence. Understanding the different tolerances audiences have for reality and fantasy violence is important, however researchers may have been too quick to dismiss the problem of student concern for vulnerable subjects, such as children and animals. In-depth interviews with fans of the original film in the Evil Dead franchise discovered that while the fans enjoyed the 2013 reboot of the original 1981 fictional horror, many were upset with a scene showing the family dog, “Grandpa,” being brutally killed. Fans were not at all upset when adult human characters in the same film met with bloody deaths (Edwards, 2019). Some of these fans explained that they felt it was unacceptable to show innocent animals abused, even in a fictional horror movie where violent victimization was expected. While some fans thought brutalizing animals and children should be off limits, they had no such concerns for adult characters or the bloody deaths they might encounter. Horror movie fans may turn off documentary horror,

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but enjoyment of fictional horror might also be diminished depending on which characters are victimized. Another study on the attractions of horror offered a “snuggle theory,” suggesting that horror movies function as heterosexual gender socialization (Zillman, Weaver, Mundorf, & Aust, 1986). Male viewers enjoyed a horror film when their female companions were upset, while females enjoyed horror when their male companions displayed bravery. Other studies suggest “horror movies present society’s norms only to violate them” and those violations are interesting (McCauley, 1998, p. 149). Some studies predict that people choose entertainment for the ambiance or to escape a current mood (Zillman, 1988). The long list of explanations for choosing violent media stories includes such reasons as: they provide the experience of facing an intensely awful possibility and mentally rehearsing for it in a safe environment; they offer excitement and relief from boredom; and they create an intense state of consciousness for reexamining personal values (Goldstein, 1999). When horror movies show awful things that happen if standards are violated, they help to reaffirm the virtue of the norm. Some people believed horror could satisfy religious needs by promising to deliver feelings of awe, enchantment, mystery, and fear of the supernatural or a supreme power (Haskins, 1984). Morbid media stories also appeal to the single most urgent human concern, the knowledge and fearful anticipation of death.

Personality Characteristics and Media Choices Reasons are those conscious rationalizations people give for what they do and assume logical decision-making behind those choices. Reasons are not necessarily synonymous with motivations. Reason suggests an awareness behind decisions, whereas motivations may involve needs that an individual doesn’t recognize or can even articulate. The fan so enamored with Quentin Tarantino films that he has the words “Reservoir Dog” tattooed on his shoulder might say he admires Tarantino films because, violence aside, they are examples of superior filmmaking. The motivation behind this fan’s devoted admiration might be a frequent, internal boredom, which experience tells him will be temporarily relieved watching a Tarantino film or perhaps another high action and extremely violent movie. Motivation is grounded in an organism’s own nature and internal state and determines the direction and strength of action (English & English, 1958, p. 330). An individual can have both inherent biological motivations and learned or conditioned drives to select morbid material and may not be conscious of either. If motivations exist at an unconscious level of needs, drives, instincts, and urges, articulated reasons may not necessarily correspond to these motivations. This is why some critics were so judgmental of uses and gratifications research that asked audiences to supply the reasons behind their choices. While the research compiled lists of reasons, important motivations might be missed. Rather than generating lists of unique reasons people offered for their violent media choices,

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uses and gratifications research began to wonder if personality factors could predict those choices and began looking for correlations between personality characteristics and preferences for violence (Kromar & Kean, 2005). Researchers began including in their questionnaires measures for audience motivations using gauges such as the Sensation Seeking Scale (Zuckerman, 1996), the Novelty Seeking Scale (Pearson, 1970), Aggression (Buss & Perry, 1992), and other personality measures.

Sensation Seeking and Morbid Curiosity One personality factor that has obvious relevance to the study of morbid curiosity and audience attraction to violence is sensation seeking. The developer of the sensation seeking scale, Marvin Zuckerman, defined it as pursuit of “varied, novel, complex, and intense sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experience” (1979, p. 27). The sensation seeking personality is uninhibited, nonconforming, impulsive, and dominant and has a high capacity for original thought. A biochemical need for stimulation in the limbic reward area of the brain may drive sensation seeking. Four subscales of sensation seeking include: thrill and adventure seeking, which is the desire for risky sports or activities; experience seeking, which is a desire for intellectual and unconventional experiences; disinhibition, which is the desire for partying, sex, gambling, and social drinking; and, finally, boredom susceptibility, which is an aversion to routine and an uncomfortable restlessness if experience becomes predictable (Zuckerman, 1996). High sensation seekers tend to have more actual experience with risky behaviors. They pursue such things such as wild parties, exotic travels, perilous sports activities, sexual variety, drugs, and alcohol. The trait is measurably higher in younger people and more likely in males than females. High sensation seekers also tend to prefer violent or abstract and expressionist art (Toback, Myers, & Bailey, 1981; Zuckerman, Ulrich, & McLaughlin, 1993). People who need excitement, or are high sensation seekers, might turn to violent media stories to satisfy desires for exhilaration (AlujaFabregat & Torrubia-Beltri, 1998; Zuckerman & Litle, 1996). A study involving adolescents who watched slasher movies discovered three motivations associated with selection of these films: rebellion against authority, the thrill-seeking subscale of sensation seeking, and sadistic gore gratification (Johnson, 1995). Research found that sensation seeking and verbal aggressiveness were associated with choosing violent films and horror movies and to a lesser extent real crime genres and violent television (Greene & Krcmar, 2005). In a study looking at reasons some audiences gave for choosing horror, those who indicated that they watched for the gore also scored low on empathy and high on sensation seeking (Johnson, 1995). A meta-analysis of the existing research about why audiences might select violent media stories discovered that both sensation seeking and aggressiveness were positively correlated with those choices (Hoffner & Levine, 2005).

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Aggressiveness Aggression is the characteristic many media effects researchers measure when they look for the influence of violent media stories on audience behavior. As discussed in Chapter One, social psychology defines aggression as behavior performed by one person (the aggressor) on another (the victim) with the intent of physically or psychologically harming that victim who has no wish to be harmed. There are distinctions among types of aggression. Aggression can be proactive or reactive, deliberate or reckless, learned or instinctive. One suggestion about the apparent relationship between violent media and aggression has been that rather than being an outcome of watching violent media stories, aggression is a motivation for watching. There is some support for that belief. Earlier studies concluded that watching violent television stories was related to aggressive attitudes (Greenberg, 1974, 1975). Interviewing parents about their children’s attraction to violent media, researchers discovered that children who were already aggressive were attracted to media stories that showed aggression as an acceptable way to achieve goals. Violent stories allowed children to consider their own aggressive behavior more favorably (Cantor, 1998). In a study of more than 3000 eighth graders, researchers found aggression and sensation seeking to be reliable predictors for choices of violent film, computer, and website content (Slater, 2003). Researchers also discovered that alienation from peers predicted selection of violent films, so that alienation engaged with sensation seeking and aggression. Another study discovered that viewer aggression was a motivation for exposure to violent media and “must remain a central focus to understanding post-viewing aggression” (Haridakis, 2002, p. 344).

Cruel Gratifications Similar to aggression, cruelty is a deliberate infliction of physical or psychobiological pain on another living creature, sometimes indifferently, but often with delight. Cruelty suggests that the perpetrator’s enjoyment of the victim’s pain falls on a continuum from the perpetrator’s coldness and emotional detachment to an escalating arousal. In an essay on cruelty’s rewards, psychology professor Victor Nell provides an in-depth examination of the gratifications for both perpetrators and spectators of cruel behavior (2006). Nell believes cruelty originated as a byproduct of predatory behavior. Communal hunting and the hunter’s excitement during the pursuit of game were its evolutionary beginnings. Nell cites anthropological evidence suggesting that hunting behavior adapted so that some hunters inflicted pain beyond what was necessary and also killed in excess of what was needed. The neurobiology of attack predicts that erotic force will follow appearances of blood and death, providing the entertainment rewards for cruelty. The enjoyment of cruelty then expanded into the culture, emerging in discipline and punishment as societies evolve and

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states wield power over victims. “In hierarchical states with centralized power, cruelty becomes a vehicle for public entertainment,” which also reinforces the power of the state and idolizes war. Historically, the delight in cruelty is potent enough for states to dedicate huge resources for the purpose of cruel rites and spectacles, “and this enjoyment remains a primary driver of the modern entertainment industry” (Nell, 2006, p. 212). The criticisms of Nell’s history of human cruelty range from high praise to complaints that hard science is missing. One response thought the connection between gorging excitedly on prey in the pain-and-blood complex and the exercise of social power was “most enigmatic,” later observing that the progress of social roles, norms, and sanctions have divested cruelty of any practical use for social and reproductive advantage (Bandura, 2006, p. 225). Another critical response noted that Nell’s definition of cruelty was too broad (Rowan, 2006) while another reacted with surprise to find so few references to the considerable literature on aggression, observing that psychologists’ definition of aggression and Nell’s definition of cruelty were virtually identical (Kosloff, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2006). Nell refers to cruelty as a “subtype” of aggression. While we might imagine a scenario where aggression could have a noble purpose, it would be difficult to make that same virtuous claim for cruelty. Another judgment complimented Nell’s work for crossing disciplinary boundaries and added the observation that once infants and toddlers can coordinate intentional movements, they show they are capable and willing to inflict pain on others (Kraemer, 2006). This is presumably before these toddlers become avid users of violent media. Several researchers commented on the social role of cruelty and possible links to media entertainment. “What spectators experience in ‘spectacles of pain and bloodshed’ is a marked, though transient, relief in psychic tension that derives from constant unconscious death fears in a society that readily resorts to corporal punishment and war” (Behrendt, 2006, p. 227). Referencing Haskin’s symposium on morbid curiosity, Lionel Tiger responded to Nell’s research with the observation that spectatorship for violent entertainments may not be the enjoyment of cruelty but sensible concerns spectators have about self-preparation for that eventual horrific disaster (2006). In discussions about violence prevention, Nell recommends carefully studying the voices of perpetrators to better understand cruelty’s motives and gratifications. One frustration about prevention includes recognition that such efforts clearly require “more than detecting high and low scores on any type of questionnaire” (Haritos-Fatouros, 2006, p. 230).

Disgust Another human response that would appear to have obvious relevance to morbid media stories, especially in their more gruesome aspects, is the disgust reaction (Haidt, McCauly, Rozin, 1994a, b). It seems logical that disgust should repel audiences from media stories rather than attract them. But, as with other human

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emotions, disgust is complicated, causing reactions of repulsion, fascination, and violence. A summary of the history and research on the human disgust reaction describes disgust as a response to something actually observed or vividly imagined (Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley, 2008). Real events, screen depictions, and completely imaginary incidents can all provoke the disgust reaction. “Core disgust” is focused on body waste, offensive matter such as vomit, feces, blood, pus, decay, mucus, and saliva. Core disgust has evolutionary value because it functions to guard the body from contamination or contagion by eliminating the motivations of hunger. Most people will reject potential food if it looks or smells like a contaminant or has even briefly come into contact with those impurities. The disgust reaction developed over time to include protection for the social self with interpersonal disgust and further evolved to add a dogmatic or religious function to moral disgust, making the disgust reaction also a guardian of the soul. These developments connect the disgust reaction to violence. The cultural evolution of core disgust to include interpersonal disgust grew from human rejection of animalistic behaviors and those qualities considered primitive or beneath the dignity of a human being. The interpersonal disgust reaction includes disapproval of foreigners, immigrants, and deviant individuals, or anyone not considered humane or civilized (Faulkner, Schaller, Park, & Duncan, 2004; Hodson & Costello, 2007; Navarette & Fessler, 2006). Particularly horrific forms of violence between groups, including genocide, involve dehumanization of a group so that they are characterized as beasts, inferior, low-status, dissimilar, and a threat to human integrity. This allows someone to view an enemy or a minority group with disgust. In violent fictional stories, villains are often characterized as animalistic “others,” making the villains deserving of a hero’s violence. Moral disgust evolved from responses to religious offenses and actions that violate taboos, so the disgust reaction plays a direct role in moral judgments (Haidt, 2001; Haidt, Koller, & Dias, 1993). There are both individual and cultural differences in moral disgust sensitivity. Some cultures regard purity as a moral virtue so violation of purity or chastity arouses disgust. A research project showed strong disgust responses among subjects viewing footage of mass executions that extremists perpetrated in Iraq and Syria (Grizzard et al., 2017). Researchers believe disgust could motivate military and humanitarian intervention but found no increase in negative attitudes toward Arab Muslims. A study of disgust and political conservatism found disgust sensitivity strongly associated with moral attitudes toward gay marriage and abortion (Inbar, Pizarro, & Bloom, 2009). Another study of homophobic men’s reactions to gay male erotica saw strong correlations with anger and fear, but less so with disgust (Zeichner & Reidy, 2009). Researchers reasoned that if homophobic men in the study were sexually attracted to gay erotica, attraction might inhibit the disgust reaction. Women’s monthly menstruation may prompt disgust reactions for some men that allow these male spectators to consider female characters in media stories as biologically inferior, weak, and even a monstrous sign of divine disgust. Menstruating

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young women characters like those in Carrie (1973, 2013) and Ginger Snaps (2000) become the grotesque “other” in horror movies as objects of disgust, fear, and desire at the intersection of monstrosity and sexual difference (Lindsey, 1991; Harrington, 2016). The boundaries between reactions of disgust and pleasure are fragile, fluid, and porous, so that revulsion overlaps with reactions such as humor and erotic desire. When a person wearing elegant clothes steps in dog feces, it’s amusing as long as you aren’t the one with dog crap on your good shoes (Rozin et al., 2008). This humor associated with disgust helps explain attractions to horrorcomedies for some audiences, where gruesome or nauseating actions restricted to a screen excite laughter. In the overlap with desire, the disgust people might have at the idea of tasting the saliva of strangers becomes sensual intimacy in the mouth-to-mouth kissing between sexual partners. Objects, individuals, and activities that provoke disgust tend to get attention and may require action. At the level of core disgust, the contaminant must be cleaned up. The wounded body needs bandaging; the sick body needs healing; the dead body needs ritual removal from the spaces of the living. At the interpersonal level, disgust continues to capture attention and may cause some to feel the need to police their community, protecting it from individuals who would degrade standards. At the moral level, disgust reactions retaliate for violations of sacred taboos. Studies using the disgust scale have discovered higher scores among women and higher correlations for people with anxiety related to mortality and the body. Disgust sensitivity correlates negatively with education and socioeconomic status as well as with sensation seeking and openness to experience (Haidt, 2001). Sensation seekers, better-educated people, men, and individuals more open to new experiences are among those likely to seek out the epistemic experience of a violent film with on-screen elements designed to provoke disgust. The negative emotion of disgust may be an interesting experience for these spectators when the disgusting objects and actions are confined to a screen and there is no risk of personal contamination (Haidt, McCauly, & Rozin, 1994a).

Violence, Moral Disgust, and Public Policy One example of how media, disgust, and violence work as partners to impact public policy emerged in controversial “bathroom bills,” which rely on imaginary scenes of violence, media publicity, as well as public disgust reactions for political traction. On March 22, 2016, when North Carolina lawmakers passed into law HB2, better known as the “bathroom bill” or the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, the resulting media stories and debates on social media seemed largely connected to the interpersonal and moral disgust reactions of some citizens about a location associated with core disgust. The bill was a reaction to a Charlotte city ordinance, which among other things would have allowed biological

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males who identified as female to use women’s restrooms and biological females who identified as male to use the men’s. Though I could find no case where a transgender woman or a heterosexual man masquerading as a transgender woman entered a public woman’s restroom in North Carolina to sexually assault women and girls, the public controversy seemed centered on this imagined violence. There were existing laws against indecent exposure and assault, but supporters of HB2 claimed additional protection was necessary to safeguard against inevitable male violence in women’s restrooms. Anecdotal stories and my own casual observation of social media posts warned that some individuals could vividly imagine disturbing and highly violent incidents happening in public restrooms. The most memorable post I encountered came from a man who vowed to arm himself with an assault rifle and patrol public women’s restrooms to protect his wife and young daughter from the disgusting behaviors of perverts and the violence he so clearly imagined would happen without the deterrent of HB2. If a person’s only experience with a transgender woman came from media depictions like that in the crime film, Silence of the Lambs (1991), the idea of Buffalo Bill hunting for female victims in public restrooms is truly disconcerting. However, the fictional character of Buffalo Bill certainly isn’t representative of transgender women. Correlation is not necessarily causation, but as media spread North Carolina’s debate with implications for other states and national policy (Dastagir, 2016), news outlets reported an increase in murders of transgender people (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016; Astor, 2017). HB2 was partially repealed in 2017 following public protests, complaints from municipal police departments (unwilling to assign officers to inspect genitals at public facilities), lawsuits, and huge financial losses for the state (Hanna, 2017). As of this writing, 16 states have considered legislation to restrict access to sex-segregated facilities such as public bathrooms or locker rooms, but North Carolina has been the only state to pass and then to partially repeal such legislation.

Pain and Pleasure Aesthetic preferences and responses to media stories begin with processes in the brain, which have physical locations for both reward and punishment systems (Lilly, 1960). Three different locales in the brain govern responses: a primary reward system, an aversion system, and a third reward system that makes it possible for something to be both rewarding and punishing (Berlyne, 1960, 1966, 1971). There may be a true biological or physiological need for stimulation that is both pleasurable and painful. The idea of something awful without the actual experience of it might also produce the electrochemical reaction of “sublime pleasure.” Things that would rationally be considered unpleasant could—in actuality—deliver pleasure (Campbell, 1973).

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The opponent-process theory deals specifically with the pleasures of pain. After enough repetition, a pleasurable withdrawal becomes connected to things initially regarded as frightening, disgusting, irritating, or physically painful (Solomon, 1982). When the horror movie is finally ended, there may be as much pleasure as relief that the on-screen torment is over. With the knowledge that the suffering is not truly theirs, suffering along with the characters becomes a transfiguration for viewers. There might be a pleasurable sense of achievement in the ability to withstand the visual onslaught of horrid imagery without flinching, a pleasure to be in the powerful position of survival when on-screen characters die. Similar pleasures may surface while watching the horrors reality manufactures for the news. In her book, Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), Susan Sontag offers an analysis of the pleasures audiences find while contemplating photographs of war atrocities. Sontag describes the browsing of global wars and news images of slaughtered foreigners while sitting safely at home as the “quintessential modern experience” (p. 18). She dismisses the idea that if the horrors of war could be made vivid enough, people would see the insanity and be moved to outrage and action. When spectators tire of atrocities and turn away, what seems like callousness is actually attention instability because of excessive media screens and exposure to constant images. Compassion is unpredictable and if not translated into action, compassion fades. Separated from the mediated disasters they witness, consumers of violence without risk can claim a pleasurable position of superiority. The repeated story is a powerful story. Repeated and powerful translate into economic and political potential. But, in a flooded attention economy, even the repeated and powerful have the potential to fail when oversaturated audiences tune out. In 2016, television news images from the Battle of Aleppo of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, his young face black with blood and powdered with soot, his expression blank, unable even to cry, gained widespread media attention as a symbol of the horrors of the Syrian war. Some critics noticed how spectator sympathies appeared to quickly evaporate as attention moved to other viral videos and news stories (Burr, 2017). Audiences may not be desensitized as much as inundated; the sheer number of awful stories makes it difficult to concentrate for any length of time on one. As Sontag noticed, “the image as shock and the image as cliché are two aspects of the same presence” (2003, p. 23). Sherene Razack reaches a similar conclusion when she reflects on the lack of public indignation following a spate of both narrative and documentary films dealing with the horrors of the Rwandan genocide (2007). Canadian produced documentaries and narrative films such as Hotel Rwanda (2004) and Shake Hands with the Devil (2007) allowed spectators removed from the violence to see the horror of genocide through the eyes of those who were witnesses. After contemplating the violence and acknowledging their own personal

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humanity, spectators are “warmed by the capacity to care” without any obligation to act (382). Audiences mentally experience their heroic transformation from spectator to sensitive humanitarian, deeply feeling the pain of others. A material system of white privilege and racial logic encourages and sentimentalizes the spectator’s “theft” of another’s pain. Razack concludes that compassion for victims nearly always amounts to pity, and when there is an inevitability that the horror cannot be stopped, the watching audience is absolved of further responsibility. Acknowledging that a catastrophic drama like Hotel Rwanda could be deeply gratifying but not “enjoyable,” some researchers use the descriptor “appreciation” rather than “gratification” or “pleasure” to describe viewer engagement with disturbing material (Oliver & Bartsch, 2010). In addition to the hedonic motivations of diversion, escapism, and amusement, audiences may also be searching for media stories that will help them ponder the deeper meanings, truths, and purposes of life (Oliver & Raney, 2011). The study of these eudaimonic motivations suggests that some audiences select media stories for greater insight into the human condition. This selection reflects a higher-order need for those violent stories that also depict inspiring human qualities such as strength, courage, wisdom, and sacrifice. Spectators identified violent films as meaningful when violence was connected to portrayals of moral virtue. These “inspiring” films provoked physical responses such as a lump in the throat (Oliver, Hartmann, & Woolley, 2012). Research examining whether audience perceptions of violence in film trailers would predict their interest in watching the full movie found that gore without purposeful suspense did not predict the likelihood that subjects would choose to watch the entire film. However, a violent film that promised to be significant and insightful would be selected for viewing (Bartsch & Mares, 2014). The researchers believe this indicates audience appreciation for violence if it is judged to be an important reflection on reality.

A Morbid Date Night I collected ideas for the following narrative during a period when I was doing in-depth interviewing with fans of the 1981 horror film The Evil Dead and its 2013 reboot. One storyteller equated fandom for the classic horror movie with what she thought must be morbid curiosity, given the number of times the protagonist of her story watched the film. There may be clues in the narrative to suggest that the protagonist’s keen interest in the horror film may not necessarily arise from morbid curiosity. Though the conflict in the story is a minor one and the morbid violence in the narrative is all confined to a cinema screen, the sequential art does appear to support what the research reveals about sensation seeking, reactions to art, and core disgust.

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Discussion: Admiration for a Horror Movie The protagonist of “A Morbid Date Night” does seem to be obsessed with a classic horror movie to the point of morbid fascination. Yet, knowing that this character has ambitions to be a filmmaker, his admiration could represent normal curiosity. According to Haskins’s definition, we would need to know more about this character before his interest in horror movies would indicate morbid curiosity. The tendency to laugh at a character who admires the foul carnage in a movie but is overcome with core disgust when confronted with real contaminants is a reaction the disgust research predicts. We could also predict that all the male characters in this narrative are high sensation seekers, though more devoted to epistemic experiences of experimental art and media rather than perceptual thrills such as skydiving or drag racing. An individual like the serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki was obsessively interested in morbid, pornographic, and violent media, but it is not a foregone conclusion that individuals interested in morbid media will want to physically participate in violent or morbid activities. Haskins was careful to distinguish between morbid curiosity and violent behavior. He did acknowledge the possibility that morbid curiosity could be related to violent behavior. He also suggested that normal curiosity about morbid materials could develop into morbid curiosity. Normal curiosity about the morbid may become “diverted or sublimated into artistic or scientific creativity for some people.” For others, “possibly due to some combination of a safe or boring environment, lower intelligence, neurotic or psychotic tendencies, and repression may become more and more preoccupied with the unlimited supply of negative media messages” developing from a person with normal curiosity into a morbidly curious individual (1984, p. 39).

Antisocial Gratifications People with antisocial personality disorder, psychopaths or sociopaths, are present in all societies at a rate of about 2 percent. Psychopaths are aggressive, promiscuous, deceitful, impulsive, irresponsible, manipulative, narcissistic, easily bored, and prone to recklessness and violence. They lack compassion, guilt, and moral reasoning, yet they can also be charming and intelligent (Wong & Hare, 2005; Vien & Beech, 2006). In his 2013 autobiography, The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain, James Fallon recognized a pattern in the brain scans of violent killers: low brain functioning or dark places in areas of the frontal and temporal lobes associated with self-control and empathy. Fallon’s personal psychopathic adventure began when he accidentally learned that his own brain scan mirrored those of violent criminals. Fallon also scored high on the Psychopath Test or Hare’s Checklist (2003), which measures for the traits of psychopathy. Yet, Fallon never killed anyone nor did he have the desire to commit violence. Fallon’s genetic predisposition was not fated to commit violence, for

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which he credits excellent parenting that protected him from his risky genetic inheritance. Fallon’s insider advice for dealing with dreadful genetic traits is that a genuinely nurturing childhood can counterbalance them. People with a predisposition for aggression are not necessarily destined for deviance and criminality. Even if they lack empathy, psychopaths are egotistical. They care about the admiration of others and will act in ways to get approval. Fallon warns that very young children need protection from all forms of abuse and brutality, particularly if the developing child has a predisposition for violence. The easily bored psychopath is always looking for different, shocking, or complex experiences that will satisfy a constant need for stimulation, and like other people looking for something to do, the psychopath can turn to violent media stories for relief. Media violence may fulfill some needs for arousal, perhaps easing boredom enough that risky or vicious physical thrills are unnecessary. I’m not suggesting a cathartic reaction, since the psychopath doesn’t have much of an internal inhibition container to protect and the research doesn’t support catharsis. At best, violent media would be a temporary diversion. The concern is that the violent story may not be enough to relieve boredom for psychopaths but serve only to whet relentless and aggressive appetites for excitement. It is curious how often characters with psychopathic traits become the aggressive, bad-boy protagonists of violent stories. Fallon suggests that people crave the “dangerous mayhem that psychopaths can offer” (p. 231). Though most people would prefer not to deal with dangerous psychopaths in real life, being able to fear and love violent characters in the controlled space of a media story can help some deal with the truly vile potential 2 percent of the population represents. Psychopathic characters are common in violent media stories, but the tiny percentage of psychopaths in real life cannot account for all the social violence people experience. Ordinary people are culpable.

The Sociobiological Explanation Some explanations for human attraction to violent media look to biology and evolution. Sociobiology is a controversial field of study that attempts to understand the contributions of natural selection to the human brain and behavior (Wilson, 1978). The instincts, needs, drives, and motivations that unconsciously affect our choices are believed to be a complex neurological package in the limbic system. The contemporary human brain evolved through natural selection over thousands of generations, resulting in the biological basis for behaviors with survival value. Several characteristics associated with human interest in violent and morbid media, such as disgust and cruelty, are thought to have evolved from our primitive ancestors, remaining with us because of their value to human survival. Sociobiology suggests that attention to media violence is also a result of human evolutionary development.

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For a long period in our very long evolution, Homo sapiens benefited from alertness to danger signals. Sociobiology explains that human beings are programmed to notice violence. Survival depended on it. Coming across the dead and mangled body of an animal or another person could signal an important hazard. Perhaps there is a hostile tribe or a hunting carnivore in the area. The brain’s cortex sits on top of older parts of the brain, which provide our basic orienting responses. Fears, drives, passions, all those things labeled vestigial or primitive, are still with us (Tiger, 1984). The same alertness to the violent dangers that worried our primitive ancestors can explain contemporary attention to violent media stories, if it doesn’t fully explain the appetite for selecting them. Unless people are living in a violent neighborhood or on the front lines of a war, hostile tribes are not as prominent in modern life. Carnivorous animals are unlikely to be hunting the corridors of business offices or the backyards of suburban homes. Yet, human beings who earn their living sitting safely behind a computer are still biologically wired to pay attention to violence, where older parts of the human brain remain primed to notice and take potential action. Sociobiology explains that audience attention to the violence in media stories is the result of fight-or-flight readiness for survival. Entertainment violence is an experience situated in the imagination and viewers are generally aware of this, but the violent incidents in these stories can captivate like a tangible threat. Even real dangers reported in the news may not be a direct risk to the individuals watching, but are instead violence in another community suffered by unfortunate others. The watching audience only vicariously experiences the carnage. The result is that modern audiences remain hardwired to notice the violence in media stories, even though this attention may not have survival value for their situation.

Optimism and Survival Without warnings about the potential for violent media to cause human aggression, the theory of optimism provides another reason why the abundance of violent media stories could be detrimental to the human imagination (Tiger, 1979; Tiger, 1984). Optimism is the confidence in a successful future. It is an essential human survival characteristic, enabling people to cope with all the issues life might present, including violent ones. Optimism is the force that encourages people to keep struggling, caring for families, creating art, planting gardens, and planning hopefully for the future. When bad times arrive, optimism encourages people to strive, even when every rational observation indicates they will fail. Hope is fundamental to survival, necessary for the individual, and essential for society. “If everybody awoke each day to announce, ‘It’s hopeless,’ there would soon be no plausible tomorrow and no continuous social arrangements” (Tiger, 1999, p. 622). Too many morbid, violent, and negative media stories may overpower the human capacity for optimism. Hopelessness

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weakens the willingness to struggle on. People become mired in an existential dilemma, where evil and destruction prevails. A belief in the certainty of violence, the inevitability of failure, and the guarantee of tragedy has no practical survival value. Optimism is the emotional nutrient on which the human imagination thrives.

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8 GENDER, HYPER-MASCULINITY, AND THE VIOLENT STORY

Since the mass shooting at Columbine High School toward the end of the last century, deadly shootings on school campuses have become so routine that American schools practice code red drills just as they practice fire alarms. Highly publicized incidents like the shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (2007), Sandy Hook Elementary School (2012), Santa Monica College (2013), Marysville Pilchuck High School (2014), Umpqua Community College (2015), and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (2018) have been among some of the more vicious. Massacres in recent years have not been limited to schools. The new millennium list includes: murder of people eating at an IHOP in Nevada (2011), watching a movie in Aurora (2012), working at a Navy Yard in Washington (2013), attending a country music festival in Las Vegas (2017), dancing at a night club in Orlando (2017), participating in a worship service in Southerland Springs (2017), eating at a Waffle House in Nashville (2018), working on a newspaper in Annapolis (2018), shopping at a grocery store in Jeffersontown, Kentucky (2018), praying at a synagogue in Pittsburgh (2018), exercising in a yoga studio in Tallahassee, (2018), and dancing at a popular college bar in Thousand Oaks, California (2018), among others. Violence in our national life hasn’t been limited to guns. On August 12, 2017 a man intentionally drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, joining the ranks of other assassins using vehicles as weapons. Bombs were the weapon of choice when two brothers detonated bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon (2013) and when a serial bomber set multiple packages to explode in the Austin, Texas area (2018). The element that all of these murders and attempted murders have in common is not the weaponry but angry male perpetrators.

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Men and Violence It’s widely recognized that men are the culprits in the vast majority of violent crimes. An examination of mass shootings since 1982 reported that men committed all but two, and most of these men were white (Kisel, 2018). This report came just before a woman opened fire at the YouTube headquarters on April 5, 2018, allegedly upset over policies she believed restricted views of her videos, but this angry woman didn’t fit the profile of a mass shooter (Roberts, 2018). Major factors associated with culprits include a propensity for aggression, alcoholic binge drinking, having been a victim of child abuse, struggling with emotional stability, having genetic or family tendencies for violence, living in an area awash in crime, and experiencing stressful life events (Rueve & Welton, 2008). However, being male is a key predictive risk factor for becoming a perpetrator of violence. Men’s performance of violence was so pronounced by 2018, that the subject of “toxic masculinity” emerged in public discussions, where the viciousness of some male behavior was blamed on the way a violent media culture socialized young boys. On an NPR podcast devoted to examining masculinity and what makes it toxic, host Joshua Johnson mentioned football coach Aaron Feis, the man who died shielding his students from the gunman who stormed the high school in Parkland, Florida, as someone who exemplifies the best of manhood and masculinity for many people, “living and even dying for what’s right.” Johnson added that unfortunately for others, it was the shooter who was “the real man, striking back, using violence if necessary to make sure that people never disrespected you again” (Johnson, 2018). The host of the show and his guests concluded it was time to examine masculinity and what we teach boys about how to become men.

The Hazards of Hyper-Masculinity Though there had been an enormous drop in violent crimes over the past quarter century (Gramlich, 2018), symbolic mass murders in the United States made citizens aware that at least some boys and men are dangerously angry. One complaint is that popular movies, music, television, advertising, video games, internet, and social media provide glorified examples of a distorted and violent hyper-masculinity that boys are inspired to mimic. Sex is understood to be a biological fact: the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, hormones, genitalia, and reproductive anatomy. Gender is the social, political, and economic definitions of what it means to be masculine or feminine, emphasizing the ways that people make cultural sense of anatomical difference. Hyper-masculinity is a form of masculine gender ideology defined by traits like violence, toughness, rage, emotional withdrawal, risk-taking, self-reliance, belittling of femininity, and calloused attitudes toward women and sex (Zaitchik & Mosher,

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1993). Some of the attributes linked to masculinity, like courage and leadership, are simply valuable human traits, but it’s harmful when extreme distortions of these characteristics become the masculine norm, while rejecting qualities with any hint of femininity. Media stereotypes are based on narrow and frequently incorrect assumptions about a group. This is no less true about gender stereotyping. Though usually a distortion the dominant group imposes on a minority group, in the case of hyper-masculine stereotyping, the dominant group appears to be distorting a vision of itself. The definition of masculinity that emphasizes aggression and suppresses compassion becomes internalized in some men and boys, who put on this tough persona in order to proudly strut through their social lives (Consalvo, 2003; Newkirk, 2002; Allen & Robinson, 1993). Because masculinity is a social construct, each individual boy must achieve it (Bosson & Vandello, 2011) and anxiously maintain it with endless proofs and validation (Vandello, Bosson, Cohen, Burnaford, & Weaver, 2008). If boys violate this restrictive masculine code, they could be subject to teasing and ridicule. The “process of stuffing oneself in the tight pants of masculinity is a difficult one for all men, even if it is not consciously experienced as such” (Kaufman, 2007, p. 35). Violent media stories aren’t the only socializing agents teaching boys about hyper-masculinity. Parents, teachers, ministers, scout leaders, and other forces join with popular media stories, telling boys they must be competitive, aggressive, repress their emotions, and focus on external achievements in the journey to be hard, successful men. However, media stories have the power to reproduce and widely share this warped definition. One of the obvious risks for a broadly circulated ideology of hyper-masculinity is the promotion of male violence. When fathers adopt a hyper-masculine ideology, they are more likely to behave with verbal, physical, and sexual aggression toward their intimate partners and children (Guerrero, 2009). Hyper-masculinity is not only dangerous to girls and women, who become its victims, hypermasculinity damages boys and men, who are also victimized in acts of direct violence to each other. Other manifestations of hyper-masculinity through alcoholism, workaholism, and violence are effectively killing men, shortening their lifespan, and causing a “spiritual death,” leaving its male victims traumatized, disconnected, and depressed (Holloway, 2015). The psychological stress of not being able to live up to hyper-masculine definitions can lead to suicide, one of the top ten causes of death among males (Heid, 2016). For males who embrace the ideology of hyper-masculinity but cannot live up to its impossible demands, suicide might seem a grotesque proof of strength, when the suicidal male reasons that others will notice his bravery to face and execute his own death (Osterman & Brown, 2011). Another harm of hyper-masculinity comes with the distortion of the male body. The relationship between media images and body dissatisfaction among girls and women has long been a topic of concern, but media depictions of extremely muscular male bodies create similar disappointments for men and boys

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who become unhappy with their own bodies (Dryer, Farr, Hiramatsu, & Quinton, 2016). The pursuit of excessive muscularity, compulsive exercise, substance abuse, and risky diets are symptoms of muscle dysmorphia, where teasing from peers and media depictions of hyper-muscular heroes contribute to harmful behaviors among some males in the attempt to achieve unnaturally muscular and intimidating body images (Cafri, van den Berg, & Thompson, 2006). Decades of research show how media stories provide girls with an inescapable lesson: no matter how clever, creative, or courageous you are, it is only the most beautiful woman who gets to live happily ever after. Violent, hyper-masculine stories may be sending a different but equally damaging message to boys: the only winners in life are the men who both look tough and act aggressive.

Honor and Hegemonic Masculinity The hyper-masculine ideology shares features with a culture of honor, demanding retribution for any insult to a manly reputation. In a culture of honor, men and boys are extremely sensitive to interpersonal threats and insults (Brown, Osterman, & Barnes, 2009). Retaliation is a theme in school massacres, when perpetrators feel socially marginalized, bullied, teased, or romantically rejected and resort to violence to recover honor (Newman, Fox, Roth, Mehta, & Harding, 2005). Even trivial disputes can challenge reputation and social status, demanding retribution (Cohen, Nisvett, Bowdle, & Schwarz, 1996). Aggressive revenge is a common response when strength and status are questioned. In Chapter Three, the character of Marcus is a boy attempting to achieve and maintain hyper-masculinity. When his peers laugh at him, Marcus is compelled to prove his skill as a martial artist and his toughness as a man. Following the time-honored script of the American western, when men and boys feel disrespected, “the lone gunman (or gang) retaliates far beyond the initial provocation and destroys others to restore self ” (Kalish & Kimmel, 2010). A boy’s determination to prove he is a “real man” depends on his power to successfully defend his reputation against any and every possible threat. If men and boys feel stigmatized as weak for needing help or failing to achieve some goal, violence substitutes for lack of success. Mass shooters also fantasize about the spotlight and try to maximize fatalities for media attention. Unable to achieve genuine success, mass shooters believe infamy is better than obscurity. When media provide shooters with celebrity, other impressionable, potentially suicidal males are galvanized to commit “suicide by cop” in a contagion or copycat effect (Lankford & Madifs, 2017, p. 264). One of the foremost authorities on masculinity, Jackson Katz, blames male violence on a crisis in masculinity, where men have internalized definitions of manhood that damage men’s emotional lives and encourage contempt for women. Popular media are fundamental to this crisis. In the documentaries Tough Guise (Ericsson & Talreja, 1999) and Tough Guise 2 (Earp, 2013), Katz demonstrates how American media portraits of masculinity have become tougher, guns and

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muscles have become bigger, and the violent performances of male characters have become more frequent and exaggerated. All boys naturally possess the basic human qualities of love, creativity, generosity, and compassion, but a homophobic culture methodically denies these qualities to boys, telling them that to be “real men,” these emotions must be suppressed behind a mask or “tough guise.” In a similar examination, activist Tony Porter refers to hyper-masculinity as the “Man Box,” a restrictive social container that is an emotional prison for men and boys (2016). The “Man Box” can cause boys to publicly engage in aggressive behaviors they may privately find repulsive, but honor and the “Man Box” require these destructive performances. The belief that hyper-masculinity is instinctive and natural rather than culturally created is “hegemonic masculinity.” As explained in Chapter Six, hegemony is the process that makes a dominant ideology seem ordinary and instinctive, allowing the status quo to maintain a “natural” power. Hegemony can serve a dominant ideology by hiding some performances of the dominant group. In this way, discussions about race focus on people of color, debates about gender focus on women or LGBTQ populations, and conversations about violence will concentrate on victims. Unless females commit the violence, media tend to ignore the gender of perpetrators, but when we talk about violence in America, whether real or imaginary, we’re usually talking about violent masculinity (Earp, 2013). An element that made the Slender Man violence so astonishing was that girls committed the stabbings.

Media Images of Masculinity Hyper-masculinity inspires hostile responses to media stories that portray female characters as heroes. Reactions include the call to boycott Mad Max; Fury Road when it was released in 2015, because the film was “a feminist piece of propaganda posing as a guy flick” (Maza, 2015). In addition to calls for boycotts, there have been attempts to limit gender diversity as well as ethnic and racial representation in science fiction and action stories (Hurley, 2015). In video game culture, when some male gamers reacted with outrage to female intrusion into the male domain of gaming, the backlash was an online harassment campaign threatening rape and torture (Quinn, 2017). If female characters show strength, courage, and leadership, it may seem necessary for male characters to perform dangerous exaggerations of those same characteristics to mark them as masculine. The male hero must be stronger, more daring, more controlling, and more violent. Some critics complain that media culture belittles men with too many depictions of inept male characters like Homer Simpson (The Simpsons, 1989–) and Peter Griffin (Family Guy, 1999–), or show commercials where male characters appear incompetent and silly. One critic declared that persistent portrayals of men as imbeciles is a result of the human need to laugh, scorn, and make fun of someone and in our politically

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correct universe, white men are the only socially acceptable group to be the butt of the joke (Utton, 2014). Others suggest that male viewers likely take backhanded pride in the dimwitted and uncouth media presentations of skirtchasing male characters, whose goals are to watch sports on big screens, make sexist jokes, or grunt while eating steak with their fingers (Gates, 2000). These undesirable characteristics might be included in hyper-masculine portrayals simply because they aren’t considered feminine. (However, female characters also engage in rude behaviors. The movies Bad Moms (2016), Girls Trip (2017), or Bad Teacher (2011) provide examples of female characters using foul language, sexual jokes, and bad manners for laughs.) An examination of media portrayals and commercialization of masculinity outlined the evolving characteristics of men in British media. Beginning in the 1980s, middle class, better-educated men began to accept a more caring, sharing, and nurturing definition of themselves in opposition to the image of their fathers, refugees from a “hardline masculinity epitomized by paranoid macho men with stifled emotions” (Beynon, 2002, p. 100). Advertising created sensuous depictions of affluent young men in the hope of developing new markets for products. An image of masculinity associated with the urbane, aristocratic Englishness of Empire, of class, prestige, and power soon eclipsed the more tender, protective male image. This was followed by a reversal to “laddism,” images of men glorifying in atrocities and football violence. If not entirely media inventions, these depictions were media elaborations, commercializing male myths for economic benefits. Men may not docilely submit to masculine myths a dominant culture imposes, but they may not fully escape images that are reproduced everywhere, including inside their heads. Similar trends of nurturing and narcissism emerged in American media portrayals of masculinity in its marketing to the metrosexual man (Rossini, 2015). Attempts to tame and urbanize heterosexual masculinity also appeared in productions such as television’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (2003–2007; 2018–). The narcissism and attention to self-grooming of the “New Man” may have been too uncomfortably soft and manicured a vision of masculinity (McNair, 2002). The mission to civilize heterosexual men provoked a backlash in the name of tradition, God, and manhood. As some men perceived male privilege to be under attack, they began to react with anger and nostalgia for a time when heterosexual male advantage was unquestioned (Kimmel, 2013). The old “Industrial Man,” who associated exploitative jobs like coal mining with status, selfesteem, and moral authority, had not disappeared in the United States. He was still alive and vocal during the 2016 presidential election, where gun rights, the loss of manufacturing industries, LGBTQ rights, and women’s reproductive choices became hot button issues for some beleaguered men. A Trump supporter told journalists at the 2017 inauguration, “I’m a white male who owns firearms. At least for the next four years I get to keep my guns and my balls” (Pilkington, 2017).

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Even if popular media don’t mainstream one concept of masculinity to an American public, research seems to support the idea that many media portraits present a uniform depiction of male violence, contributing to the idea that hyper-masculinity is only natural. Content analysis of television and movie depictions of male characters found them to be consistently aggressive, aloof, tough, dominant, and heterosexual (Greenwood & Lippman, 2010). Content analysis of advertising found that more often than not, ads targeted at men depict a hyper-masculine ideology, showing violence and a lack of sensitivity as manly (Vokey, Tefft, & Tysiaczny, 2013). Advertising also presented danger as exciting and desirable. Media depictions of fathers tended to support stereotypical masculinity that emphasized men’s breadwinning identities and competence in the workplace over their roles as parents (Schmitz, 2016). Media depictions of boxing heroes celebrate their hard, white, working class respectability (Rhodes, 2011). Video game heroes depict male images of violence, sexuality, dominance, and emotional insensitivity (Good & Brooks, 2005). Critical analysis of male protagonists of television dramas describes celebrated anti-heroes, violent criminals as protagonists with the best television writing framed as hard-edged art (Newman, 2016; Martin, 2013). Although popular media present a range of masculinities, analysis reveals that some male television characters are idealized as heroic and admirable, while other, less action-oriented male characters are disparaged (Lotz, 2014). If there is a preference to be made between media depictions of a hyper-masculine hero or the incompetent male joke of television’s situation comedies, male spectators seem to favor depictions of the respected hero, supporting the myth of the warrior knight, where violence is used in the service of noble causes (Blazina, 2003).

Media Stories and the Violent Black Male Expectations for male violence are particularly problematic for young men of color, who must balance masculine swagger against white fears of a hypermasculine black male criminal. Research suggests that when media emphasize stories about random black-on-white assault, those stories help to create a moral panic, exaggerating white anxieties and normalizing beliefs about white people as victims of black violence (King, 2015). For black men and boys, the privilege of being male and performances of male arrogance must be weighed against real dangers of harassment from jittery police, who may be too accustomed to seeing men of color overrepresented as perpetrators of crime in entertainment media or seeing too many news reports attributing criminal violence to black men (Hurley, Jensen, Weaver, & Dixon, 2015; Dixon, 2006). Social media coverage of violence against police can additionally prime some police for retaliatory violence against minorities (Bejan, Hickman, Parkin, & Pozo, 2018). Such reporting might summon the interpersonal disgust that excites violence in some audiences. Posthumous media reporting describing the black victims of police violence

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as thugs and criminals might make their deaths seem justified (Dukes, 2017). Research on media coverage of celebrity intimate partner violence shows that reporting was likely to forgive white men for domestic and dating violence, but framed black male violence as instinctive racial characteristics threatening white civility. Media reporting would justify a white man’s violence as the escalation of mutual conflict, minimizing or excusing the seriousness of domestic violence because of mitigating factors like alcohol. In contrast, reports on the gender violence of black men often invoked imagery of black men as “characteristically aggressive and predisposed to criminal behavior” (Pepin, 2016, p. 15).

Gender and Genre Preferences The very selection of violent media might be a performance of hyper-masculinity. Through excessive viewings of The Evil Dead movie, the young men from the narrative in Chapter Seven were showing their bravery to the young woman who accompanied them. More importantly, each young man was showing his young male companions and other men in the audience that he was not emotionally traumatized by the gory mayhem of the classic horror film. Becoming a horror fan indicates that the spectator is tough, emotionally impervious to on-screen violence no matter how gruesome. In the style of uses and gratifications research, studies of men’s preferences show that men tend to choose violent media and pay closer attention to depictions of male violence (Krcmar & Greene, 2005). Men seem to have an overall preference for violent movies (Bushman, 1995) and depictions of violence and domination appeal to them (Rifton, Royne, & Carlson, 2014). Another study revealed that movie preferences conform to gender stereotypes: men preferred action movies and women preferred romances (Wühr, Lange, & Schwarz, 2017). In what might be a media cultivation effect, another survey of men’s media use discovered that men who consumed more media had stronger approval of the hyper-masculine ideology and risk-taking behaviors (Giaccardi, Ward, Seabrook, Manago, & Lippman, 2017). Media preferences have additionally been linked to men’s beliefs that danger is exhilarating and violence is manly (Scharrer, 2005). Other research suggests that media stories contribute to men’s beliefs about women and gender relations, manhood, and personal performances of masculinity (Giaccardi et al., 2016). In examinations of advertising and violence, researchers found that violence and dominance were appealing to men (Rifton et al., 2014). Men and boys are also more likely to play violent video games. An investigation of gender and video game play describes boys’ gaming as a place for the production of masculinity with killing, winning, and bragging, where the boundaries of masculinity must be consistently policed to confirm that femininity has not violated its perimeters. In contrast, girls’ strategy for video gaming is just to “remember not to die” (Walkerdine, 2007, p. 47). Research examining men’s online behavior discovered that some men judge it appropriate to express sexism, racism, and aggression in social media

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if these statements are reframed as “just a joke” (Drakett, Rickett, Day, & Milnes, 2018). People who are offended by sexist and racist joking might be branded with urban slang as “snowflakes,” pathetic individuals too sensitive for the harsh realities of the “legitimate” hyper-masculine world. For adolescent males, viewing violent contact sports was also linked to actual participation in risky behaviors, but this media influence did not hold true for women’s sports viewing (Krcmar & Greene, 2000).

Men’s Movie Gazing One of the founding psychoanalytic theories about film viewership, Laura Mulvey’s Gaze Theory, tells us that classic Hollywood cinema gratifies the heterosexual male spectator by offering him two pleasures: identification with an active male hero and gazing voyeuristically at female characters (1975). According to this theoretical story, the male spectator recognizes the male protagonist as his more perfect self, reflected in the “magic mirror” of the movie screen. Classic Hollywood films show an idealized man in action, a hero who controls events in the story, moving with purpose, determination, and violence. Watching a movie gives the male spectator a feeling of omnipotence, helping him to escape time, place, and himself as he identifies with the daring protagonist and becomes immersed in adventure. The appearance of a female character interrupts the action for erotic moments, allowing both the male protagonist and the male spectator to stare at the display of the woman as an object of sexual desire. Mulvey believes that the female character, the “bearer of the bleeding wound,” creates a castration anxiety for male spectators (1975, p. 7). The feminine character is a mystery, a potential disruption, and a threat to the patriarchal unconscious only violent repression can contain (Doane, 1991). Classic Hollywood cinema helps male spectators escape distress by allowing them to examine and demystify the female character. Afterwards, the male protagonist can degrade, punish, or perhaps heroically save her. Mulvey believes this solution to castration anxiety has sadistic qualities. “This sadistic side fits in well with narrative. Sadism demands a story, depends on making something happen, forcing a change in another person, a battle of will and strength, victory/defeat, all occurring in a linear time with a beginning and an end” (p. 14). Another possibility for escaping castration anxiety is to turn the female character into a fetish object, stylizing, fragmenting, and visually exaggerating the female body until she becomes a beautiful, reassuring artifact the male gaze can control. Though originally about the cinematic experience, other scholars have applied gaze theory to all forms of visual storytelling. Gaze Theory suggests that women watching these classic films had the unhappy choice of two masochistic spectator positions: they either narcissistically identified with the vapid, inauthentic, troublesome female character, who was the object of the male gaze, or they suffered “masculinization” by identifying with the

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male hero (Doane, 1982). Some critics rejected these choices, explaining that female spectators could use selective perception to challenge the media stories they watched. African-American feminist author, bell hooks, noticed that black women watching white mainstream movies learned to mentally argue with the screen in what she refers to as the “oppositional gaze,” where black female spectators were able to critically assess how films presented white women as objects of the male gaze and chose not to identify with those characters (2003, p. 96). Subsequent writings have also been critical of gaze theory, noting that the contemporary camera has been emancipated from a strictly male gaze. Even during the age of classic Hollywood cinema, gaze theory could not predict all spectator experiences. The Wizard of Oz (1939) is one of several classic films that do not offer the twin pleasures of heterosexual male spectatorship: identification with a male protagonist or the erotic posing of a female character. More contemporary media stories have helped to fuel this criticism with an increase of differently gendered protagonists, as growing diversity among media producers brings alternate stories to production. Widespread attention to Gaze Theory shows it resonates with scholars, even if it’s less predictive of spectator experience. The theory may still be useful if male spectatorship continues to dominate genres where powerful male protagonists move through a film’s adventure with deadly force, pausing only for sexual dalliance. Uses and gratifications research seems to indicate that a controlling male gaze, allowing identification with an aggressive male hero or violent male avatar, is a type of media experience male spectators may still prefer (Weaver, 2011).

Women Watching Media Violence When women viewed media stories that celebrated male violence, reaction was mixed (Dobash, Schlesinger, Dobash, & Weaver, 1998). For women without direct experience of violence in their lives, these stories were abstract make-believe. For others, depictions of violence triggered memories of their own experiences as victims. For all female viewers, watching media stories that glorified male violence contributed to a general fear about men and their own vulnerability to rape. Rape has become such a trope,” one woman complained to me over coffee. I don’t want to see another rape on TV. And a lot of times it’s not even important to the story. In a war scene you’ll glimpse a soldier dragging a woman off the screen by her hair and you know what’s implied. I refuse to watch Game of Thrones (2011–). But even as a kid watching Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood (1991) there is a rape scene with all this dialogue that was supposed to be funny, but the scene was just disrespectful and unnecessary. No one called it an attempted rape scene, but that’s what it was. I don’t see how anyone could enjoy watching it. (Anonymous. Personal interview. January 18, 2018)

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Rape culture is a set of values, beliefs, social codes, laws, and behaviors that justify male aggression and sexual violence. It is situated in the hegemonic belief that sexual violence is a natural, inescapable fact of life (Posadas, 2017). The Senate confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court provided an example of this thinking. When senators discovered there were allegations that the nominee sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl in high school, a CNN panel questioned the importance of this allegation. One panelist asked, “What boy hasn’t done this in high school? Please, I would like to know” (Sinclair, 2018). The panelist implied that violence, sexual aggression, and alcoholic binges are natural behaviors for boys. The expectations were that a grown man who assumes a position of power has learned to suppress those “normal” aggressive behaviors. The reaction from some men was to declare that sexual assault and alcoholic binges are not natural or expected behaviors for high-school boys or the honorable foundation for the men those boys want to become. Like other acts of violence, rape has an imposing history in film and television storytelling (Projansky, 2001). An examination of online fan responses to sexual violence in Game of Thrones (GoT) and concerns about rape culture in entertainment reveals how the internet has “become a site for struggle over sexual violence, both in reproducing rape culture and in resisting it” (Ferreday, 2015, p. 22). GoT attracted considerable attention as a complex fantasy populated with morally ambivalent characters in a world where rape and violence are commonplace. Screen adaption of the George RR Martin novel series, A Song of Ice and Fire, (1991–), offered a few scenes of female empowerment that brought balance for some female fans. Fan reactions opened debate online, making feminist critique more visible but also allowing aggressive backlash and circulation of rape myths.

Women’s Weepies and Bad Boys Examining men’s reactions to romantic films in the context of dating discovered that some male subjects hesitantly admitted liking romantic scenes in movies but believed most men would not (Harris et al., 2004). Public distain for romances accompanies male preference for violent media, ridiculing “women’s genres” as silly, pathetic, and artistically inferior. This shared contempt for the “chick flick” or “women’s weepies” may be due to the power that female characters can have over male characters in these stories, particularly in romances (Mahoney, 2018). Some men may simply avoid genres that indulge emotions hyper-masculinity teaches them to suppress. In her classic study of women’s interest in romantic literature, Janice Radway discovered that women’s preferences for romance included a hidden rebellion against patriarchy (1991). In the typical plot of a romance, the female protagonist undermines masculine emotional detachment when the male character reluctantly comes to admire the protagonist for her wit, creativity, courage, and (of course)

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her beauty. The ultimate power for female characters is triumph over the hard male heart. The female fans of romance preferred a powerful male hero who was confident, intelligent, wealthy, and handsome, a “real man” but one with a capacity for tenderness the heroine can expose. The female protagonist helps the male character experience love, reconnecting to emotions that cultural definitions of masculinity deny him. The male character’s emotional vulnerability in the romance may be upsetting for some men, who would prefer male heroes to maintain steely control. Women’s expectations about pluckily revealing male tenderness in real-life relationships are likely to fail if their men resent them for chipping away at a carefully maintained rough exterior to expose emotional weaknesses. In addition to the dangerous myth that women should be the saviors of men’s emotional lives, the romance genre may condition women to accept patriarchy as unavoidable. Women have some responsibility for helping reinforce hyper-masculinity when they support the notion that “real women” want “a real man.” When women view the “bad boy” of popular media as sexy and confess attractions to bad boys in real life, men may think the armor of hyper-masculinity is not only natural but necessary. In informal discussions with former female students about their attractions to bad boys, one woman told me that, “when one of those cute but dangerous types notices you, and all your friends see you get his attention, well he can make you feel really special” (Anonymous, personal communication, April 11, 2018). Others indicated that dating a “bad boy” was exciting and a form of rebellion because parents wouldn’t approve. However, several women argued that crazy, reckless behavior in the movies was one thing, but a date with a guy who acts like a “savage” or a “dangerous fool” is generally not a good time. More than one claimed they wouldn’t consider a bad boy for a serious relationship unless they thought he might be rehabilitated. On the extreme end of the spectrum, “murder groupies” or hybristophiliacs are sexually attracted to violent criminals (Sarteschi, 2016). Some teenage girls and older women sent fan mail to the young man arrested for the mass murder of the 17 people killed in the Parkland, Florida high-school shooting in 2018. The fan mail included scantily clad photos, love letters, and money sent to his prison commissary account (Christensen & Wallman, 2018). Media contribute to this attraction when they make celebrities of convicted criminals. For some prison groupies, the allure is a desire to be associated with criminal notoriety and through an illicit romance share his scandalous fame. Other attractions include the thrill of romance with someone locked away so there is less threat of danger or sexual intimacy and, unless he has something romantic going on inside the prison, less potential for him to cheat on their relationship. Another attraction for some women is this idea of becoming an emotional superhero and saving the damaged boy beneath the savagely twisted man.

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Incels and Men’s Internet Radicalization In 2014, a college student went on a killing spree as a reaction to rejections from women who selected other men for their sexual attention. In a video posted to YouTube, the shooter felt he had been “forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection, and unfulfilled desire,” because girls gave themselves to other men but “never to me.” His expectations were that college should be a time of “sex and fun and pleasure” but he had to unfairly “rot in loneliness” (Rodger, 2014). He called himself an “incel,” or involuntary celibate, a man who considered himself a “supreme gentleman,” though women spurned him. He believed his only recourse was to take revenge as a “true alpha male.” Incels are online factions of frustrated men who encourage each other’s rage in a radicalized hate subculture. Similar to “menninist,” or male anti-feminist activists, incels choose radical violence because they aren’t having the sex that entertainment media suggest is their prerogative. Popular media stories often show couples in eager, impromptu intercourse that happily litters the screen with abandoned clothing, but this is not happening in their lived experience. If incels wanted easy sexual access, they might try to legalize prostitution. Instead they express extreme disgust at the idea of “whores” (Tolentino, 2018). Incels consider seduction as a weapon for sexual conquest, yet seduction can be a pistol loaded with blanks when seduction advice shared online fails and incels resort to violent fantasies and raging self-pity. In a twisted, fringe form of hyper-masculinity, groups of incels use online message boards and social media to spread a misogynistic doctrine calling for violence against “normies” (Nagle, 2017). The 2018 incident involving a man in Toronto who used a rented van to kill pedestrians was a call to “incel rebellion” (Williams, 2018). Though such a rebellion would not deliver the sexual gratification incels believe they are owed, perverse logic recommends violence to bring the respect that hyper-masculinity demands. There are no numbers on the incel population, but some believe it is a substantial movement (Wendling, 2018). Incels are thought to have significant overlap with other hate groups in the darker regions of the internet, where misogynistic attitudes harden and young men embrace violence as an ideology (Neiwert, 2018). Rejected by women and society, incels gather in an internet Neverland, where they fully express their anger and ruthlessly troll and mock “normies.”

Violence and Queer Theory Symbolic acts of violent hyper-masculinity might also be a response to the legitimacy of homosexual relationships and marriage following the Supreme Court Ruling in 2015, which guaranteed the legal right to same sex marriage. A greater visibility of queer culture in metropolitan areas as well as in popular media preceded these rights, mainstreaming homosexuality in popular films and television shows (Richardson & Wearing, 2014). The heteronormative story, based

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on a view that endorses heterosexuality as the normal or preferred sexual orientation, remains the dominant story, with heterosexual male bullying and violence maintaining these cultural expectations. Just as hyper-masculinity needs relentless support and resistance from intrusions of the feminine, Queer Theory describes heterosexuality as an unstable construct in need of constant affirmation and protection from the “disease” of gender fluidity. Historically, the term “queer” has been narrowly associated with gays and lesbians, but the term has since been cut loose from limitations to follow “wherever political urgency calls” (Amin, 2016, p. 176). Many use “queer” as an umbrella term for a full range of gender expressions not included in the heterosexual binary. Judith Butler describes gender as a cultural myth we tell and perform for each other about what gender means (1990). Butler’s thinking about gender performativity seems similar to ideas of dramatism and symbolic interaction; gender has cultural meaning when it is acted out or “performed” according to social norms. Research examining Queer Theory can share strategies with cultural studies, investigating how media stories support systems of power, and critical theory, investigating media stories for the impact of dominant ideologies on decisions about what is considered normal. In analyzing the violent media story, research would ask how the story’s portrayal of gender violence suppresses human potential and individual freedoms. This includes asking how media depictions of hyper-masculine violence intrude on the safety and potential of queer populations. An examination of gender, homophobia, and violence in popular media stories about school shootings concludes that they show how a desperate pursuit of “an unattainable, proper masculinity can lead some boys to violence and self-destruction” (Evans, 2016, p. 19). Historically, media visibility has not been healthy or supportive for queer populations. Investigating a century of film depictions of queer characters, Vito Russo found three predominant representations (Russo, 1981). Queer characters were: • • •

jokes for heterosexual amusement, wretched oddities to be pitied, monsters deserving of a hero’s violence.

Even if the hero did not murder them, queer characters generally died at the end of the movie, sometimes by their own hand, restoring the film world to a “normal” gender binary. The documentary based on the book offers similar conclusions, while noting a few positive examples in which queer characters do survive (Epstein & Friedman, 1995). The pain of not seeing gender fluidity accurately reflected in media culture or acknowledged in social life has slowly begun to give way to more diversity in popular media portrayals. Though contemporary depictions of queer characters show more sensitive and varied portrayals, the savage policing of gender roles “and identifying non-traditional acts of gender with the finger pointing taunt of queer” still continues (Richardson & Wearing, 2014, p. 57). Heteronormativity remains “a site of unrelenting, harsh, unforgiving, and

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continuous violence for LGBTQ individuals. Such violence is everywhere: in the individual psyche and in the collective consciousness, in individual perceptions and experiences, and in the social system and institutions” (Yep, 2003, p. 25). More visible, mainstream media questioning about gender identity and sexual orientation may enflame a backlash, violently defending the borders of hypermasculine heterosexuality, ensuring that nothing queer slips across.

The Lessons of Superheroes Not everyone believes that media are to blame for violent male behavior. One 64-year-old listener to Joshua Johnson’s podcast called the show to mention the importance of comic books and superheroes to the concept of manhood. The caller believed comic books taught him and other men that to be a hero, a man needed integrity and high ideals in addition to physical power (Johnson, 2018). There is some support for the caller’s observation about presentation of superheroes in comic books as well as their reproductions in popular film and television. Superhero comics offer a range of portrayals of a masculine ideal (Sandifer, 2008). Captain America embodies a mythic form of masculinity, protecting an integral American purity from evil outsiders and applying force with caution for selfdefense or to protect others (Stevens, 2015). Underneath his costume, Spiderman is really the emotionally vulnerable Peter Parker, who embraces the special burden of the male hero as taught by his Uncle Ben: “With great power comes great responsibility” (Amazing Fantasy #15, August 1962). This lesson is repeated in a film version 40 years later, when Uncle Ben also tells Peter that just because you are capable of beating up an enemy, “doesn’t give you the right to” (Spider-Man, 2002). As portrayed by Toby Maguire, Peter Parker exhibits a range of emotions that are less hyper-masculine: crying openly when his Uncle Ben dies, declaring his love for M.J., showing devoted friendship for Harry, and revealing sensitive care and concern for his Aunt May. The character of Superman is another example. Intelligent, kind, handsome, a protector of truth and justice, Superman hides without embarrassment under the guise of a reporter, Clark Kent, a mild and respectful man in glasses and an ordinary business suit. Some fans argue that Kent is Superman’s true self. His human parents raised him from infancy, imparting in him the values that guide him in the fight for justice. Clark Kent’s work as a reporter supports his duties as Superman: to honor truth, ask hard questions, and use honest reporting in a crusade for the common good. In 2012, Clark Kent became disillusioned with journalism and quit his job with the Daily Planet (Superman #13, 2012, October 23). Kent declares the future of journalism is online, where he will take the nonviolent mission to restore journalism, repairing the damage entertainment poses to a willfully uninformed electorate. Film adaptations of the superheroes Thor (Thor, 2011), Hercules (Hercules 1997, 2014), and Black Panther (Black Panther, 2018) show the characters using violence to maintain their royal power and protect their communities, but they also exhibit qualities of consideration and love, even for those characters who

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have betrayed them. Though blockbuster superhero films generally present traditional gender stereotypes (Behm-Morawitz & Pennell, 2013), the distinctions superheroes make between good and evil may be morally comforting for audiences (Pizarro & Baumeister, 2013). One lesson emphasized in the movie Black Panther is that when men abandon their responsibilities to boys, they create the risk of angry, vengeful adults returning to violently usurp power and the likelihood those angry men won’t respect traditions that ignored them. When Wakanda’s King T’Chaka discovers that his traitorous brother has been working with a black-market arms dealer on a plot for war and worldwide domination, the king assassinates him. King T’Chaka then abandons his young nephew in Oakland, California, where Eric grows up a wounded soul, quickly radicalized to violence. Eric assumes a hyper-masculine persona, becomes a black ops soldier, and takes the name “Killmonger.” His heart is so hard he even murders his own girlfriend without showing the slightest remorse or emotion. He has no love for his royal cousin, the reigning King T’Challa. Eric has grown up believing that the way to repair a history of oppression is with brutal retaliation, inflicting violence to establish his vision of tyrannical world domination.

Falling in Love and Icing the Female Superheroes are rarely the perpetrators of gender violence but gender violence frequently occurs in comic books. The refrigerator syndrome is the tendency for female characters in comics to suffer and die horrible deaths in order to motivate male superheroes to valor (Simone, 1999). The label “refrigerator syndrome” or “women in refrigerators” comes from an incident in the Green Lantern Comics, when the hero discovers his girlfriend has been murdered and her body packed into a refrigerator (Green Lantern Vol 3 #54, 1994). Examples of the syndrome include the prevalence with which female superheroes are raped, robbed of their superpowers, and ultimately killed. As a media trope, the syndrome includes any genre where it would be inconvenient to tie the hero down to a love interest or have him compete with a strong female character. In films such as American Assassin (2017), John Wick (2014), Alex Cross (2012), The Equalizer (2014), Oblivion (2013), Wanted (2008), Daredevil (2003), Gladiator (2000), American Psycho (2000), Braveheart (1995), Conan the Barbarian (1982), and in many of the James Bond films, female characters are raped, killed, or abandoned once they have served their purpose to the male adventure. The male hero’s “natural” preference for casual sex over emotional intimacy may be reframed as heroic self-sacrifice because evil can always hold love hostage. A real hero cannot risk romantic commitment. Look at what happened to Green Lantern. Not all action stories use refrigerators. Female fans of the first Spiderman film trilogy (2002, 2004, 2007) were happy that neither Gwen Stacy nor M.J. was killed in the series, though Gwen Stacy does die in the comics and in a later Spiderman film, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014). Fans of the earlier trilogy

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observed that it was as much a romance as an action series (Edwards, 2012). While the heroine in a traditional romance helps the male character rediscover his emotional self, Peter Parker didn’t need that kind of rescue. Parker was already in touch with a range of feelings, which he didn’t seem to suppress. It was M.J. who needed to learn how to love Peter Parker, the actual man, rather than the masculine ideal or “god” represented in the masked power of Spiderman. Through the unusual endurance of their relationship, Peter Parker and M.J. demonstrate the difference between the exhilaration of falling in love and the hard work of loving. In lived experience, falling in love is the appearance of a media ideal or a divine world, where the beloved hides behind a mask of perfection. Falling in love substitutes the ordinary individual for an illusion (Johnson, 1977). People falling in love look through each other rather than at each other. Falling in love is divine delirium that will not last. In lived experience, the female eventually unmasks her lover, damaging the illusion of superhero perfection and exposing the flawed man so he can see a reflection of his own defective self in her disappointment. It is equally possible for a man to see the flawed person in his lover, destroying the thrill of divine mystery and illusions of an airbrushed media goddess the feminine masquerade cannot hope to maintain. The same is true for relationships across the gender spectrum. When imperfect humanity emerges, glorious fascination quickly fades. In contrast, the work of loving is the act of valuing another person’s uniqueness in an ordinary world. The work of loving sees the humanity in the beloved and still chooses that reality over an illusion. Humanity is flawed. Loving it takes considerable patience, commitment, and work. When the painful deception of falling in love is exposed and cannot be resigned to the hard work of loving, an equally painful breakup follows. In lived experience, stalking and violence sometimes accompanies the split. News accounts of the Maryland high-school shooting suggested that this particular shooting wasn’t a random act of angry symbolic violence, but the shooter’s reaction to the breakup with a female victim (Barakat & White, 2018). Too many disappointed men and boys create their own symbolic refrigerators for wives and girlfriends. In a media story, when the hero’s love interest is murdered, the protagonist is spared the commitment and hard work of loving. He is freed to pursue vengeance and the exhilaration of falling in love again. The short-lived quality of sexual enchantment is one of the reasons why the refrigerator syndrome appears in plots of so many action films. Likewise, credits will generally begin to roll on media romances before the characters truly begin the hard work of loving, leaving spectators to imagine some vague “happily ever after.”

“Brooke” In the following narrative, the potential for a relationship never gets beyond that first glimpse of a media goddess. The intrusion of violence prevents the protagonist from an opportunity to unmask the goddess, appreciate the woman, and choose humanity over a media ideal.

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Discussion: The Murder of a Transgender Woman This story was a fleeting incident in the storyteller’s life, a heterosexual man, Joel, who briefly defied transphobia and bigotry to dance openly with a transgender woman of color. It may have been a dangerous and thrilling experience for Joel to take such a social risk in a public setting. He was clearly fascinated with Brooke’s charm and beauty but perhaps also captivated by her mysterious gender fluidity. In spite of his fascination, Joel didn’t have the courage to proceed, though he did return to the bar hoping to see Brooke, only to learn he was too late. Since the story ends the way it does, we never learn if Joel’s infatuation with Brooke could have resulted in them falling in love or if such a relationship could have survived the hard work of loving under the added stress of dealing with a transphobic community. The film Soldier’s Girl (2003) dramatizes the hazards of such a relationship within the hyper-masculine community of a military base. Inspired by the story of Barry Winchell, an American soldier in the airborne infantry, and his romance with Calpernia Addams, a transgender entertainer, the film shows the dangers in relationships others perceive as illicit or threatening. For a trans man, the real-life story of Brandon Teena, which inspired the film Boys Don’t Cry (1999), also ends in violence. The fictional story in the comedy film Transamerica (2005) and the gender fluidity in the cartoon series Steven Universe (2013–) offer hope that not all queer stories will involve violence or murder. Some can be meaningful journeys toward family, acceptance, and respect. It is unknown if Brooke’s murder was a case of violent, hyper-masculine policing, though Joel’s coworker hints that it probably was. I heard the narrative that inspired this story more than ten years ago, before the Human Rights Campaign began investigating cases and documenting transgender homicides in 2013. One of the historic issues for documenting cases is that media outlets and police departments don’t always provide accurate accounts of the person’s gender and may not perceive gender nonconforming people as legitimate victims (Quinlan, 2017). Many of these cases go unsolved. A further complication for stories like Brooke’s is that violence against black women is often ignored in media coverage of sexual violence and murder (Neely, 2015). Though Black Lives Matter may have brought problems of anti-black violence into the national conversation, the focus has been on heteronormative or cisgender black men (Williams, 2016).

Sociobiology and Men’s Violence Sociobiology predicts that men cannot help their violence or their preference for violent entertainment; it is the atavistic residue of evolutionary survival and reproductive selection. “Boys will be boys.” Some research seems to support the idea that male aggression is embedded in male anatomy and psychologically instinctive. Higher levels of testosterone were found among prisoners who committed the most violent crimes (Kreuz & Rose, 1972). However, testosterone

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may be an accomplice rather than a cause of violence and cultural performance of masculinity can’t be reduced to any single biological trait (Konner, 1982). Male vulnerability to the MAOA-L gene, the “violence gene” or “warrior gene,” does put some men at risk. Because the MAOA gene is located on the X chromosome, females have two versions. If the mutant MAOA-L occurs on one chromosome, the other is likely to be normal. Without a backup X chromosome, males are susceptible to the violence gene and impulsive aggression. Examining the MAOA-L gene for its relevance to legal cases, a review of the research noticed consistent findings connecting the enzyme regulating impulse control with antisocial behavior (Gonzalez-Tapia & Obsuth, 2015). After examining the research, the authors conclude that an individual with the “violence gene,” who is severely mistreated in childhood, is at risk for abnormal impulsivity and likely to respond aggressively to a triggering event. Comparing it to a form of insanity, researchers believe this genetic inheritance combined with abuse is so predictive of violent behavior that it has potential to be a legal defense in a criminal case. Not all men will inherit this defective gene nor do all those who do inherit the gene get mistreated as children or resort to violence in their adult lives. James Fallon, whose brain scans looked suspiciously like those of murderers, also found that he possessed the MAOA-L gene, yet he generally managed to be civil. Other research has looked to our more primitive cousins for evidence that males are biologically programmed for aggression. The research discovered that violence and sexual force occurs in orangutan, chimp, and gorilla populations. However, bonobos, who are also primate cousins to Homo sapiens, live in peaceful communities with sexual equality (Muller & Wrangham, 2009). Another examination of the primate research noted that the crude picture of rape and combat as the “sole path to evolutionary success is wrong” (Sapolsky, 2006, p. 109). Gibbons and marmoset couples mate for life and males help substantially with the care of infants. Observations of a troop of savanna baboons, the “Forest Troop,” showed that even aggressive baboons could develop a society of nurturing tranquility that was not genetically inherited. Choosing to believe that male aggression and violence is natural, inevitable, or divinely ordained surrenders to the hyper-masculine media distortion, ignoring the diversity among our primate cousins, the development of humanity, and the self-determination of individual men (Brownmiller, 1975). Human history has been a long movement away from a visceral animal existence. Orangutans do not write poetry, comic books, or screenplays.

The Patriarchal Explanation Contributors to the book Gender Violence present arguments countering the notion that patriarchy and male violence are the inevitable, biologically-driven purpose for gender relations (O’Toole, Schiffman, & Edwards, 2007). Authors discuss anthropological evidence supporting a social rather than a biological theory of gender, showing that some cultures have more than two gender categories. Male

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dominance is more likely the outcome of an early division of labor developed to support infant survival and needed centuries before patriarchy inadvertently emerged as an established system. However, patriarchy is no more “natural” than other human creations, such as skyscrapers, monarchies, Santa Claus, or hypermasculinity. A king’s authority arises from his subjects’ shared belief that a divine power ordained the king to rule. A king maintains power until an outside invasion or internal rebellion overturns the king’s authority or the system modifies to keep the monarchy as a national symbol, while shifting governing power to other leadership. Patriarchy is not divinely ordained but is instead an arrangement that continues because people support it. When the contributors to Gender Violence specifically examine the role of media, they express concern that media stories help convince audiences that violent behavior is routine and expected of men. Media mainstreaming of gender violence may not cause rape and murder but could “erode sensibilities that would deter sexual coercion” (Schur, 2007, p.  95). The book presents the hope that transforming gender relations could end gender violence. The media role in these transformations is to create “new heroes and new myths for our boys” (Miedzain, 2007, p. 429).

Solutions for the “Man Box” Solutions to the problems of hyper-masculinity and male violence are not simple. Gender representation might be included in the visual literacy or media education solution for media violence. Taking a cue from the warning in Black Panther, boys should not be abandoned to negotiate a culture of hyper-masculinity on their own. Many boys manage to do this successfully, but the risk is that others, like the fictional villain Killmonger, could be radicalized to the violence of a distorted hyper-masculine ideology. Media and gender literacy can’t be confined to schools with the expectation that overworked and underfunded public school systems will solve the problem. Athletes, business leaders, politicians, media personalities, and other adults can contribute by supporting public education efforts and being proactive models (Katz, 2006). Basketball player LeBron James is a dynamic model of masculinity not only because of his athletic prowess and celebrity success, but for his obvious care for his community and his eagerness to partner with public education to support atrisk children and their families (Bieler, 2017). Men like James help make compassion and generosity seem cool. Parents can also find ways to counter media stories that reward violent heroes. This requires knowledge of the stories children pursue and willingness to get involved. Vulnerable young boys might be shielded from an overabundance of violent and hyper-masculine media stories. Boys with emotional and behavioral difficulties related to the “psycho gene” might be rewarded when they reject violence for more positive and creative activities (Hunter, 2010). By exposing the worst elements of patriarchy, media stories can also help to dismantle the “Man Box.” One example of the intentional use of internet and

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social media to publicize the harms of patriarchy is the social media campaign founded by Tarana Burke in 2006. The original intent of the #MeToo movement was to educate the public about sexual assaults women of color suffer under a patriarchal system (Rowley, 2018). By 2017, the movement spread to include all women, traditional mainstream media, multiple internet platforms, and 85 different countries to reveal the ubiquity of sexual abuse and violence. As the movement uncovered more cases of sexual assault, not all victims were women (Kingkade, 2018). Men suffered just as violently under patriarchy, but hyper-masculinity made some men reluctant to admit their victimization. The conversation about sexual violence in queer populations also lacks visibility (Segalov, 2018). Once it became widespread, there was optimism that #MeToo might create a mass reckoning, changing an international culture of violence. Others noted that in spite of progress, some famous men exposed for their violence had not faced real consequences (Filipovic, 2018). Though #MeToo seemed to have momentum, critics thought the violent elements of patriarchy are too ingrained to be so easily dismantled. There was concern about backlash if powerful men used their power to suppress the movement in destructive ways. There was additional worry that some innocent men’s reputations might take a hit in the undoing of patriarchy (Wilhelm, 2017). Even some women denounced #MeToo as a threat to sexual freedom and the excitement of seduction. These women were concerned that a legitimate campaign against sexual violence might be subverted into persecution of erotic flirtation and the men they loved (North, 2018). More advantaged women who have not experienced sexual violence may feel the need to defend romantic notions about aggressive seduction. The concept of intersectionality reminds us that people who share a gender category may not share the same life experiences. Forms of gender violence will be experienced differently by people from different racial, ethnic, religious, economic, or disability categories (hooks, 2015). Two-valued evaluations often fail to recognize the many channels of oppression and privilege. #MeToo may change sexual harassment policies to make a safer work environment in the privileged U.S. Senate but have less impact on conditions for low wageworkers in other industries. Media producers willing to direct their creativity toward telling meaningful stories where admirable masculinity defies the “Man Box” can help change the gender narrative. It’s possible for media stories to show the depth and breadth of masculinity, including stories that respect a boy’s heroic yearnings, value his needs for excitement, and celebrate rather than suppress his emotions. The difficult job for male spectators is to recognize the harmful impact that hypermasculinity can have, to see how it constricts possibilities and damages happiness. In order to remain self-determined individuals free from the “Man Box,” men will need to resist the intrusion of glorified media violence on their personal definitions of masculinity.

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Architects of the General Aggression Model were wise to consider the multiple and interlocked causes of human aggression. Violent behavior is fairly predictable when we combine being male with the violence gene, bad parenting, bullying, deprivation, exposure to violent media, and a pervasive ideology of hypermasculinity. However, simply removing violent media from the equation may not prevent social violence with all the other factors in place. Violent media stories do contribute to the ideology of hyper-masculinity but are not its only architects. Finally, preferences for violent media among men and boys aren’t necessarily predictive of vicious behaviors in life. While it is true that men perpetrate most violent crimes, most men are not criminals. Violence is not a man’s natural destiny.

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9 TERRORISM, WAR, AND MEDIA SYSTEMS

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Discussion: “The Bomb” The story behind “The Bomb” happened in 1998, after I had left The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). My colleague, Professor Suzanne Lindsey, remembers the constant disruptive protests at the New Woman, All Women Health Care Clinic, which were visible from the UAB building where we taught classes. “Even my conservative, pro-life students would eventually get disgusted and yell at the protesters to get a job” (Lindsey, Suzanne. Personal communication. July 7, 2018). This was a period of intense domestic terrorism aimed at women’s health providers, with bombings, death threats, sniper attacks, arson, kidnapping, and murder. One employee of a women’s clinic had her home vandalized and her cat beheaded (Clendinen, 1985). Another professor who was working at UAB in 1998 volunteered as an escort for women needing to use clinic services. He described the scene as hostile and embarrassing. “Women didn’t just go for abortions,” he observed, “the clinic offered a range of services. My job as an escort was to help patients get safely from their car, navigating through the maze of angry protesters to the front door of the clinic” (Richard Vogel, telephone interview, July 7, 2018). The perpetrator of the Birmingham bombings, Eric Robert Rudolph, was a United States citizen who committed multiple bombings, including one at the 1996 Olympics. He was finally identified in Birmingham, when a student at UAB, Jermaine Jerome Hughes, heard the bomb and looked out of the ground floor window of a dormitory laundry room. Hughes noticed Rudolph’s peculiar behavior, followed the suspicious man, and recorded his license number (Reeves, 2005; Martinez, 2012). When radio news reported that Rudolph had been identified, he escaped to the North Carolina mountains. Rudolph remained hiding there, relying on survivalist skills for five years until his capture (Conklin, 2016). When members of my family gathered at the Nantahala National Forest for camping and rafting, campfire stories included nervous jokes about the real, bomb-building boogeyman possibly hiding in the woods nearby. Readers might sympathize with the woman in the graphic story who would choose to end her pregnancy rather than bring a child into the world to live a short painful life only to die after medical care had bankrupted the family. For staunch anti-abortion activists, the conflict is an inability to see the decision to terminate a pregnancy as a difficult personal solution within the context of a specific woman’s life and her individual issues (Lyons & Lyons, 2005). It is a failure to trust women as capable moral agents, able to recognize when the consequences of bringing a pregnancy to term can be more harmful to individuals, families, and society than the repercussions of abortion (Todd, 2018). Rudolph could not see abortion as a moral decision for a woman without the physical, emotional, or economic abilities to bring a pregnancy to term. For Rudolph the choice was a simple two-valued evaluation between his definition of right and wrong (Pence, 2015).

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By 1998, Birmingham had already achieved the derogatory nickname “Bombingham,” because it was the unfortunate site of a series of bombings following the federal court order in 1963 to integrate Alabama’s public schools. The third explosion in 1963 happened during Sunday services at the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls and injuring fourteen. The church was a respected cornerstone of the African-American community in Birmingham. It was a shock to see the church so viciously attacked. Members of the Ku Klux Klan were charged with the crimes but FBI director J. Edgar Hoover stopped the investigation (King, 2001). It would be decades before the case was closed and all suspects arrested, tried, and imprisoned. Few people described the 1963 case as one of domestic terrorism, though both the Rudolph bombings and the KKK bombings fit that description.

Symbolic Violence The term “terrorism” is challenging because it has become exceedingly politicized, used inconsistently, and like the word “violence” is highly abstract (Schmid, 2011). A terrorist’s actions are a form of symbolic violence; the immediate physical harm the terrorist produces is not the ultimate goal he seeks. A terrorist kills people whose life or death may be a matter of complete personal indifference. Terrorism uses symbolic violence to further the political objectives by creating fear in populations. Domestic terrorism is symbolic violence carried out by citizens or permanent residents with the goal of influencing their government’s policy or expressing grievances against the state. International terrorism is symbolic violence associated with foreign governments, foreign citizens, or global terrorist organizations. The symbolic violence of the terrorist differs from the symbolic violence of most school shootings because school shootings tend to lack a political, religious, or ideological agenda and sometimes include a specific target among the random ones. Motives usually involve a personal vendetta such as resentment of fellow students for bullying or other slights. As previously noted, some of this symbolic violence relates to a perpetrator’s frustrations when his sense of entitlement over female bodies and affections is denied. More than half of mass shooters also have a history of domestic or gender violence, which can be confused with ideological purpose (Chang, 2018; Dvorak, 2018; Haider, 2016). The school shooter and terrorist may share suicidal objectives. The domestic terrorism of the 1998 Birmingham bombing was symbolic use of random violence against innocents in order to bring about political change through fear. It is also an example of special-interest terrorism, or symbolic violence for a specific cause. Rudolph wanted to “fight threats to fundamentalist Christian values, especially abortion and homosexuality” and reframed his violence as the righteous duty of a warrior defending religious principles, justifying his violence (Martinez, 2012, p. 286). He had nothing personal against the police officer he killed or the nurse he maimed. If the bombing did significant damage to the

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building and widespread reporting made women afraid to seek medical care or inspired others to join the troops in the “Army of God,” then Rudolph achieved his goal (Levin & Pinkerton, 2000). All forms of symbolic violence seek attention, making journalists unwilling accomplices when media coverage provides terrorists or school shooters with the publicity they desire.

War and Cyberwar War is declared military conflict involving forces between nations or, in the case of civil war, armed conflict between opposing groups within a nation. Weapons of war include traditional munitions, as well as biological agents, chemicals, and cyberwarfare to damage a nation’s information systems and disrupt its critical infrastructure. A declared war is generally less symbolic and more strategic. Cyberwarfare is digital destruction, damaging a target by disrupting routines and injuring information systems, confusing citizens, and crippling a government’s ability to operate. Some observers described Russia’s hack on American infrastructure in 2016 as cyberwar. Russian agents sent “expertly tailored messages carrying malware to more than 10,000 Twitter users in the Defense Department” (Calabresi, 2017) and Russian hackers tampered with American voter rolls (Perlroth, Wines, & Rosenberg, 2017). Russian use of social media to spread hoaxes and stoke hostilities among American citizens during the 2016 presidential election was also described as cyberwarfare, though Russia officially denied involvement. If it was cyberwar, it was strategic but undeclared. Other reports told how Russian-linked Facebook groups successfully organized opposing protests and counter-protests on the same date and time outside a Houston Islamic Center, hoping to prompt a violent conflict (Allbright, 2017). The Russian effort successfully created noisy arguments between an ultra-conservative group angry about America’s “liberal cesspool” and a rival group promoting diversity but no physical violence. Presumably the goal was to start a bloody street battle that would have Americans waging war on themselves (Lister & Sebastian, 2017). Elsewhere, attempts to use social media propaganda or false reporting to incite physical violence and genocide have been more successful. The spread of hate speech and false reporting on Facebook was credited with inciting mass riots, arson, execution, rape, and militant violence in Myanmar and Sri Lanka in 2017 (Hogan & Safi, 2018; Gowen & Bearak, 2017). Media propaganda and disinformation are the weapons of contemporary cyberwars, where angry soldiers may have no clear understanding of the cause for which they commit and dedicate their violence.

Terrorism and Hate Crime Terrorism is distinguished from hate crime, where extreme bias motivates violence. The perpetrator of a mass shooting during Shabbat morning services at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 was charged with hate crimes (Gormly,

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2018), or a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity” (Federal Bureau of Investigation). A key difference between terrorism and hate crime is that terrorism is an “upward crime,” in which the perpetrator comes from a lower social standing than the targeted victims. When members of a frustrated fringe group strike citizens of a powerful government with violence, this is considered an “upward” crime of terrorism. The perpetrators of hate crimes are usually members of a faction with more political, social, or economic power who target their victims from a minority group (Deloughery, King, & Asal, 2012). When a member of a powerful majority, such as a white, heterosexual man, commits violence against someone from a marginalized group, such as a transgender woman of color, this is a “downward” hate crime. If the character of Brooke from the previous chapter had been stalked and murdered because her killer despised transsexuals, this violence fits the definition of a hate crime. Hate crimes may not have a political goal but instead be a violent expression of interpersonal or moral disgust. When a 21-year-old white man, Dylann Storm Roof, committed symbolic murder of nine African-Americans in a Charleston, South Carolina church in 2015, his ambition was to start a race war. Because Roof meant for his ideologically motivated crimes to terrify the African-American community, pressure the government, and inspire additional violence, his actions constituted domestic terrorism. However, the government labeled Roof ’s violence a hate crime. In a review of the Roof case, criminal justice professor Jesse Norris argues that properly labeling the  attacks domestic terrorism would direct attention to all threats rather than continue an overwhelming emphasis on jihadi terrorism (2017). Norris further argues that correct labeling would bring attention to the history of racist terrorism in the United States, help to counter Islamophobia, and encourage greater vigilance for preventing all types of terrorism. Roof ’s violence fits the label of an “upward crime,” since his personal circumstances were as a high-school dropout from an unsettled family that was drifting ever downward in economic and social mobility (Ghansah, 2017). Roof ’s victims were among the congregation of the celebrated African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent black denomination in the U.S., which met in a historic building in Charleston. National leaders had attended this church. It was an established, educated, upwardly mobile congregation. The violence fit the definition of domestic terrorism as an upward crime. Labeling symbolic violence a hate crime lessens feelings of threat for those not in the targeted group. Unlike the person who shoots someone during an armed robbery or the man who murders his wife for insurance money, terrorism is not usually tied to an individual’s economic benefit or private goal. Neither Roof nor Rudolph personally profited from their actions. By committing violence, the terrorist may have a great deal to lose, including life, freedom, and finances. However, terrorism can be closely related to criminal activities (Matejka, 2017). It has become more

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complicated to separate terrorism from criminality, since terrorist organizations “often maintain groups composed of organized criminals that help the ‘political’ wings function” (Stanislawski, 2005, p. 158). Ideological motives become entangled with illicit drugs, weapons sales, money laundering, human trafficking, cybercrime, and piracy (Stigall, 2016). The motivations, ideologies, and allegiances that motivate terrorists may be diverse, but they are united by: • • • •

reliance on random and symbolic violence, failure to distinguish between civilian and military targets, use of civilians as surrogate victims for the state, and exploitation of the media.

A terrorist threatens or kills in an effort to exacerbate social tensions, provoke the state into increasingly brutal police repression, or show the current government as an impotent, incompetent power, unable to protect citizens. A large part of the terrorist’s goal is to attract public attention through news media. “The terrorist generates spectacles, and these are newsworthy items” (Miller, 1982, p. 13). In October of 2018, when a man sent pipe bombs to prominent democrats, CNN, and influential individuals critical of the Trump administration, the act was clearly political, intended to threaten and silence detractors (Swenson, 2018; Zhao, 2018). It was action to support the government in power not symbolic violence against it, which is the more typical terrorist act. Trump’s response was to claim that by finding fault with his administration, media caused the violence (Embury-Dennis, 2018).

Media and the Drama of Terrorism Terrorism became a recognized political problem and a household term when terrorists seized the U.S. Embassy in Teheran in 1979. The scene presented on television news was one of turmoil, with nightly images of anti-American protests from Teheran. However, less than two blocks from the television cameras, business carried on calmly as if nothing usual was happening. The many events surrounding the much publicized hostage crisis in Iran caused the event to be called a “soap opera,” a high drama that played nightly on nationwide television news (Nimmo & Combs, 1985, p. 42). Though this crisis motivated scholars and politicians to focus attention on international terrorism, political violence as propaganda was nothing new. Attempting to create political change through fear has been a tactic since biblical times. The King James Bible mentions that the leadership in ancient Rome intended to crucify Barabbas for crimes of sedition and murder (Luke 23:19). What was new about terrorism in the 20th century was the function of popular media in creating a global stage where terrorists could perform heinous acts of violence (Mohamad, 2004).

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Beginning in the 1980s, there was a great deal of agonizing over the relationship between news coverage and terrorism. Journalists worried that too little or too much coverage could act as a catalyst, escalating the number and seriousness of terrorists’ assaults and causing public panic. Some critics were convinced that media coverage not only gratifies terrorists by directing world attention to their crimes, but also through a contagion effect could incite other groups to use these tactics. They concluded that terrorist incidents are undeniably media-promoted events. There was additional concern that media reporting of terrorists’ crimes might expose law enforcement intelligence. However, providing citizens with information could also help with capture. Terrorism is not considered a military operation, but, as a media narrative, terrorism introduced a new form of violence through psychological warfare and propaganda. It illustrated a lack of distinction between war and peace, governance and chaos. It was and is a menacing method of disrupting civilized order. In a 1983 seminar on terrorism and the media, Senator Jeremiah A. Denton, who was then the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism, credited Brazilian guerrilla fighter Carlos Marighella and his book, The Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla (1969), with the formula for terrorism that uses news media as an indispensable part of the strategy (Midgley & Rice, 1983). The terrorist’s goal is to capture national or international attention, claim the public media stage, and hold governments hostage while real or imagined political grievances get attention. Terrorism is public theater (Nimmo, 1976). Media become the unwilling partners in terrorist events when they report on hostage situations, bombings, assassinations, and murder. Denton shared a number of proposals to make terrorism less effective: • • • •

Prohibit terrorist spokesmen from appearing on camera, Cover only those incidents where reports will serve the public interest, Limit live coverage of terrorist incidents, Omit the names of terrorists groups taking credit for violent incidents.

These proposals were difficult ones for news media to follow, particularly limiting live coverage and not crediting the groups claiming responsibility. Many journalists agree that providing terrorists with on-camera interviews to publicize grievances is not useful, though some critics were not convinced that media exacerbated terrorism (Picard, 1987). Hearing the voices of terrorists, filled with their passions and complaints, might help law enforcement to better counter the violence and the public better understand it. International terrorism moved to American soil in 1993, when terrorists bombed the World Trade Center. Two years later in 1995, domestic terrorists Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City as a symbolic act of their hatred for the federal government. This would be the most violent act of terrorism until September 11, 2001, when members of al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial jet

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airliners and staged a series of coordinated suicide attacks, crashing two planes into the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon. Passengers on the fourth plane fought the terrorists, attempted to retake control of the plane, and finally crashed it in a rural Pennsylvania field rather than allowing the plane to hit the high profile target that was the terrorists’ goal.

Creativity and Terror The authors of “Malevolent Creativity: A Functional Model of Creativity in Terrorism and Crime” observe that other than simply publicizing terrorists’ actions, media stories help reduce their effectiveness. The phrase “malevolent creativity” refers to innovations in violence (Cropley, Kaufman, & Cropley, 2008). A creative act of terror is novel or surprising, making it difficult to anticipate. The 9/11 use of a commercial plane as a bomb is an example of this malevolent creativity. Law enforcement and terrorists become contenders in a powerful struggle in which creative violence requires creative prevention. The hijacking of a commercial airline was countered with creative uses of metal detectors, facial recognition systems, and armed undercover marshals posing as passengers to deter future hijacking attempts. One issue for law enforcement is finding creative responses that thwart terrorists without unduly infringing on the freedom and convenience of citizens. If a government’s response to terrorism is to clamp down and become oppressive, citizens become disgruntled and terrorists have achieved an important goal: to make the state the enemy. When terrorists perfect a method or modus operandi (MO), they develop skills and expertise, but tend to lose the element of surprise. The shock of using passenger planes as suicide bombs lost innovation when passengers on Flight 93 learned of the other attacks and were able to create their own rival response. While media coverage of terrorist activities frightens citizens and embarrasses governments, reporting on terrorists’ methods also reduces novelty and increases likelihood that plots can be revealed and stopped. Reporting may not always cause citizens to cower in fear but rather embolden them to stage their own defiant reactions. In Barcelona, Spain, in August of 2017, terrorists weaponized a van to kill thirteen people and injure more than 100 others. The next day half a million people, including Spain’s King Felipe VI, marched against the violence to reclaim their city. The demonstrators shouted, “I am not afraid” (Bruton, 2017). The march was an act of symbolic defiance that also received attention in the international media and world stage, inspiring citizens not to live in fear because to do so allows the terrorists to “win.”

Historic Theories of Press and Government Media systems are closely tied to the kinds of governments in which they operate. Because violence creates special challenges for governments and media systems, it is useful to review the theories describing the values that influence

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this relationship. In 1956, Fred Siebert, Theodore Peterson, and Wilbur Schramm wrote what is now the key work that describes the relationship between press and government. The Four Theories of the Press explain how media are the offspring of the government system in which they function, and how media systems reflect and support a governmental philosophy. Systems of authoritarian, libertarian, communist, and social responsibility can be viewed as a continuum with the most government restriction and censorship of media on the authoritarian end and the most press freedom on the libertarian (Merrill, 2004). The authoritarian system is the oldest and perhaps the most geographically widespread. When Johannes Gutenberg invented his movable type and printed his first book in 1450, he began a revolution against ignorance that had restricted much of humanity in societies where authoritarian principles governed under the absolute power of a monarch. The new printing press promised greater public access to information. Sovereign leaders immediately responded to the threat of uncontrolled information, demanding that the press be in the service of the state. This demand established the authoritarian system, where media are  implicit government agents. Media companies are privately owned, but the government provides licenses or permissions to operate. Media companies need to comply with strict government censors or, in a less regulated system, suffer consequences of fines, punishment, imprisonment, and even execution if they publish ideas a government finds objectionable. Serious threats encourage media operators to be sensitive to what the state wants, self-censoring to suppress stories that might be unacceptable. As a result, media stories under an authoritarian system are often propagandistic, filled with government edicts, and educational in the sense that the public learns what authorities want it to learn. Since authoritarian governments grant the privilege to create media stories, media producers are obligated to the government “to support and perpetuate the authority that permits them to survive” (Lowenstein & Merrill, 1990, p. 164). An important assumption underlying all press theories is the perception of the individual in society. The authoritarian opinion is that with the exception of ruling elites, most individuals are not competent or interested enough to make political decisions. The privileged regard most of the population as foolish or naughty children; the state must command, restrain, and protect them. These weak-minded lower classes should find their fulfillment in service and submission to their government with admiration for the elites who control it. Whether an authoritarian government will permit distribution of violent stories depends on the function they serve for the state, supporting or undermining state power. Violence in media stories might be permitted if it reinforced the ability of the state to ensure citizen compliance, supported the administration’s goals, provided a distraction that kept citizens from questioning injustice, brought glory to the leadership, or didn’t cause trouble or embarrassment for the government. By the 17th century, literacy had grown and so had the middle class. Individuals began to question the absolute power of government and the Church.

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Moreover, the individual had become more respected. Wealthy elites weren’t considered the only ones capable of rational, intelligent thinking. If there was freedom of expression and all individuals had free access to information, anyone could make good decisions. Individuals were also believed to have inherent natural rights and it was the job of government to protect those rights. This new respect for the individual gave rise to the libertarian system of the press. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is a clear statement of libertarian principles. The libertarian system is the opposite of the authoritarian system because it proclaims that government and media must serve citizens and if they don’t, both should be replaced. A libertarian media system is privately owned and functions to uncover and present the truth. An assumption the libertarian system makes about truth is that it is discovered through a diversity of voices. When people with different perspectives of an event share their experiences, the larger truth of a situation becomes more evident. Therefore, the libertarian system is obligated to provide a plurality of voices and a marketplace of ideas. An opinion should not be silenced, no matter how unpopular, for in suppressing an opinion there is the risk of suppressing truth. Even the libertarian media system doesn’t allow absolute press freedom. Some constraints include libel, invasion of personal privacy, copyright violation, fraud, sedition, and obscenity. The violence in a media story might be considered necessary if it reveals problems citizens need to better understand but a distraction if the violence is simply gratuitous. Under a libertarian system, citizens are free to choose their distractions and are encouraged to understand society’s problems. Since the media system is required to keep the public informed of government activities and to watch for government improprieties, journalists must be free to investigate and inform the public of what they discover. Producers of fictional media must also be free to explore the artistic and socially vigilant elements of narrative. Therefore, government should not attempt to control the media system. Media must also remain independent of government influence to fulfill their watchdog duties. The communist theory of the press developed in the early part of the 20th century. Sometimes referred to as the Soviet Totalitarian or social-authoritarian system, it is similar to the authoritarian system but better integrated. Media are state owned and operated, a branch of the government in service of national goals. Criticism of government might be permitted but only of tactics, not objectives. The assumption is that the state’s leaders and its media agents both want the same thing: the greater glory of the state, even at the cost of truth. Anyone who interferes with that goal can be fined, imprisoned, or executed. Like the authoritarian system, the communist system is based on beliefs that individual citizens are too ignorant, unconcerned, or incapable of understanding national problems to be informed about government activities. Violent entertainment might be permitted when it serves the state’s larger narrative but prohibited

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where it conflicts with government goals or if the state deems paternalistic oversight is necessary. One observation of entertainment media under the Soviet Union was that a video of the Rambo action film First Blood (1982) was the “hottest video on the Moscow Black Market” and later the Russian film industry liberated itself to create bloodier films modeled after “Yank B-pics” (Everette, Gerbner, & Zassoursky, 1991, p. 35). As distractions, violent media stories are particularly effective. The last of the original four theories, social responsibility, developed in response to the rise of large media industries in the United States, which emphasized profits. By the middle of the 20th century, the industrial media system was more commercial than it had been at the time the Constitution was written. Industrial media production had become expensive and it was difficult for individual citizens without resources to gain access to the free marketplace of ideas. Ideas not considered profitable were not likely to get exposure. Media systems relied heavily on advertising revenues. An attention economy might pervert the truth or exaggerate violence to catch public notice and related earnings. Limitations of the airwaves also meant that broadcast media needed and wanted government regulation. All of these things helped to bring an end to a strict libertarian philosophy for the American media system. Though still based on libertarian concepts, social responsibility shifts the emphasis from media freedom to media obligation. The Hutchins Commission on Freedom of the press (1947) is one of the clearest statements of social responsibility, arguing that along with press freedoms go certain commitments to society. Citizens still depended on their media to provide the information necessary for effective self-governance. Media were still considered the government watchdog, but government could act to improve media. As broadcasting companies emphasized entertainment over information and other media began using outrageous tactics in the scramble for public attention, there was less confidence that individuals would see past distractions to make worthy choices or even bother enough about the responsibilities of citizenship to stay informed. In Four Theories of the Press, Theodore Peterson commented that people are rational but lazy and therefore gullible to manipulation. It was still important for journalists to keep citizens aware of what their leaders were doing in the hope that citizens would care, but optimism for responsible citizenship and individual accountability declined. By 1985, media scholar Neil Postman predicted that audiences would come to adore the technologies and easy entertainments that would undo their ability to think. Postman expected that some citizens might appreciate release from the intellectual commitments that democracy demands. In a system of social responsibility, a discussion about media violence still involves a concern for the First Amendment freedoms and the necessity for a plurality of voices, but government may feel more pressure to protect audiences that a capitalist, profit-driven system might exploit. Violent fictional stories

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provide a nonpolitical reason for media censorship when government takes a paternalistic position in citizen welfare. If individuals are considered lazy and weak-minded, if parents refuse to take responsibility for their children’s media exposure, and if leaders are concerned that adult audiences aren’t capable of managing their responses to violent stories, then censorship may be necessary for the good of society. Media professionals might anticipate government objections and self-censor to avoid punitive legislation. Governments have as much concern about violence in news reporting as in entertainment. A government embarrassed by its own response to a crisis or concerned about public perceptions of its handling of domestic problems and international conflicts may take steps to curtail reporting. Leadership that becomes upset when reporting is not flattering may take steps to punish journalists or act in ways that will attempt to turn citizens against the concept of a free press. Governments can also claim that unmonitored news reporting threatens national security. Even a system of social responsibility may tightly regulate coverage of military activities and violence of war.

Expanding the Continuum Critics of the four theories of the press as the dominant paradigm for studying world media systems suggest that the four theories were built on Western perspectives that do not adequately describe media systems in Asia (Yin, 2008) or media systems in developing countries (Altschull, 1995). The actual continuum may not be a simple line connecting the two opposites of authoritarian and libertarian systems, but a layered channel filled with wrinkles and creases. One examination of the four theories suggests that the influence of Confucian philosophy on Asian press systems makes it difficult to neatly fit the many different Asian models into one of the four categories. Confucian philosophy is paternalistic with an emphasis on the importance of family and harmony. It is also supportive of business and leadership but claims that governing authority must come from morality, not force. Japan provides an example where media are independent of government as in a libertarian system but reporters rarely criticize the state. Instead, journalists willingly collaborate with the government as more of a lapdog than a watchdog, not bothering to investigate financial or government corruption. The Japanese government takes no paternalistic position on citizens’ use of entertainment violence. Japanese citizens are free to consume some of the world’s most brutal television (Iwao, Pool, & Hagiawra, 1981), films (Balmain, 2008), games, and comics (Castle, 2007). Japanese entertainment does explore themes of government corruption and capitalist greed, though these stories tend to drown ideological messages in blood. In one example, Tokyo Gore Police (2009), the young protagonist constantly fights the corrupt military police force of a sadistic authoritarian government.

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Even the media system in China is not fully communist. The Chinese government has gradually cut media subsidies, encouraged commercial financing, and given citizens more choices (Yin, 2008). High-level officials encouraged the Chinese press to investigate rampant corruption among low-level government administrators. However, when reporters published embarrassing stories or dealt with sensitive issues, they became the unprotected victims of violent retaliation. The Chinese government also allows import of Hollywood films and actively seeks to have a larger role in the international cultural arena for its own entertainment products. An examination of China’s cultural industries shows how media stories are important for the soft power of a rising nation, supporting China’s political agenda (Vlassis, 2014). Among successful Chinese films are violent, Rambo-like movies about a Chinese special forces operative. The protagonist of Wolf Warrior (2015) and Wolf Warrior 2 (2017) saves Chinese civilians from the violence of evil Western mercenaries and other ruinous global thugs. North Korea’s constitution may appear to guarantee citizen rights to free speech and press, but the government prohibits exercise of those rights. “Its people experience the world’s deepest information void” (Yin, 2008, p. 31). North Korean citizens might even be executed for watching South Korean soap operas (Dearden, 2014). No matter how seemingly harmless, non-political, or nonviolent they might seem, media stories showing comfortable lifestyles could stimulate an oppressed people to imagine they too could have a better life with a different government. Saudi Arabia is also among the stricter authoritarian states, criminalizing any expression critical of the ruling monarchy. The Saudi government partners with other countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council to suppress critical voices in the region and monitor online and YouTube content, ensuring that Saudi contributors adhere to government guidelines (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2015). In 2018, when Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Turkey, Saudi Arabia faced international condemnation for its shifting accounts of the journalist’s disappearance. Khashoggi had been a contributor to the Washington Post, publishing articles critical of the Saudi Government. In a globally interconnected world, where different systems must interact and do business, Saudi Arabia scrambled to cover up, deny, and later provide spin and damage control for violence that authoritarian governments in earlier eras might have openly displayed as a sovereign right (Hudson, Mekhennet, & Leonnig, 2018).

Media Systems as Canaries in the Mine The Four Theories predict that changes in a media system will follow changes in government or vice versa. Developments after the fall of the former Soviet Union seemed to support this prediction when the press changed overnight from a communist system to a more libertarian system. Yet, observers note that under

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the presidency of Vladimir Putin, Russian media have become more restrained, with the state once again taking control of the television channels to broadcast Kremlin propaganda. Russia was reverting to a more social-authoritarian model (Oates, 2007). An NPR series examining life in Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union, “Russia Under Putin: Echoes of the Soviet Era,” notes that Russians can travel abroad and read whatever they want, but there was an emerging hardline culture under Putin. The assumption that most citizens deliberately close their eyes to what government does factored in Russian media moving away from a brief flirtation with libertarian ideals. A former editor of publications that helped revolutionize Russian media moaned that people simply want “cheap food and a quiet life. And if I announce today that we have to choose between free press and free sausages, of course they’ll choose free sausages” (Feifer, 2007). Critics in the Unites States can be similarly disparaging of citizens. The democratic dilemma is that voters may not have the capacity to make good choices or care enough to actually vote (Lupia & McCubbins, 1998). An educationally deprived, willfully ignorant, or economically stressed public is easy to bamboozle. Democratic ideals may seem abstract to low wageworkers struggling with bills or to college graduates saddled with large student loans. When economically stressed citizens are burdened with daily problems of survival, they may not have the energy necessary to evaluate public policy. The dynamic of the relationship between press and government is continuing to change. Violence is clearly one of the pressures on that dynamic. During times of war or following egregious terrorist attacks by foreign agents, American journalists may abandon their adversarial relationship as the government watchdog to become more of an uncritical patriot. Following the September 11 attacks, journalists rallied behind the Bush administration, failing to ask hard questions when the White House made claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had intentions to deploy them. Fearful American citizens so recently victimized were gullible to these government claims. “When sloppy journalism prevails, the public suffers because government influence expands to fill the vacuum left by news media’s nonperformance” (Seib, 2013, p. 4). The Bush administration wouldn’t allow journalists to independently investigate military operations during the Iraq war. War correspondents embedded with troops and under military supervision are additionally embedded in their culture and biased accordingly (Bennett, Lawrence, & Livingston, 2007). Journalists reporting on the war were less likely to investigate the lives and concerns of Iraqi citizens living with war and avoided showing painful videos or pictures of victims killed and injured by America military. Eventually, safety risks, economic factors, and a public loss of interest in the war caused withdrawal of most journalists from high-risks areas. Violence contributes to changes in a social responsibility system when

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government denies access to information because of national security claims, blocking the watchdog function. The Four Theories predict that changes in a media system are the canaries in the mine, alerting to possible fundamental changes in government. Concerns during the Trump administration were that diversity and plurality of voices were shrinking as companies like the Sinclair Broadcast Group had gained an enormous percentage of local television stations after the Trump-appointed FCC voted to relax media ownership rules ( Kasakove, 2018 ). Critics characterized Sinclair programming as consisting of media stories and commentary that were uniform across many stations and favorable to the Trump administration ( Domonoske, 2018 ). When media outlets begin to operate like the propaganda arm of the state, a system of social responsibility moves closer to a social-authoritarian system. Denigration of mainstream media that offer critical stories about an administration, its policies, or its activities and shunning both foreign and domestic mainstream media as “fake news” can frustrate citizens about what to believe Jacobson, 2018. Citizens who confuse patriotism with dogmatic devotion to their country’s leadership may believe that violent condemnation of a critical press is their patriotic duty. In 2017, free press groups began documenting violent threats against reporters in the United States (Gold, 2017). The rebranding of critical news as fake and threats to take away press credentials are other attempts to shift from libertarian principles toward a more social-authoritarian system. There is a closer relationship between press freedom and political democracy than with any other element in society except for free elections. When this relationship is no longer the case, some sort of quiet revolution is taking place that should be noted, because within a short while either the political system will change to conform to the media characteristics, or the press will soon change to conform to the existing governmental philosophy. (Lowenstein & Merrill, 1990, p. 157)

Media Systems and the Internet The Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 and the manhunt that followed underscored the transformation that social media platforms and technology would bring to both news gathering and crisis communications. A participatory public of citizen journalists became fully involved in breaking the violent story and publishing the continuing coverage of the events through social media platforms that hadn’t existed on September 11, 2001. Greg Barker’s

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documentary, The Thread (2015), shows the collision between professional journalists’ regard for accuracy and the quick speculations of citizen journalists, when mob conjecture during the manhunt accused innocent men of terrorism. After a missing Boston University student was labeled as the terrorist, his family became the butt of aggressive vigilante justice (Ziv, 2015). Media distribution of photos and videos taken from security cameras near the marathon’s finish line did help police identify the suspects, and authorities initialized a public manhunt that shutdown the city of Boston and glued residents to their TVs, pads, and smartphones in a disarray of “total noise” (Gleick, 2013). The growth of the internet and social media also challenged the historic relationship governments have with traditional media, undermining how a government likes to manage coverage of international conflicts. Though the Bush administration had intended to control the reporting about the Iraq war, when American soldiers wrote blogs or uploaded their own shocking footage of the “dirty” war in Iraq with clips of violence, abuse, and obscenity, they revealed horrific military activities that the government preferred to keep hidden. The government didn’t want citizens who funded the war and voted for the politicians who supported it to see scary ground reporting of military events. It was also embarrassing that these reports had a potential global audience in the hundreds of millions. In response, the U.S. military initiated a ban on the use of video-sharing sites (Christensen, 2008) and tightened restrictions on soldiers with blogs, requiring them to register blogs and submit content for review (Frosch, 2007). In the years after the 2016 election, internet and social media came under increasing criticism for inappropriate and violent content, for providing a platform for the spread of extremist ideas, hate speech, foreign state-sponsored propaganda, and hoaxes, as well as for mishandling of user information. The internet that had enjoyed an open libertarian philosophy was increasingly pressured to become more socially responsible. Large technology companies openly grappled with First Amendment rights in the face of those darker impulses in human storytelling. However, laws passed by a government in one country are felt globally, and there is concern that removing ideological content could legitimize the repressive measures of authoritarian regimes (Wadhwa & Ng, 2017). Laws that inflict large financial penalties on internet companies also encourage tech companies toward stiffer self-censorship and removal of some user-created stories. In an age of online terrorism, where groups use the internet to recruit, raise money, and spread propaganda, some suggest that governments must partner closely with technology companies to: • • •

assist with information on terror-related groups, enact laws to punish online perpetrators, take steps to counter cyber-terrorism,

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prevent undeclared cyberwars, and deprive terrorists of publicity. (Dwivedi, Singh, Partlow, & Sharma, 2018)

Techniques a government uses to fight terrorism can be identical to those used to silence critical voices. In countries that hope to maintain a libertarian or social responsibility system, the fundamental predicament is that tension between democratic traditions that encourage critical voices but prevents the call to terrorism. In 2018, technology companies suspended accounts of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and removed some of his content for policy violations on hate speech and violence (Williamson, 2018). Shortly afterward, President Trump threatened tech companies with government regulation for unfairly restricting conservative voices (Satariano, Wakabayshshi, & Kang, 2018). When mainstream news outlets dominated the results of a Google search for “Trump News” rather than favorably positioning supportive partisan media, Trump announced intentions to look into stricter government supervision of technology companies. There have been no policy changes as of this writing, though it does appear that the internet’s purely libertarian phase may be over.

Terrorism and War in Media Fictions Entertainment media are also credited with helping to shape public attitudes about the violence of war and terrorism. In the United States, the ideological underpinnings of these stories are diverse. Among other things they may reinforce the views of a current administration, provide a warning about the corruption and greed of an elite power, and encourage appreciation of war in defense of individual rights in an oppressive system. There is some suggestion that entertainment stories may even influence debates about the use of torture as a solution to undermining terrorist activity. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Fox Network premiered 24 (November 6, 2001—May 24, 2010), an action series with each episode representing a 24-hour period in the life of counter-terrorism expert Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland). Bauer participates in successful torture sessions to extort information from terrorists. An examination of the influence entertainment stories could have on public policy discovered that this show was especially popular among the guards at the Guantánamo Bay military detention camp, a favorite of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia, and a preferred program among ordinary soldiers. The “proliferation of brutality and torture in motion pictures and television entertainment in general and Jack Bauer’s frequently torturous treatment of suspected terrorists in particular influenced the views and actions of legal experts and rank-and-file guards in military prisons” (Nacos, 2013, p. 337).

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Fictional media stories portraying war are not confined to the war genre. Among some of the most viewed movie wars are those arising from popular millennial media franchises such as the fantasy series Harry Potter (2001–2011), the romantic fantasy series Twilight (2008–2012) and the futuristic science-fiction dystopias of The Hunger Games (2012–2015) and Divergent (2014–2016), among others. All of these series present young protagonists subjected to the harsh rules of a tyrannical elite that is either firmly established or dangerously threatening to overthrow a progressive republic. In the series listed previously, only the Twilight films avoid war when the governing elites and the watching audience magically experience the devastating results of violence between rival factions without a genuine war. Realizing their own vulnerability, the elite vampires will decide they can coexist with ideas and ways of being that contradict their ancient ideology. The Hunger Games franchise provides a stark example of how a despotic government can corrupt an advanced media system for its own uses. In this series, the powerful Capital stages televised games similar to the gladiatorial games of ancient Rome. For the amusement of the Capital and its privileged citizens, children from the Districts are selected through a lottery as “tributes” to fight to the death in a competition that the Capital’s media system frames as grand fun. The tributes are expected to die but for one triumphant survivor. The games become a morbid Super Bowl phenomenon for Capital citizens and a symbol of the Capital’s devastating power for residents in the starving Districts. State media make temporary celebrities of the tribute warriors, romanticizing their impending deaths and surrounding the upcoming games with talk shows, parties, and fanfare. The Districts do not have their own media voice, but must hack into the Capital’s system to make their story heard. Once the Districts join forces in violent resistance, the series protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, becomes the natural symbol of the rebel movement. She is recognized throughout the Districts for her principled performance during the games and as a surviving tribute. The former president of District 13, Lama Coin, and other leaders of the resistance enlist Everdeen in a propaganda effort, staging battle scenes where Everdeen must speak memorized lines. The message is more persuasive when rebel leaders use actual footage of the Capital’s violence and Everdeen expresses her genuine outrage at these atrocities. The implication is that leadership resorting to staged propaganda does not fully believe in the truth of its cause. When leadership resorts to manipulation in pursuit of a goal, it is not leadership that can be fully trusted. No matter how righteous the cause, use of propaganda indicates a leader’s general willingness to stage and perhaps distort. Global audiences perceived the character of Everdeen as an inspiring symbol of rebellion. Following the military coup in Thailand and release of The Hunger Games in that country in 2014, Thai students identified with Everdeen, using

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symbols from the movie such as the three-fingered salute in their protests against the junta. The military response was to arrest the protesters and take them to camps for “attitude adjustment” (Turner, 2017). Although the American millennial generation has been labeled as politically apathetic, widespread preferences for dystopian stories ripe with political themes suggests millennials are highly interested in political topics but may like them best within “the safe confines of fiction” (Ames, 2013, p. 3). However, polling in the fall of 2018 suggested a new political activism among millennials and Gen Z voters (Fall 2018 National Youth Poll. Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics).

The Yin-Yang of Terrorism and War When the general social environment is stressed, as with terrorism or war, American media tend to have a yin-yang relationship with social conditions, offering audiences stories that are either highly germane or else escapist entertainment with happier themes. The yin-yang hypothesis is the idea that in a libertarian or social responsibility system, media producers will naturally look for elements that offer relief when the larger social system is troubled (Haskins, 1984). Forced to report the horrors of international or domestic violence, the only alternative for news media would be to interlace harsh brutality with feature stories about individuals involved in heroic rescue, narratives of steadfast family love, and tales of patriotic self-sacrifice. These would be stories that are archetypal, beloved, and buoying in a time of crisis. The exemplary elements of these stories must be clear: a brave teacher risking his life to protect his students; a heroic young man pulling a gun from the hands of a mass murderer; the joy of first responders upon discovering survivors of a terrorist explosion. These stories offer a counterbalance to the detestable necessity for news media to be an accomplice in spreading the violent story. Uplifting and inspirational stories push back against the violence. In them are the mythical elements that audiences need: ordinary Americans are courageous, heroic, and will do whatever must be done under extreme circumstances. Yin-yang predicts that a gross imbalance of violent media will be instinctively countered with stories about the best of humanity. Fictional narratives distract audiences from real terrors by providing an escape into exotic, dangerous situations, which protagonists might survive with promises of a happily ever after. Authors of research examining media coverage of terrorism suggest that balance should not rely on yin-yang impulse but become an intentional policy: less repetition of horrific scenes, less trauma, less sensationalism, and more prudent information (Dwivedi et al., 2018). The goal of all media stories might be to provide inspiration that helps audiences live defiantly, courageously, knowledgeably, and humanely in the aftermath of terrorism or times of war.

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References for Chapter Nine Allbright, C. (2017, November 1). A Russian Facebook page organized a protest in Texas: A different Russian page launched the counter protest. The Texas Tribune. Altschull, J. H. (1995). Agents of power: The media and public policy (2nd ed.). White Plains, NY: Longmans. Ames, M. (2013). Engaging “apolitical” adolescepts: Analyzing the popularity and educational potential of dystopian literature post 9/11. High School Journal, 97(1), 3–20. Balmain, C. (2008). Introduction to Japanese horror film. Edinburgh: Edinburg University Press. Bennett, W. L., Lawrence, R. G., & Livingston, S. (2007). When the press fails: Political power and the news media from Iraq to Katrina. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bruton, F. B. (2017, August 18). Scared but defiant, Barcelona marches to Reclaim city from terrorists. NBC News. Calabresi, M. (2017, May 18). Inside Russia’s social media war on America. Time. Castle, R. (2007). Manga mad: Comics and anime in Japan. (Documentary). Ray Castle Films. Chang, E. (2018, June 30). The Annapolis shooting was an attack on a newspaper: And a woman. The Washington Post. Christensen, C. (2008). Uploading dissonance: YouTube and the US occupation of Iraq. Media, War, and Conflict, 1(2), 55–75. Clendinen, D. (1985, January 20, Sunday). Abortion clinics report anxieties. The New York Times. Committee to Protect Journalists. (2015). Trends in press freedom: 10 most censored countries threaten jail terms, restrict internet to silence press. In Attacks on the press: Journalism on the world’s front lines (2015 ed., pp. 219–230). New York: John Wiley and Sons. Conklin, G. H. (2016). Terrorism in the United States: A case study of Eric Rudolph, a homegrown terrorist. Torch Magazine, 10–14. Cropley, D. H. C., Kaufman, J. C., & Cropley, A. J. (2008). Malevolent creativity: A functional Model of Creativity in terrorism and crime. Creativity Research Journal, 20(2), 105–115. Dearden, L. (2014, October 29). North Korean officials publicly executed for watching South Korean soap operas. Independent. Deloughery, K., King, R., & Asal, V. (2012). Close cousins or distant relatives? The relationship between terrorism and hate crime. Crime & Delinquency, 58(5), 663–688. Domonoske, C. (2018, April 2). Video reveals power of sinclair as local news anchors recite script in unison. NPR. Dvorak, P. (2018, July 5). Rage toward women fuels mass shooters. The Lily. Dwivedi, R., Singh, A., Partlow, S., & Sharma, A. (2018). International terrorism and television: An analytical discourse based on media regulation on coverage of terrorism in pre and post 9/11 scenario. Indian Journal of Health and Well-Being, 9(2), 296–302. Embury-Dennis, T. (2018, October 29). Trump brands media “true enemy of the people” just days after pipe bomb scare at CNN offices. The Independent. Everette, E. D., Gerbner, G., & Zassoursky, Y. N. (1991). Beyond the cold war: Soviet and American media images. Newberry Park: Sage Publications. Feifer, G. (2007, March 6). Russia under putin: Echoes of the Soviet Era: All things considered. NPR Broadcast. Frosch, D. (2007, May 15). Pentagon blocks 13 web sites from military computers. The New York Times.

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Ghansah, R. K. (2017, August 21). A most American terrorist: The making of dylann roof. GQ. Gleick, J. (2013). “Total noise,” only louder. New York, 46(3), 7–10. Gold, H. (2017, July 4). Free-press groups warn of violence against media. Politico. Gormly, K. B. (2018, October 27). Suspect in Pittsburgh synagogue shooting charged with 29 counts in deaths of 11 people. The Washington Post. Gowen, A., & Bearak, M. (2017, December 8). Fake news on Facebook fans the flames of hate against Rohingya in Burma. The Washington Post. Haider, S. (2016). The shooting in Orlando, terrorism or toxic masculinity (or both?). Men & Masculinities, 19(5), 555–565. Haskins, J. (1984). Morbid curiosity and the mass media: A synergistic relationship. In J. A. Crook, J. B. Haskins, & P. Ashdown (Eds.), Morbid curiosity and the mass media: Proceedings of a symposium (pp. 2–44). Knoxville: University of Tennessee and Gannett Foundation. Hogan, L., & Safi, M. (2018, April 2). Revealed: Facebook hate speech exploded in Myanmar during Rohingya crisis. The Guardian. Hudson, J., Mekhennet, S., & Leonnig, C. D. (2018, November 1). Saudi crown prince described Slain journalist as a dangerous Islamist in call with the White House. The Washington Post. Iwao, S., Pool, I., & Hagiawra, S. (1981). Japanese and US media: Some cross-cultural insights into TV violence. Journal of Communication, 31(2), 28–36. Jacobson, Z. J. (2018, May 21). Many are worried about the return of the “Big Lie”: They’re worried about the wrong thing. The Washington Post. Kasakove, S. (2018, March 12). The spread of Trump TV. The Nation. King, C. (2001, May 5). No thanks to hoover. The Washington Post. Levin, M., & Pinkerton, D. (2000). Soldiers in the army of god. (Documentary). US: Off Line Entertainment Group. Lister, T., & Sebastian, C. (2017, October 6). Stoking Islamophobia and secession in Texas: From an office in Russia. CNN. Lowenstein, R. L., & Merrill, J. C. (1990). Macromedia: Mission, message and morality. New York: Longman. Lupia, A., & McCubbins, M. D. (1998). The democratic dilemma: Can citizens learn what they need to know? New York: Cambridge University Press. Lyons, E., & Lyons, J. (2005). Life’s been a blast: The true story of Birmingham bombing survivor Emily Lyons. Homewood, AL: I Em Press. Martinez, J. M. (2012). Terrorist attacks on American soil: From civil war era to the present. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Matejka, S. (2017, November 29). Gangster Jihadists: The crime-terror nexus. Fair Observer. Merrill, J. C. (2004). Global press philosophies. In A. deBeer & J. C. Merrill (Eds.), Global journalism: Topical issues and media systems (4th ed., pp. 3–18). Boston: Pearson. Midgley, S., & Rice, V. (Eds.). (1983). Terrorism and the media in the 1980s. Washington, DC: The Media Institute. Miller, A. H. (1982). Terrorism: The media and the law. New York: Transnational Books. Mohamad, G. (2004). War, words, and images. In P. van der Veer & S. Munshi (Eds.), Media, war, and terrorism: Responses from the middle east and Asia (pp. 185–196). London: Routledge. Nacos, B. L. (2013). Mass-mediated debate about torture in post 9/11 America. In J. Seethaler, M. Karmasin, G. Melschek, & R. Wohlert (Eds.), Selling war: The role of the

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mass media in hostile conflicts from world war I to the war on terror (pp. 331–351). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Nimmo, D. (1976). The drama, illusion and reality of political images: Drama in life: The uses of communication in society (J. E. Combs & M. W. Mansfield, Eds.). New York: Hastings House, pp. 258–270. Nimmo, D., & Combs, J. E. (1985). Nightly horrors: Crisis coverage by television network news. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Norris, J. J. (2017). Why Dylann Roof is a terrorist under federal law, and why it matters. Harvard Journal on Legislation, 54(1), 501–541. Oates, S. (2007). The neo-soviet model of the media. Europe-Asia Studies, 59(8), 1279–1297. Pence, G. (2015, January 1). The losses he caused and those who narrowly escaped the Birmingham Bombing. Alabama Media Group. AL.COM. Perlroth, N., Wines, M., & Rosenberg, M. (2017, September 1). Russian election hacking efforts, wider than previously known, draw little scrutiny. The New York Times. Picard, R. G. (1987). The conundrum of news coverage of terrorism. The University of Toledo Law Review, 18, 141–150. Postman, N. (1985). Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business. New York: Penguin Books. Reeves, J. (2005, April 14). UAB student is the unsung hero of the Rudolph case. The Decatur Daily. Online Edition. Satariano, A., Wakabayshi, D., & Kang, C. (2018, August 28). Trump accuses Google of burying conservative news in search results. The New York Times. Schmid, A. (2011). The Routledge handbook of terrorism research. New York: Routledge. Seib, P. (2013). Delivering war to the public: Shaping the public sphere. In J. Seethaler, M. Karmasin, G. Melschek, & R. Wohlert (Eds.), Selling war: The role of the mass media in hostile conflicts from world war I to the war on terror (pp. 1–14). Chicago: Intellect, The University of Chicago Press. Seibert, F. S., Peterson, T., & Schramm, W. (1956). Four theories of the press: The authoritarian, libertarian, social responsibility and soviet communist concepts of what the press should be and do. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Stanislawski, B. H. (2005). Transnational organized crime, terrorism, and the WMD. International Studies Review, 7(1), 158–160. Stigall, D. (2016). “Central authorities” and the global network to combat transnational crime and terrorism. Air & Space Power Journal: Afrique et Francophonie, 7(1), 48–53. Swenson, K. (2018, January 23). Fake news: I’m coming to gun you all down: Mich, man accused of making threatening calls to CNN. The Washington Post. Terrorism and the Media in the 1980s. (1984). Proceedings of a conference, April 14, 1983. Transnational Communications Center and Institute for Studies in International Terrorism, State University of New York. Washington, DC: The Media Institute. Todd, R. (2018). Trust women: A progressive christian argument for reproductive justice. Boston: Beacon Press. Turner, S. (2017). District thailand: Identification, spectatorship, and the Hunger Games in Thailand. Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 14(1), 88–107. Vlassis, A. (2014). Soft power, global governance of cultural industries and rising powers: The case of China. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 22(4), 481–496. Wadhwa, T., & Ng, G. (2017, July 31). Tech companies policing the web will do more harm than good. Wired.

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Williamson, E. (2018, August 7). Alex Jones urges info wars fans to fight back and send money. The New York Times. Yin, J. (2008). Beyond the four theories of the press: A new model for the Asian & world press. Journalism and Communication Monographs, 10(1), 3–62. Zhao, C. (2018, January 23). Man who threatened to kill CNN employees over “fake news” arrested. Newsweek. Ziv, S. (2015, April 15). How social media changed news coverage after the Boston marathon attack. Newsweek.

10 THE VIOLENT AESTHETIC

A reality competition game on the Syfy cable network, Face Off (2011–), offers challenges to a group of makeup artists to see which one can fabricate the most believable or shocking makeup for characters and creatures who often appear in genres of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Each week the makeup artists test their imaginations and technical skills in the creation of demons, space aliens, and monsters of all sorts. An episode typically follows these artists as they struggle to interpret the challenge they’ve been given, design a character, sculpt and cast the prosthetics, and then apply all the parts and paint to a live model, who is transformed from a human being into a grotesque illusion that is “camera-ready” and convincing or compelling enough to appear in a professional media production. The climax of each episode comes when the judges, industry award-winning creature and concept designers, view the makeup these competing artists created. When provided the opportunity to view this work up close, judges might gather around a particularly impressive monster on stage, touching the prosthetics, peering at the elaborate paint job, and commenting on the design and execution. As the judges examine a preferred creation, they murmur things like “beautiful, exquisite, lovely, stunning, gorgeous.” The object of this admiration is usually a being that has been crafted with outrageous deformities, a hideous demon, grotesque beast, or rotting zombie, whose potential for fantasy violence is obvious. The judges’ appreciation seems oddly directed at such intentional hideousness. Their comments may reflect wonder at the technical skills of an artist who can turn latex and paint into a credible monster but the judges may also be seeing beauty in these creations. Rather than looking at the violent character from a moral or ethical perspective, judges observe the creature aesthetically, as they might enjoy the colorful markings on a poisonous snake. Moral judgments of violent characters and their actions may pronounce them ugly but that does not remove them or their ferocity from aesthetic consideration.

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The artists who design and create creatures for science fiction and horror genres make aesthetic judgments about how their character should look based on the character’s backstory, or those major incidents that shaped that character’s history. When hired to work on a production, a concept artist will confer with the director to make design decisions about physical details of a creature and how it will move in a scene. The artist considers what the creature has endured, its mannerisms, its environment, and how it might act or react to situations in the script. Vicious characters and brutal actions have historically been displayed in traditional arts and have maintained a flamboyant and hefty share of exposure in digital storytelling. All aspects of life, the ordinary and ugly, as well as those imagined and never lived, inspire aesthetic interpretation. What takes characters, ideas, or events and turns them into an aesthetic experience are those media artists who perceive these things, interpret or imagine them as story, and then transform and expand this story through the tools of verbal, visual, and nonverbal languages.

Applied Aesthetics and Violent Art Aesthetics refers to those theories or philosophies that attempt to understand the qualities of beauty. These are the theoretical stories about how beauty is defined and appreciated. By the 18th century, aesthetics had become a distinct philosophical study, often linked to ideas about morality, spirituality, knowledge, emotion, and logic that inspired centuries of debate over the fundamental nature of beauty (Guyer, 2013). Modern aesthetic critique examines elements such as structure, expression, appearance, mood, and plot in such artistic domains as music, theater, painting, and poetry and, more recently, in digital media that combine multiple artistic traditions. Applied media aesthetics merges appreciation with production, suggesting techniques for manipulating light, space, time, motion, and sound to best serve a story (Zettl, 2017). Applied media aesthetics is the “how to” for creating an effective media product. The work of production involves decisions about language choices: the visual and nonverbal interpretations of the verbal script. Although it might be possible for an auteur to have artistic control over all the languages in a production, development of a commercial media product is usually a collaborative enterprise, involving the aesthetic judgments of multiple individuals. We know the production processes entail many stages of gatekeeping subject to various controls: economic, personal, and ideological. All can impact aesthetic decisions. Not every person involved in a production can close the gate on a media story, but each one may be able to alter its development or contribute to its aesthetic. Above-the-line personnel are those people who have considerable influence over the creative direction of a project. “Above-the-line” (ATL) is an accounting term for the costs associated with personnel such as the writer, producer, director, and on-camera talent. The cinematographer or director of photography

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(DP) is also often included in ATL costs. These are not the only people who make aesthetic decisions in a large-scale production. Below-the-line (BTL) production costs include salaries for camera operators, designers, composers, lighting technicians, stunt coordinators, and editors among others. In lower budget productions some individuals may take on multiple responsibilities to keep costs down. Though there are certainly differences in the production processes of different media products, the aesthetic decisions and gatekeeping processes in fictional film, television, video games, and internet media have similarities. The pressure on the teams of all commercial media productions is to create a product that will engage audiences, make a profit, and with skill and insight deliver something that is culturally meaningful. What a production team actually delivers with their completed media story is something as ephemeral and uncontrollable as experience. Though some may debate whether popular media are actually art forms, there is no denying that popular media have embraced the violent aesthetic. This involves artistic interpretations that emphasize aggressive characters and vicious actions, turning them into spectacularly brutal ornaments with which to decorate a story. The violent aesthetic is particularly obvious in the manipulation of visual language, where production can involve stylishly elaborate treatments of formal elements. The violent aesthetic influences on-screen action for visual impact, driving decisions about lighting, framing, character, and camera maneuvers. Though it carries implications for the framing discussed in Chapter Two, framing in production is preoccupied with picture composition and placement of subjects within the picture’s borders. A director will consult with the DP to determine how character actions should be blocked, calculating how each character will move in relation to the camera, elements of the set (or location), and the story’s other characters. Once movements are decided, the DP will light the set for mood and then position the camera for the shot. These choices will influence how audiences interpret the scene. The horror-comedy television series, Ash vs Evil Dead (Starz cable network, 2015–2018), provides examples of aesthetic choices familiar to fans. The series was based on the 1981 horror film Evil Dead and often used low key and kinetic lighting as well as aggressively mobile camerawork to emphasize dread and gore (Gray, 2016). The first episode of the series illustrates these techniques when two detectives enter a dark, abandoned house filled with hard, foreboding shadows. This low key or chiaroscuro lighting creates sharp contrasts between light and dark and is typical for film noir and horror genres. When a demon reveals itself, one of the detectives drops a flashlight, which spins abnormally as if possessed, casting constantly shifting shadows across the room. Kinetic lighting adds movement to light and is intended to increase both tension and confusion. Neither the characters in the scene nor the audiences watching can be entirely sure of what they’re seeing. Light is not violence but it cultivates the mood that permeates viewer perception, biasing the spectator’s judgments with the attitude of a scene (Plantinga, 2014).

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Visual extravagance in the violent aesthetic extends backward to the mid1960s with the decline and final abandonment of the production code for Hollywood films, which coincided with advancements in staging and special effects. The mid-century introduction of squibs allowed a director to simulate a bullet hitting the body. A squib (or bullet-hit) is a “condom filled with fake blood, which is concealed within an actor’s clothing and wired to detonate” on command (Prince, 1995, p. 10). When the charge explodes, it breaks the latex, pushing the theatrical blood outward and through the actor’s clothes. Squibs quickly became an enduring feature of on-screen gun violence, an attempt at realism that was intensified with unrealistic manipulation of time using camera speeds and/or post-production editing. It has become a familiar stylistic choice to cut between different speeds so that the impact of violence and the moment of a character’s death are prolonged with slow motion. The 2014 film, 300: Rise of an Empire, shows an Athenian general leading an attack on Persians, using his sword to stab, gut, and behead assailants. The film’s production both speeds up and slows the action to create an unnatural tango of violence and blood. Unconnected to any real-world physics, blood from wounded soldiers billows and hangs in the air until the movie’s action speeds up again. The more contemporary trend is to produce intense and flamboyant works of exploitation aesthetics which quickly migrate across digital and social media platforms into user-generated contexts, when fans of the violent aesthetic create video mash-up composites of on-screen death (Purse, 2017). Some critics see the excesses of digital effects and slow motion violence as the creation of a majestic aesthetic experience. “Here we are seeing life meeting death, where the vivacious and vital possibilities of digital technology make something come alive anew beyond the initial capture and its reckoning” (Johnson, 2017, p. 49). Although it is possible to separate the aesthetic experience from the moral one, a concern is whether producers and audiences should respect the aesthetic dimensions of media violence without considering the context or moral dimensions of the story, how the violent action supports that story, what it means, and whether or not it is necessary. Art can certainly reflect life, clarify and improve life; and since most of humanity teeters on the edge of violence every day, there is no earthly reason why art should not turn violence to its own good ends, showing us what we do and why. The clear danger, of course, is that violence begets violence in life and engenders confusion in art. (Morgenstern, 2000, p. 50) Among the most expensive and dangerous moments of production are those that deal with choreographing violent stunts like explosions, car crashes, and gunfights. There have been serious accidents on film and television sets when stunts go wrong. Because safety concerns may not significantly impact the

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on-screen aesthetic, there is a tendency for lower budget, student, and nonunion productions to make their budget cuts in safety expenses. A handbook detailing the processes of film and video production recommends that projects with lower budgets rent an ambulance to stand by during the staging of violent stunts in case of an emergency (Wales, 2012). With the advance of production technology, green screens and digital software became more cost effective for smaller budgets and less dangerous than live staging. Technology supplemented or replaced some expensive stunts, enabling the creation of violent scenes that had very little relationship to lived experience. Even with green screen technology, the violent scene is likely to be among the most expensive to produce, particularly as contemporary productions compete with each other in a field crowded with optical overindulgence.

Aesthetics of Ritualistic, Hyper-Real, and Representative Violence In his examination of hyper-real violence, critical scholar Henry A. Giroux makes distinctions between the use of violence that may be unnecessary or disruptive to the story and the use of violence intended to illuminate important ideas about humanity and brutality; power and subordination; racism and political agency (1995). In media stories where unnecessary and continuous violence dominates, Giroux notes two separate aesthetic types: the ritualistic and the hyper-real. Some horror, science fiction, and action stories tend to showcase ritualistic violence, which celebrates pure spectacle and is often campy, ostentatious, contrived, formulaic, and predictable. These are the media stories most saturated in digital video effects to transform aggression into actions of bizarre travesty or unrealistic splendor. Because the abstract visual expression is severed from the real pain it represents, stories of ritualistic violence are less likely to inspire audience critique of violence and its implications. Martial arts films as a subgenre of action are one example of media stories with a reputation for using both slow motion and computer-generated imagery (CGI) to create ritualistic violence that is highly stylistic and often award-winning. Movies such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Hero (2002), House of the Flying Daggers (2004), and Enter the Warrior’s Gate (2016) offer simple stories of revenge and betrayal where retaliating warriors appear to leap into gravity-defying slow motion flight, landing into choreographed combat that is as much ballet as battle. Verticality, or the use of the screen’s vertical axis, is noticeably manipulated through slow motion and CGI to move characters to giddy heights. The protagonist’s upward mobility is a dynamic device for the heightened emotions of violent conflict, providing dynamic expression to feelings of “soaring hope, unbridled desire, and aspiration” (Whissel, 2006, p. 24). It is an impressionistic imitation of external reality in which understanding the violence is subordinate to impressive visual effects.

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The film Hero (2002) offers examples of ritualistic violence when repetitive fight scenes become visual poetry. As a story told from multiple viewpoints, Hero references the classic film Rashomon (1950) but is less likely remembered as a philosophical questioning about the relationship between truth and perspective and more likely remembered for the grandeur of its ritualistic violence. Hero treats combat as an art form, comparing it to both music and calligraphy. In one example scene, the protagonist battles an assassin during a rain, where water drops drizzle into the courtyard as the two enemies fight. The protagonist pays a blind musician to accompany the combat on his harp. While the music plays, the protagonist imagines his attack and his enemy’s response. When the harp strings break, the protagonist leaps across the space in slow motion, tearing through suspended raindrops that rupture on contact, splintering like shattered diamonds. Giroux refers to this ritualistic violence as “deeply masculine” (1995, p. 337). Reflecting on the exploration of hyper-masculinity from Chapter Eight, it may be that heterosexual men can enjoy a breathtaking aesthetic experience without concern for ridicule of their masculinity when it is violence that is rendered as high beauty. Other applications of ritualistic violence are less poetry and more kitsch or cartoon, but equally surreal and impossible. The 2014 film Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequels provide examples of ritualistic violence as outlandish, exaggerated action with an exceptional number of on-screen deaths. Hyper-real violence is an aesthetic more often associated with gangster, spy, and crime genres. This extreme violence is gritty, cynical, ugly, hip, cool, and often without remorse. The violence may seem realistic but it is overemphasized, pushed beyond what is natural or probable into the realm of sadistic humor and cynicism. Instead of turning violent sequences into stunning spectacles, these stories rely on exaggerated and unrelenting bloodshed, cruelty, and carnage to bring legitimacy to a plot that would otherwise be thin. Hyper-real violence is noisy, grotesque, constant, and sometimes served with a punchline. The sheer amount of hyper-real violence in a story can drive the hero far beyond the limits of credible human endurance. Films such as Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), No Country for Old Men (2007), The Revenant (2015), and The Hateful Eight (2015) provide examples of hyper-real violence. In a discussion about the violence in the film Red Sparrow (2018), director Francis Lawrence describes it as stylistic realism. “We were aiming for a gritty, visceral, almost naturalistic version of that kind of violence, versus the ‘ballet’ of it” (Mulcahey, 2018, p. 96). A third form of violence reproduces the aggression in lived experience or places it in the context of fantasy in an attempt to better understand brutality apart from the massive illusions people spin about and around it. I will substitute the term “representational” here for Giroux’s term “symbolic” to distinguish this violence from the symbolic violence of terrorism. Representational violence probes “the complex contradictions that shape human agency, the limits of rationality, and the existential issues that tie us to other human beings and a

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broader social world” (p. 337). These stories may draw from historical accounts and often have violence as a core theme. Examples Giroux provides include films like Platoon (1987), Unforgiven (1992), The Crying Game (1992), and Schindler’s List (1993). I would add to this selection films like Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), The Hurt Locker (2009), Dunkirk (2017), and Get Out (2017). These films are attempts to connect the visceral response with the thoughtful one. Though critics rarely describe the horror genre as thoughtful, the film Get Out (2017) was an effort to get under the skin of racial tension, using violence to expose anxieties around miscegenation and the paranoia black people have in traversing a hostile white culture (Harris, 2017). The use of fairies and a faun in Pan’s Labyrinth does not beautify the film’s violence but explains how a fantasy-prone child living on the front lines of the Spanish Civil War uses myth and imagination to reinterpret the baffling cruelty of adults and her own sacrifices for their war. In the development of the sequential art for Marcus’ story from Chapter Three, there was an effort to visually separate the violence of the martial arts film that the character Marcus enjoys from the bloody fight Marcus becomes involved in at his school. The cinematic violence is majestic and unnatural. In contrast, when Marcus fights his classmate, the attempt was to make the action cramped, ugly, and painful in the frame. Artist Tristan Fuller explained that he wanted panels showing the martial arts movie to have dreamlike intensity but he wanted the character of Marcus and the bullies at school to seem trapped inside panels that had more narrative clarity. Both are aesthetic experiences within the same sequential art: one intended to emphasize the beauty of fictional film violence and the other intended to represent a tragic personal experience (Tristan Fuller, telephone interview, September 18, 2018).

Learning Techniques of Media Violence Bringing aesthetic judgment to violent scenes in a media story is part of the struggle media production faculty confront as they mentor students eager to find a professional home in the entertainment industry. A frequent complaint from production faculty is that in their impatience to learn production skills and to make something that might be commercially successful, too many students put emphasis on technique and turn to formula for their stories. Too often student producers want to recreate ritualistic violence, sacrificing plot and story to decadent brutality, or they attempt to reproduce the ruthless pessimism of hyper-real violence without exploring the actual consequences violence has for lived experience. Story becomes an afterthought. “Some of these students don’t have personal experience with violence, so for them the violent story is just a fairy tale or a joke. Violence is only connected to them through films and video games” (Anonymous faculty telephone interview, July 10, 2018). There is an eagerness among some amateur producers to copy the violence they’ve seen in popular media or to reproduce their own violent versions of favorite stories. Anecdotal

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accounts from production faculty suggest that this eagerness sometimes translates into carelessness. I’ve heard multiple accounts where police, who weren’t properly notified about a production, arrived on set believing they were encountering an actual crime rather than the staging of a video or movie scene. In one example that happened not too long after the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, production students at a different institution were so excited about staging a gun fight in a university parking deck that they neglected to notify campus police about their project. The resulting confusion when armed and anxious police arrived on set could have also been disastrous, but luckily wasn’t. Shooting a scene that involves weapons creates an additional danger for young producers of color, when the action looks real to concerned bystanders and police are called. In 1981, Professors Michelle Citron and Ellen Seiter complained that the divorce between technique and content had become too routine in media production classes, and that the culture surrounding media production too often marginalized female students by regarding art as heterosexual male privilege and technology as the big guns of aggressive storytelling. Citron and Seiter shared a plot synopsis for a proposed student film where the story’s protagonist argues with his girlfriend, murders her, stuffs her body into a garbage bag, and then calmly walks off into the night. The suggestion was that this proposed plot was the rule rather than the exception for student projects. They criticized instructional practices such as the classroom use of the outdated shower sequence from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) for teaching lighting and editing. Some instructors praised the sequence as a paragon of technique, while their students watched a woman stabbed to death on screen. Given a learning environment where the violent image is routinely held in such high esteem, it isn’t surprising that students would want to reproduce it. Citron and Seiter were issuing a wake-up call for production faculty that by teaching students to be technologically savvy but perhaps not truly media literate, they were perpetuating some of the worst Hollywood practices and creating learning environments that were hostile to both diversity and thoughtful storytelling. Thirty years later, production faculty were still complaining that they too often saw purely derivative, racist, homophobic, violent, and misogynistic content in student work (Proctor, Branch, & Kristjansson-Nelson, 2011). Faculty were tired of screening student films with yet another violent drug deal and a dead woman in the trunk of a car. Though the intention behind the research that examined contemporary production classes was to address bias and create more inclusive production experiences for students, the concern about violent content in student productions was also central to this inquiry. EDIT Media (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Teaching Media) is an initiative that developed from discussions among caucuses of the University Film and Video Association as well as from interviews and surveys with media faculty, administration, and students about ways to create better classroom experiences for media production students. Among the ten best practices for teaching production, EDIT Media recommends blending theory with practice. Students want hands-on experience with how to light and frame a subject

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or how to use digital software to manipulate an image, but it is also important to engage with their stories in a theoretical and historical context. The blend of production and theory requires that students have a strong understanding of what representation means, so that when they create characters, they’re thinking through those deeper consequences of portrayal, pulling characters from their own lives with all the nuances of what it means to live a life and not just creating characters based on the limited versions of what they’ve seen in other media. (Jen Proctor, telephone interview, August 30, 2018) The process of learning how to produce a media story includes developing an awareness of each creative choice, the meaning that choice expresses, and why that choice is important to the story. Advice also includes supporting student creativity through constraints. This does not mean creating a list of banned content items or a “production code” for the classroom. Instead, the recommendation is to focus on conceptual or stylistic approaches to a theme, directing student attention toward a creative challenge and away from reproducing violent Hollywood scenes. A limited production assignment can engage student ingenuity and involve them more deeply with specific skills. Some professors are unwilling to put any restrictions on student work, believing that once students become professionals and classroom limitations are lifted, the new professional will confront violent content without ever having dealt with that challenge in the classroom, a situation that could invite thoughtless, clichéd responses. Media professor Shawn Montano believes students are more passionate about projects that come from their own ideas. Allowing them the excitement of ownership sometimes means letting students produce violence-driven narratives. I’ve had some groups of students where violence was a continual theme. I had one student group that produced a parody of online dating about a homicidal maniac looking for love. They took a worse-case scenario to the extreme as a horror comedy. That kind of freedom gives permission for some spectacular failures, but I’m going to allow students to experiment. This is college. If you’re going to fail, this is where you do it. He also observed that not every student is just mimicking their favorite film. Sometimes students have real experience with violence and have a need to explore what they’ve suffered. “I had this one student who was definitely dealing with some personal demons . . . others just enjoy the genre” (Shawn Montano, Telephone Interview, June 26, 2018). When students are insistent about making films with misogynistic and derivative violence, it may be important to find out why. If the story is simply a showcase for violent scenes and an opportunity to play with pyrotechnics, the faculty member might mentor student producers toward a deeper

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exploration of character and meaning, including a discussion about what they want audiences to experience and why. One of the contributors to EDIT media, Jen Proctor, explains that she is definitely not opposed to all violence in storytelling. Violence has a place . . . but we want our students to be fresh and original, thinking about story in new ways .  .  . if students want to explore the aesthetic of violence, I don’t have a problem with that if they can demonstrate that they are pushing the aesthetic in a new direction, telling a story that’s based in research or their own experience. There needs to be something else going on that makes this worthwhile. They have to be able to defend their choices .  .  . part of my push back against violence is I don’t want my students to fall into clichés. (telephone interview, August 30, 2018) Other faculty add that they want students to consider whether the violent scene is redundant: is it just another gory detail or does it support the story in a necessary way? I think there’s a fascination some students have with squibs, weaponry, and explosions. They get pretty jacked up about doing scenes with high action. They think learning this stuff .  .  . that mastering the technology is what’s going to make their career rather than following safe production practices. (Anonymous telephone interview, August 15, 2018) Another contributor to EDIT Media, Kyja Kristjansson-Nelson, shared that an online safety and ethics policy can help guide students when the excitement of the violent aesthetic turns dangerous, but other student voices are also important guides. When a student project wanted to include a violent scene with squib effects, her class viewed the test video based on the squib techniques a student had learned from YouTube. The squibs weren’t strapped to actors at this point; it was just basement tests. Well, these things were blowing up and starting small fires. Watching this, my pulse and blood pressure went through the roof .  .  . just as the video was ending, maybe 15 hands shot up in the air. So we opened it up for discussion and the whole class—every single person—was telling him you can’t do that. It’s not safe. You can’t put anything like that on an actor . . . it felt so good to hear them speak up. I wasn’t the only one with objections. The student producers ended up doing what professionals do: they hired a licensed pyrotechnics expert who was certified to do the work. They also called the local sheriff ’s department to come and observe the whole shoot .  .  . . The content still went forward; it was graphic, but it held together narratively. They made sure that the violence was done in

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a safe way. They had to spend quite a bit of money on that part of it, but that was also a good learning experience .  .  . these are the professional safety practices that we expect them to follow now. (Kyja Kristjansson-Nelson, telephone interview, September 20, 2018) While there are still complaints about young filmmakers and their fascination with violence, production faculty have noticed a new sensitivity among some students for the integrity of story and a rebellion against the predictability of conventional Hollywood production practices. Faculty have additionally recognized an expanding diversity among student filmmakers who have different experiences and unique stories to tell. These students are challenging the uniformity of violent narratives even if they haven’t altogether avoided violence.

Professionals Working With Violence Professional media production faces a similar environmental challenge to other manufacturing industries but on two fronts: physical and cultural. The physical processes of production can do literal harm to the environment when producers don’t properly care for the locations where they shoot or wisely consider for proper disposal and reuse of production materials. There has been a push toward sustainable production practices among those who want to see media stories created in an environmentally responsible way. As important as it is to be sustainable to the physical environment, many producers also feel responsible to the emotional and intellectual landscape not to litter it with clichés of unnecessary violence. The debate is whether potential profits merit investing personal talents in projects that only contribute to the cultural landfill. American cinematographer John Bailey explained his decision to stop working on yet another unoriginal project filled with repetitive, forgettable violence. He needed the job but took a financial risk and turned down the work, believing that media producers have a responsibility to audiences but a greater responsibility to themselves as artists to create work that actually speaks to the human experience. “I do believe there is a strong correlation between our work, the kinds of films we choose to work on, those we refuse to do, and the people we become, certainly over the long haul” (1994, p. 28). Media production jobs generally belong to the workforce known as the gig economy, meaning that a job is temporary. Like most of the cast and crew, a DP like Bailey is an independent contractor who must produce or perish in a system where reputation is critical to financial stability. Quitting a job or turning down paying work is risky. With so much content that is violent or even subpar, it’s possible for selective professionals to face extended periods of unemployment. The opposite danger is to book yourself into a violent, mediocre production, only to have the project ultimately cancel. Meanwhile, a superior opportunity goes to someone else. During periods of economic downturn, production professionals have been known to survive by taking jobs on substandard projects,

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even helping to produce pornography (Morris, 2009). The risk of accepting this work is getting “type cast” into the kinds of productions that don’t challenge creativity and may hamstring careers.

“The Pitch” The following graphic story is the result of discussions with faculty, former students, independent, and low budget media makers about the interplay of the gatekeeping process, aesthetic decision-making, and story possibilities in preproduction planning. In this story, a newly formed production company hears two pitches for ideas about a potential narrative film in which a major investor is the developer of a new video game.

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While there may be concern about how gatekeeping processes can close the gate on worthy projects, this story suggests an instance where the gate was properly closed on a project and a production method that posed a number of hazards. Swatting is a vicious prank where a culprit makes a false 911 call to bring police to the home of an unsuspecting victim, only for the police to discover that there is no actual danger and they have also been victimized. The basic hoax has been around for decades. When I was in high school, prank bomb threats were routine during exam week. A bomb threat meant the school was evacuated and exams postponed, while police methodically searched the school for bombs that didn’t exist. The newer versions of this old hoax is an internet phenomenon that converts the prank into a watchable media story. If a swat team arrives on a bogus call while the gamer is live-streaming, audiences watch as police interrupt the gamer in what could be a life-threatening situation. Swatting does actually happen. Game culture is afflicted with rivalries and some people like to embarrass players while they are live-streaming (Wingfield, 2015). Repeating internet stories makes the proposed project more juvenile and reckless than edgy and the pre-production discussion wisely closed the gate on a production method using an actual prank. A producer who would consider swatting an acquaintance hasn’t considered the potential injury such a stunt could do to the targeted gamer, the police, the production crew, or his professional standing. The character of Scott possibly wanted to capitalize on what he believed to be a continuing audience fascination for reality media, or producer manipulation of real people for dramatic effect. Manipulated reality is not representational violence in the sense of connecting the visceral with the thoughtful. The violence may be “actual” and still be irresponsible. If the film had been made and distributed, the gimmick could have brought serious legal troubles. The pre-production process did consider another pitch under the same constraint that a developer’s video game be featured in the movie. Such restrictions are an example of economic control that producers may actively seek out for financial support. In this case, a game developer who helped to secure funding for the film wants to see his game advertised in the movie, a practice known as product placement. The second pitch does seem more professionally considered. The producers had done a bit of research on the proposed setting and considered how the video game would be integrated into the story as well as the overall aesthetic of a film that attempts to merge a video game with the disaster genre. In screenwriting classes, I have heard several pitches where writers wanted to explore the problems characters face during and after devastating hurricanes. There may be good reasons to explore how the stresses and tensions surrounding a natural disaster such as a major storm can cause people to behave aggressively. Screenwriters wanted to examine how formerly decent people succumb to violent temptation when they are abruptly cut off from jobs, infrastructure, and opportunity. One danger in focusing on scenes of brutal, post-hurricane crime is the temptation of using hyper-real violence that over-emphasizes bloodshed

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in order to bring more urgency or legitimacy to the story. Producers would need to decide if violent scenes are necessary to explain hazards people experience during recovery, as criminals re-establish their territory or find ways to take advantage of a bad situation. A video game could create a similar trap if producers succumb to ritualistic game violence that is kitsch, cartoon, and unnecessary. Ultimately, none of the ideas that inspired “The Pitch” were produced. Given all the potential hurdles of egos, ideology, and economics, it is amazing that any independent project finds full funding and makes it through arduous preproduction and production processes to finally see distribution.

Counter-Storytelling Producers deliberately using the unexpected perspective are counter-storytelling. In an article about counter-storytelling and independent filmmaking, David Coon chronicles how openly gay production professionals and actors formed their own for-profit production company, Mythgarden, to confront harmful media stories about queer populations (Coon, 2018). The major success for Mythgarden was their feature film Save Me (2007). In the film, a gay addict overdoses and enters a Christian retreat to be “cured” of his homosexual affliction and drug use. Rather than tell a predictable story about hostility between a victimized gay protagonist and sadistic Christian villains, producers resisted temptations to ridicule or demonize the ex-gay movement. The movie intentionally challenges traditional ideas about interpersonal and ideological conflict, examining values on both sides of the ex-gay debate. Religious-inspired guilt is heavy-handed, but producers took care to portray the ministry as sincere in its beliefs and genuine in its love for the client who arrives to be “healed.” The film’s violence is a result of internal conflict, when a gay character attempts suicide after realizing that the love he yearns for is not “in the Lord’s design.” Coon explains the self-inflicted violence as necessary for the story, providing a turning point for the protagonist and illustrating a potential consequence of the ex-gay ministry. Save Me was not a large budget or blockbuster film but was considered artistically successful. Yet, the production company ultimately closed. Securing funding for projects following the 2008 economic crisis proved too difficult for what some investors considered a niche market, or small audiences with narrowly focused interests. Mythgarden’s lesson for other media producers is that counter-storytelling works, though a small independent production company will have its financial challenges.

Aesthetics of Violent News In 2017–18, when I was doing most of the writing for this book, blood seemed to be everywhere: in schools, churches, workplaces, and streets. None of it was pretty. Though the news does not generally use variable motion, careful lighting, or beautiful cinematography, journalists do make decisions about which pictures

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or video clips to select, which words to use for describing an event, where a story should be positioned, and whether or not an event fits the values and definitions of news. These are all aesthetic judgments. Similar to professional producers of fiction, journalists covering violent news are confronted with the ethical dilemmas of their aesthetic choices. Footage showing a street fight, a shootout with police, or violence between protesting groups might be visually shocking but may not add to what citizens need to know to be safe in their own neighborhoods or to understand why the violence is happening. Journalists might ask how injecting the violent aesthetic into a news story better informs citizens and if it could actually distort coverage. It may not be necessary for citizens to see the likeness of a shooter or even know the name of the person responsible for a mass murder in order to understand the tragedy. Reporting that a 64-year-old man opened fire on concertgoers from the 32nd floor of his hotel room may be enough. Personal details and photos of the shooter might satisfy lurid public interest but the publicity also satisfies a shooter’s desire to leave a dark legacy. One problem with an attention economy is that fragile individuals can come to believe they must achieve media celebrity in order for their lives to have value. If law enforcement needs public help in identifying and capturing a suspect, journalists might want to release the photos. Otherwise, journalists should consider how the choice to publish might contribute to contagion and copycat crime among emotionally vulnerable and suicidal audience members. The violent aesthetic can be seductive for journalists, sometimes obscuring truth with the ritualistic beauty or hyper-real shock more often associated with fictional stories. The documentary Militainment, Inc.: Militarism and Pop Culture (Stahl, 2007) and the related book Militainment, Inc.: War, Media and Popular Culture (Stahl, 2010) both argue that the aesthetics of entertainment have compromised images of the real violence of war, blending war coverage seamlessly into the broader cultural landscape. The argument is that media coverage of American wars mimics the aesthetics of action films, video games, and extreme sports. In reporting on the war in Iraq, journalists complied with the Pentagon’s goal to make the war appear to be short, abstract, precise, sanitized, and aesthetically beautiful. Cameras positioned on the ground pointed up at the sky, capturing a mesmerizing pyrotechnic television show for Americans watching at home. Cameras looking down on devastation did so from a great distance. Images of destruction and human misery were minimized or extracted. The Iraq war had a Pentagon-produced trailer and news reports often had the aesthetic of an action film complete with inspirational soundtracks. The Pentagon additionally assisted in production of music videos, supplying expensive military props for propagandistic songs to boost soldier morale and energize public support. The use of digital simulations in some reporting made war seem like a game. Footage of soldiers made them appear to be athletes in an extreme sporting event. The violent aesthetic also dominated coverage of anti-war protests, emphasizing physical skirmishes that framed protesters as antipatriotic brutes. This critical examination of war coverage is a reminder to journalists that the violent

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aesthetic can seduce the unwary into a style of reporting that corrupts the mission to inform citizens and maintain a check on government power.

Applied Media Theory Stories put a face on abstract theory, while research reveals whether that abstract theory is useful for explaining our stories. Many of the media theories we’ve examined attempt to condense our very difficult social world into simpler narratives about cause and effect. Some of these theories come with huge collections of data, empirical evidence to support or question the usefulness of a particular theory. Even with an abundance of data, debates continue about the usefulness of some theoretical narratives. Media producers may be tempted to dismiss all of it as not relevant to the work they do. Yet, the narratives these theories tell us can be as important to media artists as they are to social scientists and philosophers. Research provides a more nuanced story about audience preferences than the old industry adage that violence gets attention. Of course media theories also tell us that violence captures audience interest. People might even be biologically wired to notice violence. However, data from uses and gratifications research also suggests that attention does not necessarily come with appreciation. While audiences want escapism and amusement, many want stories that connect them to the purposes of life. Audiences want to see characters behaving with moral determination toward goals that are more than simply self-serving. They want to be entertained but they also want to be inspired. Other theories further hint that while audiences may be wired to pay attention to violence, they can become bored with it too. The theoretical stories behind desensitization and dead-level abstraction are both warnings to producers about overloading a media product and the larger cultural environment with constant violence. The movie that seems to be one long series of fights, examining every brutal detail, every bullet hit and knife thrust, is stuck at a low-level of abstraction. The audience can become jaded, watching casually with no emotional investment and increasing impatience for the movie to get to the point. Audiences can become so desensitized to violence that the on-screen action actually becomes tedious. They’ve already seen demons beheaded and body parts strewn across the room. What else is new? The same monotony might infect the first person shooter game in which the only required response is to constantly pull a trigger as quickly as possible. In his discussion about decisions behind the aesthetics of graphic novels and comic strips, Scott McCloud warns that when the level of intensity is “tuned up to full volume at all times, any hope of dramatic contrast is lost” (2006, p. 49). Media theory explains that intensity without meaningful content and quiet moments only make an audience numb. The audience member seeking arousal through jump-scares may be better satisfied and find more appreciation for a story that delivers something new and thoughtful in connection with them. A horror movie like A Quiet Place (2018)

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has its jump-scares, but these are isolated within a preponderance of silence and stillness that creates tension surrounding the jump-scare moment. The film also asks audiences to imagine how a person might adapt to a world that is no longer the noisy place we know, how a disability can be reconsidered as an advantage, and how family members can care for each other and survive in a deadly world. What makes the film unique for the genre is that it avoids a continuous scream of blood and mayhem. If audiences can become callous, bored, or impatient with violence in media stories, it may seem odd that violence is still considered so valuable for an attention economy. We know the answer is complex. Theory suggests that attractions to violence include such elements as boredom susceptibility, morbid curiosity, hyper-masculinity, and whether a subculture or opinion leader labels that violent media product as “cool” or “important.” Media theory also explains that in complex ways stories do have an impact on the lives of audiences. Most members of an audience are unlikely to directly mimic or reproduce the violent behaviors they see on their screens, but media stories may help in the construction of pseudo-environments where audiences mentally live and make decisions. The story of cultivation theory is a warning to producers that, in addition to being cliché, the reproduction of the same violent story and character stereotypes contribute to belief in a mean world. Content analysis tells us that across platforms too many media stories have stereotyped heroes as heterosexual males who have violent, hyper-masculine qualities, which the stories then validate as natural and necessary. Research suggests we need new stories with authentic heroes who defy violent stereotypes. In order to pull audiences into a story, to make them concerned for the characters, and perhaps to experience Aristotle’s katharsis, producers need to care about the characters that live in their story, the ideas their story expresses, and the sensations that story awakens. “It’s harder to simply kill off characters when you care about them. Sometimes characters must be sacrificed, but their loss should be deeply felt” (Hafed Bouassida, UFVA Screenwriting Caucus, August 6, 2015). Depicting more authentic male characters with a broader array of emotional responses would better reflect the actual diversity in masculinity and could make for a more interesting product. A media story’s most exquisite moments need not be lashed to aggression, murder, or war to have validity. Breathtaking heights and vibrantly saturated color need not be confined to scenes of brutal conflict. A male character should be able to appreciate the beauty of a sunrise without obligations to then shoot a deer, march into battle, or otherwise commit violence. Authenticity in representation is important for all characters. Violence can damage the way males understand masculinity, the way females understand their value, and the way queer populations understand their prospects. Critical theory would additionally ask producers to be aware of the ideology their story supports and not unwittingly wear the blindfold of cultural hegemony. Cliché can masquerade as truth when it is a tale everyone knows by heart.

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Conflict is at the heart of the stories people tell, but storytellers can find creative alternatives to violence for solving narrative conflicts and innovative ways to stage violence when it cannot or should not be avoided. Using negotiation, fast-talking protagonists might argue their way out of a violent confrontation. Trickery, indulgence, evasion, sanctions, and sympathy can also be interesting alternatives for solving story conflicts. A hero’s use of logic, charm, even spin could be more engaging than her ability to eliminate an enemy with force. When cultural differences between characters seem intractable, protagonists might learn to deal with their own emotions first, leading to a better appreciation of their enemy’s position if not a full resolution of the conflict between them. General semantics recommends looking beyond the two-valued evaluation to the many options forming that long, convoluted road between extreme choices. Audiences come to media screens with lived experiences that impact how they interpret what they see. Media producers have a responsibility to those audiences, but that responsibility may be more of a creative opportunity than a limitation. New York Times cultural reporter Aisha Harris describes how police harassment and violence against people of color have been a consistent feature of film and video entertainment and cautions producers about the effect of this violence on black audiences. In a short video about the depiction of police violence, Harris warns that contemporary audiences now also see police brutality as a common feature of social media feeds, often as the violence is happening. Audiences coming to entertainment media bring that lived baggage with them, particularly if the targeted audience is black. Her advice to professional media makers is to consider whether their treatment of violence is exploration of a social problem or exploitation of it. If the camera emphasizes excessive, detailed violence, even though it’s effective, it can be a bad experience. Her advice to artists, especially black artists struggling with questions of examination versus exploitation, is not to let the camera inhabit those abusive, horrific moments. The audience doesn’t necessarily have to see everything in order to understand the story. The implied action may actually be more powerful. What is imagined but not visualized can have significant impact. “It’s also very important to focus on the recovery, the aftermath, the emotional toll that comes long after the incident has happened” (Harris, Tiefenthaler, Reneau, & Buhre, 2018). Another way of appreciating the theoretical story is to look at how it predicts human experience, to see how useful theory can be for clarifying the relationship of media stories to unique personal encounters with violence. Moral panic, stereotyping, and interpersonal disgust can explain why an individual might be targeted for bullying and violence, especially if abusers assign that person to a group their leaders describe as “animal.” Cognitive dissonance explains the eagerness of some individuals to wall themselves inside a media environment that supports their worldview, even when those media choices are dangerously distorted or false. It explains why audiences will willfully misinterpret or “spin” media stories when confronted with those that don’t support their ideology. Theory also predicts that

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real people use media stories to help construct and interpret their own characters as they decide what kind of person they want to be and an aggressive person may deliberately choose violent stories as potential personal “scripts.” More and more media stories include introspective elements so that media industries themselves become characters featured in storytelling that investigates the role and power media have in people’s lived experience. Theories that are not useful in predicting human behavior are useful for revealing how many people still understand the function of violent media. In this way, even outdated theories make interesting stories, though to be meaningful the flaws should be evident. For example, a story that may seem to support direct effects should at least hint at the complexity of character and the many different pressures motivating individuals. Even the vengeful, media-influenced character from The Cable Guy (1996) does not simply reproduce what he sees on television, though he makes television the excuse for his bad behavior. In the 2016 feature film A Monster Calls, the Yew Tree Monster warns, “Stories are wild creatures. When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?” Social science may never fully understand the significance of the violent story for the interior lives of audiences or the ways stories are entangled in how people make sense of the violence in their world. Journalists, poets, producers, and artists may never fully grasp the power of violence in their own work, to see where violence is important to the story and pay attention when it becomes detrimental. The violent story is a dangerous place, sometimes ridiculous, sordid, and oftentimes unnecessary. People coming at the violence problem from different perspectives can seem to butt heads over approaches to research, the questions to ask, and the validity of results. The crusaders wanting to protect children and fragile adults from violent media and the rest of humanity from their potential aggressive responses suggest the answer is tougher policies and renewed, perhaps stricter production codes for all media products. For these crusaders, data showing a small but consistent relationship between media violence and human aggression is enough evidence to put harsher policies in place. Artists and humanists raise concerns about the autonomy necessary to explore humanity’s darker side. Any inconsistency in the data is enough for them to argue against stricter regulations. Some producers will claim that humanity is best served when artists are able to tackle any issue, especially the violent ones. Proud supporters of the First Amendment will emphasize that free speech, which implies the freedom to watch and listen, is such an important American value that any policy that threatens or limits that freedom is dangerous. This freedom does come with a terrible risk. Imagination can magnify those things it encounters, exaggerating violence and abnormality. It is beyond the power of producers to force meaning on any audience member. Audiences ultimately create the meaning. An old Chinese proverb teases that “the person who rides the tiger is afraid to dismount.” If we consider the tiger as a metaphor for the violence in

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storytelling, the suggestion may seem that media producers riding that tiger should just hold tight. The moment producers attempt to get off, they will be devoured, their professional esteem lost to a media system that demands blood in storytelling. The violent story can be beautiful, thrilling, and dangerous, but human beings create her and control her. Producers can pull up the reins or dig in the spurs. Without a grip on the tiger’s harness, attention to the path she takes, and knowledge of when to change her route or bring her to a stop, producers and their audiences can expect some teeth. It is important to remember that in the contemporary media landscape, many of us are both producers and consumers of media stories. Large media companies generally create commercial movies, television programs, and computer games, but many individuals are actively engaged in producing and sharing their own media stories or altering and resharing the stories of others. Some of these stories are happy announcements about family and personal accomplishments, but others are the vicious tigers of violent memes and videos. Media theories suggest it is important for all producers to consider the consequences when they decide to mount that violent tiger, and to have the courage to dismount when the beast threatens the more significant qualities of our stories, the ones we imagine as well as the ones we live.

References for Chapter Ten Bailey, J. (1994). Bang, bang, bang, bang, ad nauseam. American Cinematographer, 75(12), 26, 28–29. Citron, M., & Seiter, E. (1981, December). The woman with the movie camera. Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 26, 61–62. Coon, D. (2018). Mythgarden: Collaborative authorship and counter-storytelling in queer independent film. Journal of Film and Video, 70(3–4), 44–62. Giroux, H. A. (1995). Racism and the aesthetic of hyper-real violence: Pulp fiction and other visual tragedies. Social Identities, 1(2), 333–355. Gray, S. (2016). Return of the king: Cinematographers Dave Garbett and John cavil help lend stylized realism to the horror-comedy series Ash vs Evil Dead. American Cinematographer, 97(11), 30–39. Guyer, P. (2013). Monism and pluralism in the history of aesthetics. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 71(2), 133–143. Harris, A., Tiefenthaler, A., Reneau, N., & Buhre, M. L. (2018, July 20). Police violence is flooding our screens: What’s the impact? The New York Times. Culture. Harris, B. (2017, March 4). The giant leap forward of Jordan Peele’s “get out”. The New Yorker. Johnson, P. (2017). Life out of death-violent FX and it vivacious power. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 45(1), 40–49. McCloud, S. (2006). Making comics: Storytelling secrets of comics, manga, and graphic novels. New York: Harper Collins. Morgenstern, J. (2000). The thin red line. In S. Prince (Ed.), Screening violence (pp. 47–50). London: Athlone Press. Morris, C. (2009, November 16). Hollywood turns to porn as unemployment rises. CNBC.

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Mulcahey, M. (2018). Seduce and destroy: Jo Willems, ASC, SBC and director Francis Lawrence Weave a web of intrigue with the modern-day spy thriller Red Sparrow. American Cinematographer, 99(4), 84–99. Plantinga, C. (2014). Moods and Ethics in narrative film. In T. Nannicelli & P. Taberham (Eds.), Cognitive media theory (pp. 141–157). New York: Routledge. Prince, S. (Ed.). (1995). Screening violence. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Proctor, J., Branch, R. E., & Kristjansson-Nelson, K. (2011). Woman with the movie camera redux: Revisiting the position of women in the production classroom. Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, (53). Purse, L. (2017). Digital visceral: Textural play and the flamboyant gesture in digital screen violence. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 45(1), 16–25. Stahl, R. (2007). Militainment, Inc: Militarism and pop culture. [Documentary]. Media Education Foundation. Stahl, R. (2010). Militainment, Inc: War, media and popular culture. New York: Routledge. Wales, L. M. (2012). The complete guide to film and digital production: The people and processes (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Whissel, K. (2006). Tales of upward mobility: The new verticality and digital special effects. Film Quarterly, 59(4), 23–34. Wingfield, N. (2015). A cruel prank, streamed live. The New York Times, 164(56812), B1–B2. Zettl, H. (2017). Sight, sound, motion: Applied media aesthetics (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Cambridge Learning.

INDEX

above-the-line 268 abstraction 30–31; dead level 31, 287; high level 31; low level 31, 287; in non-verbal language 33; in verbal language 30; in visual language 33 agenda-setting 42–43 aggression 5; and catharsis 111–112; as consequence of violent media 116, 122, 124, 145–152, 290; and learning 115–116; and masculinity 203, 228–229; as personality trait 178–179, 193; and play 125; stimulus for 94 anecdotal evidence 23, 112 antisocial personality disorder 193 applied theory 287–291 bandwagon effect 41, 89 below-the-line 269 categorical thinking 31, 33; see also stereotyping catharsis 111–112, 194 change agent 84 channel 27 cognitive and behavioral theories 24 cognitive dissonance 88 communication 51; as group 36; as interpersonal 36, 91, 98; as intrapersonal 29; as mass 37; as non-verbal 33; as organizational 37; as pollution 51; as verbal 29; as visual 32 conflict 1–2; as group against group 12; as ideological 12–13; as individual

against group 12; as individual against individual 11; as individual against law 12; as individual against nature 13–14; as individual against self 10–11; as individual against supernatural 14 contagion or copycat effect 204 content analysis 138–141, 154, 207, 288 counter-storytelling 285 creepypasta 67, 173 critical theory 24 cruelty 179–180 cultivation theory 138–141; criticism of 141–142; heuristic model of 140; in video games 153–154 cultural studies 24 cyberwar 246, 259 data 23 decoding 27 dependency model 171–172 dependent variable 23 desensitization 116–118, 150, 287 direct effects theory 55; assumptions of 56–57; as bullet or magic bullet 55, 57; and comic books 59–62; and hoaxes 63–65; as hypodermic needle 55; and Pizzagate 63–67; and Slenderman 67–68; as transmission belt 55; and War of the Worlds 58–59 disgust reaction 180, 194; as core disgust 181, 193; as interpersonal disgust 181, 207, 247, 289; as moral disgust 181–182, 213, 247; violent responses to 182–183, 207

294

Index

disinhibition 116–117, 150, 178 distortion 41, 105, 203; as random 41; as systematic 41 diversive exploration 171, 174–176 dominant ideology 126, 142, 143–145, 205 doxing 90 dramatism 120–121, 123–124, 214 encoding 22, 27–28, 29–33, 34–35 epistemic curiosity 175 eudaimonic motivation 185 feedback 27–37 four theories of the press 251, 253, 254; assumptions of 251; authoritarian 251; communist (soviet totalitarian or socialauthoritarian) 252; and internet 257–259; libertarian 251–253; and non-western governments 254–256; social responsibility 253; and system changes 255 frame analysis 119 framing 43; as media influence 43, 50; and perception 105, 119; as picture composition 269 gaming disorder 150 gatekeeping 37–42, 268–269, 278; economic controls on 38–39; ideological controls on 39; and media breederism 142; parents and guardians as 94–95; personal controls on 39; and social mediators 89 gaze theory 209–210; and oppositional gaze 210 gender 202; and fluidity 214, 228; and media preferences 208–213; and stereotyping 203 general aggression model (GAM) 150–151; critiques of 151–152, 232 general semantics 29–33, 289 genre 10; preferences for 208–212 graphic violence 4 Guernica 6 hate crime 247 hedonic motivation 185 hegemony 142–145, 205, 288 hero’s journey 7–8; and journalism 9 heteronormative story 213–214 hyper-masculinity 202; violence and 203–209, 213, 230–231, 232 hypothesis 23

imitation hypothesis 115 incel 213 independent variable 23 information explosion 51 information seeking 171 inhibition container 111–112, 194 innovator 84 institutional violence 4–5 internet media 34–35 interposed device 28 intersectionality 231 katharsis 109–111, 288 limited media effects 91–96, 98, 111 macroscopic theory 24 mainstreaming 139, 141–142, 154, 213, 230 mass media 34 mean world hypothesis 161–162, 288, 138–139; index for 139; and resonance 139–140 media breederism 142 media literacy 95–96, 126, 152 meta-analysis 124, 140, 148, 176, 178 MeToo movement 231 microscopic theory 24 mimesis 112–113 models of communication processes 27–29 moderate effects 42, 97–98, 105, 137 moral panic theory 152–153 morbid curiosity 172–173, 175–176, 178, 180, 185 multi-step flow 84, 92 muscle dysmorphia 204 net neutrality 40 noise 28–30, 36–37; physical or mechanical 28; psychological 28, 51, 79; semantic 28, 79 normal curiosity 174 obstinate audience 79, 87–88, 95, 96 opinion leader 84, 86, 89–91, 92–93, 98–105, 288 opponent-process theory 184 optimism 195–196 patriarchy 211–212, 229–230 perceptual curiosity 175

Index

performances 113, 119, 121, 205; of gender 205, 207, 208, 214; of violence 113, 117, 141 play theory 122–123 powerful effects 97–98, 105 priming effect 43, 116, 150 product placement 284 pseudo-environment 137, 138, 141, 142, 288 queer theory 213–215 rape culture 211 reality media 284 redundancy 28 refrigerator syndrome 216–217 sandbox 145–146 script theory 121–122 selection 7; as abstraction 30; as cognitive stages 86–88, 145; of violent media 170, 178, 179, 208 selective attention 86 selective behavior 88 selective exposure 86 selective perception 86 selective retention 87 sender 27 sensation seeking 178; and disgust 182; and violent media 178, 179, 185 slanting 32 Slender Man or Slenderman 67–68 social learning theory 113; and aggression 113–115; criticisms of 114–115; steps of 115 sociobiology 194–195, 228–229 spiral of silence 97 stereotyping 31, 153, 203, 289 story 1–2; conflicts in 10–14; and journey 7–9; as spreadable 36; structure of 6–7; theory as 22–23; as viral 35

295

structural-functional theory 24 subculture 84–86, 90, 91, 137, 153, 213, 288 swatting 284 symbolic interaction 119 symbolic violence 217, 245–246, 247, 248, 272 technological determinism 51 terrorism 245, 248; coverage of 249–250; and creativity 250; and crime 247; domestic 245, 247; international 245; and hate crime 247; special-interest 245 trends 36, 138 troll and trolling 65, 90, 146, 147, 213 two-step flow theory 84, 89 two-valued evaluation 32–33, 231, 244, 289 unconscious projection 32 uses and gratifications 170, 210, 287; assumptions of 171, 178; critiques of 170–171, 177 violence 2–5; and cartoons 3; enjoyment of 176–178; and evolution 179, 181, 194–195; and gender 230; and love 216–217; and superheroes 215–216; and video games 62, 105, 118, 145–150 Violence Index 138 violent aesthetic 269; dangers in the production of 270–271, 273–274; and education 273–277; and gig economy 277; as hyper-real 272; as motiveless 14; and news 285–287; as representative 272–273; as ritualistic 271–272; and special effects 269–271 War of the Worlds 58–59, 65 Yin-Yang hypothesis 261