MEDIA VIOLENCE & Aggression among Adolescents:

Media Literacy as an intervention

By

Dr. AnubhutiYadav

Assistant Professor

Central Institute of Educational Technology

NCERT

ABSTRACT

Today children are bombarded with powerful images, words, and sounds from various

media, which are designed to win their minds and hearts. Adults can use their vast

experience and education, as filters to navigate these powerful messages.For children it

is disfficult. For them mass media is everywhere, all the time in school, at home, at

shopping malls, in parks. They are growing up in a media saturated environment and with

this burgeoning media availability came the problems likemedia’s connection to

increasing obesity, body dissatisfaction, aggressive behavior, promoting stereotypes etc.

Out of all these problems people seem to have been complaining about violence in the

media a lot. Newspaper, Television, video games and social networking sites are loaded

with the violet content in the form of news, stories and innumerable games with the vilent

streak. Few years back after the school shootings at columbine, newspapers and

magazines articles began to decry the negative effects of violent programmes and video

games on young people. Same happened in India few years back when class IX student

shot at a school mate with an air gun after a small tiff during cricket match. Majority of

the people started blaming media content for such incidents. In this paper the issue of

media violence will be addressed by focusing on two fundamental topics underlying the

issue. First, the topic of effects will be analyzed and then the topic of the nature of

violence in the media will be analyzed.The purpose of this paper is to expand perspective

on media violence so that we have better informed opinion about media violence.

While examining the issue of Media Violence and negative impact of the same on

children, the concept of media literacy and the role of teacherswill be discussed.

Key words: Aggression, media violence, Media Literacy, Effect of media Violence, Nature of Violence in Media

INTRODUCTION:

A few week ago parent teachers meeting was called in one of the renowned school in

Delhi. I happened to attend the meeting as my kid is also studying in that school. Just like

any other parent teachers meeting, parents came with an expectation to discuss their

child’s performance and interact with the teacher. On the contrary after reaching the

school most of the parents realized the point of discussion is not a kid. Yes, it affects their

children but the issue was different. Not the usual scholastic or non-scholastic discussion

about the kid. The parents were called for a group meeting and the reason cited by the

teacher was “ increased aggression amongst students”. Had it been a class of teenagers or

adolescents the topic, parents felt was of some relevance. But here the class in question

was ‘first grade’. Parents looked at each other with surprise. Aggression amongst class I

student! Yes, the topic which most of the parent felt was out of place suddenly became

relevant as teacher shared some examples to support her statement. “They are throwing

things at each other, pushing each other, get involved in physical fight very quickly and

very frequently and are using all kinds of wrong words and they are very loud” she said.

Putting parents at ease, she added, “Yes, we know these kids are from very good families,

we do not blame you but we too do not teach such stuff at school.” Then where is it

coming from? While most of the parents were still pondering over the question pat came

the answer from the teacher of course. “Television” she said. All heads nodded

unanimously which was followed by the discussion on how TV is influencing their kids.

There was a huge list why and how their children are being affected by the television. At

the end of the discussion there were many questions with no answer. “Yes, we agree

there is lot of stuff which is their on television and which is not age or culture

appropriate”, echoed parents. But then what should we do? What are the programmes

which kids should watch? Where are they? When do they come? On which

channel?Their concern was very genuine. Despite the fact that Media and Entertainment

industry is growing at a rapid pace in our country, somehow the interest and needs of the

children are ignored evidently. Let us have a look at the media Industry in India and try to

find out the space given to children in it.

Media scene in India and space for kids in it The media industry in India is growing at a very rapid pace. According to FICCI-KPMG

Indian Media and Entertainment Industry Report 2011 “Hitting the High Notes” the

Indian media and entertainment industry grew from INR 587 billion in 2009 to INR 652

billion in 2010, registering an overall growth of 11 percent. It is projected that by 2012

the Industry will achieve the growth of 13 percent by touching the figure 738 billion.

Since the paper is focused more on impact of TV on children, let us have a glimpse of TV

industry. The television and broadcasting industry has grown over the last two decades,

with an average growth rate in double digits. The industry added almost 100 million

viewers in 2010 to reach 600 million viewers and crossed the 550 channel mark from 460

in 2009 . .There are still more than 250 channels awaiting approval. The number of TV

households grew at a rate of seven percent to reach 138 million in 2010 compared to 129

million in 2009. The penetration of TV in the country grew from 58 percent in 2009 to 61

percent in 2010.New players are entering the market with niche offerings like food

channels and more channels in English Entertainment space. Viewers are able to access

niche content easily on DTH platform even in smaller markets.India is the only country

in the world with 88 million TV HHs indicating the potential for growth in the market.

The penetration for Cable & Satellite (C&S) households increasedfrom 74 percent of

total TV households in 2009 to 78 percent in2010. The overall number of C&S

households reached 108 million.

KIDS’ Genre of TV Programmes According To TAM data for 2010 the kids’ genre of programming has viewership of 6.3

pecent.

Genre Viewership %

Hindi GEC 29.6

Regional GEC 22.9

Hindi Movies 11.4

Kids 6.3

Cable 6.5

Regional News 3.6

Regional Movies 3.4

Hindi News 3.4

Music 2.5

Sports 2.9

Infotainment 1.2

Reginal Music 1.9

English Movies 0.7

Regional news 0.3

English Entertainment 0.1

Religion 0.6

Regional prog 1.1

Others 1.4

If the kids genre of channels are compared with other countries than the India has least

number of kids channels. Out of total only 3 percent of channels are kids’ channels( 17).

According to KPMG analysis:

Country %/no. of channels

South Korea 16% (38)

Singapore 7% (11)

Malaysia 7% (12)

Indonesia 6% (9)

Honngkong 6% (14)

UK 5% (32)

USA 5%(36)

India 3% ( 17)

Growth of KIDS’ channels from 2006-2010

Year No.

2006 5.8

2007 5.9

2008 5.4

2009 5.8

Jan- Dec 2010 6.3

Kids' channels hog over six per cent of the total time Indians spent on television

nationally and get about Rs 700 crore in advertising. Why then India is far behind other

countries in providing content to children and there are very fewoptions for kids on

television?In her article ‘Doraemon versus Teletubbies’,MsVanitaKohli-Khandekar

points out two major explanation for the same:

More than 80 per cent of kid's television is about animation. India is very good at doing

off-shore animation work for global companies, but our record in creating home grown

characters is pathetic. Except perhaps for Hanuman, none of the home-grown animation

films or shows have really struck a chord with viewers. This is because good animation

takes a long time and is terrifically expensive to create and produce. It is more lucrative,

from a tax perspective to export animation (classified as software). So we subsidise

animation exports to other countries, while importing 2D animation from Japan and other

countries for channels in India.

The second explanation which she gave was ‘Making kids' shows is the sort of research-

oriented, specialist job that not many production houses in India are geared to do. Most

are sweat shops that prefer economies of scale that come from daily soaps and reality

television. This leaves kids with the current options. What could change things is

digitisation. Already 30 per cent of the TV homes in India are digital. These homes are

more likely to pay for and get specialty channels and programming. This could be

infotainment, kids, health or lifestyle. Already several of these genres are seeing a rise in

time spent across TV homes in India. This means more revenues for broadcasters and

therefore more investment in programming. Some of this will hopefully go into kids'

programming that is less violent.Till that happens Children will watch content made for

adults whether it is soap operas or the news. This is the reason why children end up

watching the programmes which are actually not meant for them and not watching the

programmes which are really meant for them. Not consuming age appropriate media

content creates problem not only for children but parents and teachers are also often

disillusioned with the peculiar situations they come across while interacting with today’s

generation which are often termed as ‘The New Kid’ by psychologists.

The New Kids? Children these days are often accused, by the psychiatrists, of growing up too fast. They

are tagged as KGOY- Kids Grow Up Young. Dr. Samir Pareekh, a leading psychiatrist,

feel the reason for this phenomenon can be attributed to the fact that the younger

generation has more access to answers to their queries with different forms of media .

Psychologists also feel that the new generation is a detached lot. In a recent cross-cultural

study in US, youngsters were asked whom they would turn to if they had a problem. The

first choice was music. Computers came second and people finished eight. But then there

is another school of thought which says the new generation has always been more

informed, more connected and with more power. Children nowadays are tyrants. They

contradict their parents, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers -Attributed to

Socrates in the year 425 BC.

The media today, no doubt, has entangled kids in their thick knit-web of virtual reality.

Recently in India we have witnessed various instances of increased aggressive behaviour

among students including shootout in one of the Gurgaon’s (a suburb of Delhi) popular

school. In America, after the school shootings at Columbine, newspaper and magazine

articles began to decry the negative effect of video games on young people. Similarly in

India, post shootout there were numbers of articles appeared in newspapers and lot of

panel discussions took place on television accusing increased portrayal of violence in

media as one of the factors responsible for increase in aggressive behaviour among

children. Not just instances mentioned above but like a kid beating up his friends as his

favorite comic hero. Or jumping off a cliff like superman and still more of those violent

acts are but some of the instances, which should ring, alarm bells among the sensitive lot.

Effects of mass media The media especially TV no doubt has an effect on children but it is really very difficult

to prove a direct connection between media effects & children. It is like watching rainfall

on a pond and trying to figure out which drop causes which ripple.( Philips 1998).But one

thing is for sure that the ripple is there because of television.

Researchers have documented numerous effects related to both the amount of media

consumed and the content of media consumed. Many negative outcomes are correlated

with increased amount of viewing T.V. These include lowered school

performance(Huston et al, 1992, Robert et al, 1999, William, Haertal and Walberg, 1982)

increased aggression (American Academy of pediatrics, 1995, Strasberger and

Donnersien, 1999), increased obesity (Gable slatz, 2000) and the prevalence of symptoms

of Psychological trauma (Singe, Slorak, Frieerson& York, 1998) . In addition to these

negative effects there are many positive effects of mass media. Rice , 1983:Rice Houstan,

Truglio, & Wright, 1990 claimed that there is a link between the child as language learner

and the child as television viewer. Television dialogue should serve as a source of new

words for preschoolers. Television stimulates imagination as long as the child does not

depend on it for imaginative activity ( Singer& Singer, 1986) and it can be used to

increase creativity and tolerance (Rosenkoetter, Houston and Wright, 1990). It can teach

prosocialbehaviour( de Groot, 1994:Forgeand Phemister, 1987, Potts, Huston& Wright,

1986: Rushton, 1988) and it can move extraordinary numbers of people to act charitably,

as has been demonstrated by many telethons, aid concerts, and other media initiative at

the time of disasters. It can dramatize historical events, entertain and inform. It can

provide role models for children and teach coping skills (Hattemer and Showers, 1995:

Libert&Sprafkin, 1988).These researches shows that media has both positive as well as

negative impact on children.Complaining about Violence in the media is one the most

important issue while discussing the media effects. This criticism has increased in the

past few years as the no. of channels and violent content in these channels increased.

Though the violence in media is one of the most talked and debated issue but many of us

have a very narrow perspective on a problem. This narrow perspective distort our

perceptions andprevent our criticism from being useful. The most important issue here is

the tendency to correlate violent programmes with the aggressive behavior and thereby

rarely considering its physiological, emotional, attitudinal and cognitive effect.

In his book media Literacy, W. James Potter describes Immediate and long term effects

from exposure to Media violence as follows:

EFFECTS Immediate Effect Long-term Effect

Behavioral Effect • Imitation

• Triggering Novel

behavior

• Disinhibition

• Attraction

• Training behaviour

Physiological Effect • Fight/Flight

• Excitation Transfer

• Physiological

habituation

• Narcotizing

Emotional Effect • Temporary Fear • Desensitization

• Cultivation of fear

Attitudinal Effect • Immediate

Creation/Change of

Attitudes

• Long term

reinforcement of

attitude/beliefs

Cognitive Effect • Learning Specific

Acts and lessons

• Learning social

norms

Studies on Depiction of Violence andAggression amongst children

George Gerbner: Studies conducted by George Gerbner, at the University of Pennsylvania reaveals the

following important issues:

• Children's television shows contain about 20 violent acts each hour. They also

showed that children who watch a lot of television are more likely to think that

the world is a mean and dangerous place.

• Children often behave differently after they've been watching violent programmes

on television. In one study done at Pennsylvania State University, about 100 pre-

school children were observed both before and after watching television. Some

watched cartoons that had many aggressive and violent acts; others watched

shows that didn't have any kind of violence. The researchers noticed real

differences between the children who watched the violent shows and those who

watched non-violent ones.

Children who watched the violent shows were more likely to strike out at

playmates, argue, disobey authority and were less willing to wait for things than

those children who watched non-violent programmes.

Huesmann L.R

• Huesmann's research states that young girls who often watched shows featuring

aggressive heroines in the 1970s, have grown up to be more aggressive adults

involved in more confrontations, shoving matches, choking and knife fights than

women who had watched few or none of these shows.

One example cited by Huesmann is that 59 percent of those who watched an

above-average amount of violence on television as children, were involved in

more than the average number of such aggressive incidents later in life.

Williams T M

• Some of the most compelling studies have investigated children's behaviour in

areas before and after the introduction of television. Tannis Macbeth Williams

and other researchers from the University of British Columbia compared the

levels of aggression in first and second graders from two Canadian towns, one

with access to TV and one, due to a mountain range, with no TV access. When

the mountain town finally received television, the hitting, biting, and shoving

levels of the children increased tremendously.

Eron and Huesmann University of Michigan psychologists Leonard Eron and Rowell Huesmann have

followed the viewing habits of a group of children for decades. They found that

watching violence on television is the single factor most closely associated with

aggressive behaviour-more than poverty, race, or parental behaviour.

In 1960, Eron embarked on a landmark longitudinal study of over 800 eight-year-

olds. He found that children who watched many hours of violent television tended to

be more aggressive in the playground and the classroom.

Eron and Huesmann checked back with these students 11 and 22 years later. They

found that the aggressive eight-year-olds grew up to become even more aggressive

19- and 30-year-olds, with greater troubles-including domestic violence and more

traffic tickets-than their less aggressive counterparts who did not watch as much

television. And the researchers found that even if a child is not aggressive at the age

of eight, but watches substantial amounts of violent programming, he will be more

aggressive at 19 than his peers who didn't watch violent TV.

Jordan Grafman A new research published in Oxford Journal Social Cognitive and Affective

Neuroscience in has shown that watching violent films, TV programmes or video games

desensitises teenagers, blunts their emotional responses to aggression and potentially

promotes aggressive attitudes and behaviour.

Lead author Dr Jordan Grafman, senior investigator at the National Institute of

Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, USA), and

colleagues recruited 22 boys between the ages of 14-17 to the study. The boys each

watched short, four-second clips of violent scenes from 60 videos, arranged randomly in

three lots of 20 clips.The degree of violence and aggression in each scene was low, mild

or moderate, and there were no extreme scenes. They were asked to rate the aggression of

each scene by pressing one of two response buttons at the end of each clip to say whether

they thought it was more or less aggressive than the previous video.

The boys were positioned in a magnetic resonance imaging scanner that collected data on

their brain function while they watched the videos. They also had electrodes attached to

the fingers of their non-dominant hand to test for skin conductance responses (SCR). This

is a method of measuring the electrical conductance of the skin, which varies with

moisture (sweat) levels and is a sensitive way of measuring people's emotions and

responses to internal or external stimuli.

Data from the SCR showed that the boys became more desensitised towards the videos

the longer they watched them and also that they were more desensitised by the mildly and

moderately violent videos, but not the ones that contained a low degree of violence. Data

on brain activation patterns showed a similar effect.In particular, the area known as the

lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC), which is thought to be involved in emotions and

emotional responses to events, showed increasing desensitisation over time, and this was

most marked for the most aggressive videos (showing moderate violence) in the study.

The researchers also found that boys who had the most exposure to violent media in their

daily lives, as measured by screening tests and questions in their initial meeting with the

researchers, showed the greatest desensitization.

The Researches shows television violence undoubtedly plays an important role in the

aggressive behavior of children. Children are affected in one way or the other. The

intensity of effect may vary but the effect for sure is there.

Nature of Violence: Talking about effect is easy. But arriving at definitive conclusion in this field of study is

difficult. The reason is definition of violence. What is violence can vary from study to

study.Following issues crop in while defining violence

• Justified or necessary violence

• Violence in aid of good cause

• Violence on news

• Measuring violence: no. of fights per episode

• Is verbal violence, violence of mood part of violent act

• Relational Violence/Relational aggression

• Humour camouflaging the violence

A NEW TREND: Soft horror

Since children are interested in interested in supernatural and ghost stories there is new

trend emerging when children's shows are graduating to horror or horror shows having

been hit with a demotion. When Sahara TV launchedRaat Hone KoHai (RHKH), a

horror serial that is to be aired from Monday to Thursday at 11 pm, was moved to the 8

p.m time slot when the launch neared. The whole marketing strategy of the show implies

that it is targeted at the 4 - 18 age group because children love supernatural stuff because

there is a lot of special effects and graphics shown in them. This may be the main reason

why they like the horror genre and at the same time, we can't fill the stuff with violence

and bloodshed because our target group is kids and family audiences."

Despite the fact that the violence is available in media in wide variety of form but when

the people complain about the amount of violence they base their complaints mianly on

graphic elements. This means they are missing more than 90 percent of the violence

which might be affecting kids.

Intervention Strategies

Media Literacy: Many media literacy programmes have been developed and introduced

into school curricula in an effort to encourage and develop children’s critical viewing

skills and more general media literacy. Such programmes appear to be effective in

increasing children’s awareness of many aspects of the media and making them less

susceptible to negative messages.

Rating Systems: Violence ratings for television can help parents judge how violent

specific programmes are without having to watch them not only parents but cable

operators and DVDs or video cassette distributors can make use of it.

Parents strategies and education: Informed teacher parent partnership can go a long

way in protecting children from media induced orientation to violence. Teachers can help

students to relate to media in arealistic and wholesome fashion so that its benefits are

derived and its harmfuleffects minimized.Parents’ need to monitor their children’s tv

viewing habits. They have to model healthy media practices themselves including

selective viewing, limited or reasonable amounts of time.

Deconstruction Exercises

Teachers and parents must discuss some of the popular television shows and deconstruct

on the following parameters:

• Does the character remind them of someone in the real life?

• What was the problem or conflict in story?

• How was the conflict solved?

• Would these solution work in real life?

• How do the students think victim feels?

• Did the television version of violence leave anything out

• What would happen if people would do it in real life?

• In what way could the problem have been solved without anyone getting hurt?

• Did the characters think about alternatives before becoming violent?

• How you would have solved the same conflict had you been in the same

situation?

Summary Plethora of Researches conducted on the issue shows exposure to violent programmes

make children aggressive. Their aggression though may not be only because of their

exposure to violent programmes. There might be some other triggering factors as well in

addition to the exposure to violent content in the media. But exposure to violent

programmes on TV is the reason one cannot shy away with. Industry people might say

that there is no such effect than why there is so much of expenditure on Advertising. If

the content in advertising can have an impact on children and they may run to the store to

buy different products then why and how the violent content on television does not have

any effect. In India with TV channel figures touching 550 mark and constant flow of

messages from thesechannel, children are no doubt absorbing the content from these

channels. The only worry is that most of the time these messages are made for the adults

and the kids by force or in the absence of choice end up consuming the content made for

adult. Just think about a situation of an adult when most of the content is being made for

kids, whichever channel we surf we find cartoons and fairy tales. No content to match our

intellectual level and to suit our interests. Same is happening with kids at this point of

time. The Industry is avoiding making content for kids as it requires specialized skills to

make programmes for them and second they find it less profitable. So the children in such

circumstances end up watching content which are made for adults or watching

programmes imported from other countries. The content of such programmes are not

monitored and many of the programmes aired on these channels are violent, aggressive

loud both in audio and visual. Since there is very less control over the content and what

the channels show the solution lies in Media Literacy. Parents and Children must

consume media messages wisely. They should access the content which they feel is

relevant and beneficial for their kids and inculcate the habit of analyzing whatever they

see on screen. It could be the latest release Don, Robot, Ra one or children’s all

timefavouriteTom and Jerry.

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