News media incorporates violence in a way that some would say, influence society to change the way they see the world. Behavior change in society occurs when news coverage focuses on the violent events in society, because "journalists are drawn to reporting bad news because sudden disaster is more compelling than slow improvements" (Tom Stafford). Journalists have many different influences for them to focus on violent events. Violent events in news articles influence people to take violent actions, have opinion changes on events in society, or become scared of the world around them. The violent events in the media are most of time committed by someone with a mental illness.
The audience that is reading articles on bad news has “trained” the
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Research has done consisting 14 nations from 1997 to 2002 on articles on gun violence and serious mental illness. The articles consist of how people with a serious mental illness can be the cause of gun violence and it can change people's behavior and opinion on the situation. Many news channels during the Sandy Hook shooting, involved how the shooter had a mental illness, "even though this heightened public attention to the issue may raise public support for gun violence prevention policies, it may also exacerbate negative attitudes about persons with SMI" (McGinty, Emma E). In the news coverage, they are focusing on violent events caused by someone with a serious mental illness, and it causes people to think that anyone with a serious mental illness can threaten the safety for the world. There is no way for audiences to see someone with a mental illness as being a nonviolent person because only 16% of the articles in the study said that they person was not …show more content…
What is not acknowledged is that violence in the news can affect society in a bad way. The people who read the articles are suppose to be informed by the information they are reading, and instead it is giving them fear in the world they live in. Informational influence is when people look to others for guidance about how to behave in ambiguous situations. When someone is not directly influenced by the violence, they get informational influence from the world they live in. When someone has fear in what is going on, it can cause others to have
Over the past years media has been overwhelmed with news about mass shootings happening around America and if mental illness is the primary cause of the violent act. On February 2014, Jonathan M. Metzl and Kenneth T. MacLeish published their article “Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms” in the American Journal of Public Health that addresses the issue that mental illness has very little to do mass shootings which is commonly used on the aftermath of the shooting
We make choices every day, from waking to sleeping our day is composed of choices and the results of these choices. These choices help to shape us to who we are and want to be. But, these results may not be foreseen and may be adverse or favorable depending on the situation. Topics and events in our history ranging from the literacy of common man to unnecessary gun violence were a result of un-foreseen consequences. Our world’s history has been shaped by these consequences forming the world to where we are today.
The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms, but only in cases of self-defense and hunting for food. However, the use of guns has drastically changed since 1791 when the amendment was implemented. Today, guns are not solely used in their intended ways. Since 2010, over eighty-seven school shootings have occurred within American grade schools, high schools, and universities, resulting in approximately 107 injuries and 109 murders of innocent students. The two most deadly shootings in the world occurred in the United States: the Virginia Tech University Massacre which left thirty-two dead and Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting which left twenty-eight dead. Each new shooting prompts a debate about gun control laws and leaves citizens wondering about the accessibility of guns; any United States citizen over the age of twenty-one that does not have any previous felonies is able to easily receive a gun license. Forty-nine out of the sixty-one school shootings that occurred between 1982 and 2012 legally obtained firearms. The statistics become even more outstanding: seventy nine percent of all shooters have been diagnosed with a mental illness or disability, including the Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook shooters, Seung-Hui Cho and Adam Lanza. Cho and Lanza were diagnosed with mental illnesses and disabilities, depression and autism, respectively. Even so, they were still able to acquire the guns they needed because extensive mental health background checks did not and still do not exist; Cho purchased his own weapon and Lanza stole his mother’s guns. Although the case studies of Lanza and Cho are only two out of the many school shootings, they should be considered prime examples to illustrate the necessity to add stri...
The United States will not soon forget the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut that came just two weeks before Christmas last year. This tragic event resulted in the death of twenty students and eight adults. Although the event shocked the nation, rampage shootings are nothing new. Over the years, many families have lost loved ones to these horrific events. As a result, these mass shootings such as the one that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary caught public attention leading to a push to find the cause of these events. Out of this research a variety of possible causes came to light consisting of arguments stating that high school bullying, availability of guns, mental illness, violent movies and video games are the cause of mass shootings. However, these researchers and debaters tend to ignore the role of massive media coverage in the increase of copycat shootings in the United States.
They suggested that not only mental illness but other factors such as social relationships, firearm access during emotional moments etc also lead to gun violence. However, they failed to cite this with strong facts, numbers etc. Reports suggest that up to 60% of executioners of mass shootings in the United States since 1970 displayed symptoms including acute paranoia, delusions, and depression before committing their crimes[4,5]. In another article “Rates of Household Firearm Ownership and Homicide Across US Regions and States, 1988–1997”[6], the authors emphasized on the “association between rates of household firearm ownership and homicide across the United States, by age group”. In this analysis, they failed to take gender, mental health and other factors into consideration which helps more to analyze that which type of people (mentally ill) and/ or which gender are doing these cruel
have shown the firearm homicide and suicide rates in the US are several times higher than that of any other industrialized country” (Towers 2). The automatic reaction people have to mass shooting is talking about gun control and mental illness policies. Every time a mass shooting occurs both the people and the government go crazy trying to find a solution yet there is no solution. The United States needs to set up mental illness awareness programs to decrease the number of mass shootings.
On December 14, 2012 Adam Lanza, a 20 year old with asperger’s syndrome, shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut . According to the final report by the states attorney’s office he got in the school at 9:30 AM in the morning and shot the principal and the school’s psychologist that went out to the hallway to check loud bangs they heard. He then moved on to class rooms where innocent children were learning and started shooting and by 9:40 AM, just ten minutes later, he took the lives of twenty six people, including twenty children age twelve and below and six adults, before taking his own life (State Report on Sandy Hook Elementary shooting).
The answers to the inquiry questions will be answered via extensive review and analysis of literature. It is hypothesized that looser gun laws will predict a higher rate of occurrence of public mass shootings involving adult males ages 18-35 with untreated mental illness. Meanwhile, the untreated mental illness of males ages 18-35 predicts a higher rate of public mass shootings compared to that of other adult males who are not afflicted with mental illness.
Imagine receiving the news that a loved one or someone you care about has had a tragic or a misfortunate accident in consequence of a gun; this can happen to anyone in the reach of a weapon. Misuse of Guns in America is an irresponsibility of people misusing and abusing the authority of a gun. Americans in the U.S buy and obtain guns all the time; of course, there are background checks done for the people purchasing them, but who knows what that person will do with a weapon this present day, and that does not mean the will be the only one who uses it.The rate of guns being misused by irresponsible people in America is not safe for U.S citizens. Those domestic abusers, criminals, and who are dangerously mentally ill and others should be denied
Many psychologists have studied the effect of the media on an individual’s behavior and beliefs about the world. There have been over 1000 studies which confirm the link that violence portrayed through the media can influence the level of aggression in the behavioral patterns of children and adults (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2001). The observed effects include, increased aggressiveness and anti-social behavior towards others, an increased fear of becoming a victim or target of aggressive behavior, becoming less sensitive to violence and victims of violent acts, and concurrently desiring to watch more violence on television and in real-life (A.A.P. 2001). According to John Murray of Kansas State University, there are three main avenues of effects: direct effects, desensitization, and the Mean World Syndrome (Murray, 1995, p. 10). The direct effects of observing violence on television include an increase in an individual’s level of aggressive behavior, and a tendency to develop favorable attitudes and values about using violence to solve conflicts and to get one’s way. As a result of exposure to violence in the media, the audience may become desensitized to violence, pain, and suffering both on television and in the world. The individual may also come to tolerate higher levels of aggression in society, in personal behavior, or in interpersonal interactions. The third effect is known as the Mean World Syndrome, which theorizes that as a result of the amount of violence seen on television and also the context and social perspective portrayed through the media, certain individuals develop a belief that the world is a bad and dangerous place, and begin to fear violence and victimization in real life (A.A.P. 2001).
Emma E. McGinty, Daniel W. Webster, Marian Jarlenski, and Colleen L. Barry. " News Media Framing of Serious Mental Illness and Gun Violence in the United States, 1997-2012. " American Journal of Public Health. Mar 2003: Vol.
“The more energy they have to gin up to execute their plan, the harder it will be to do so” (Newman). When “Would be shooters” are faced with a challenge they most likely don’t go through with their plan. The dedicated shooters are those who intend on finding guns and shooting people, those who have the drive. “Totally dedicated shooters” are the type of people who wont give up whether the guns are accessible to them legally or illegally. Dedicated shooters have a plan of action and intend on going through with it. These types of people likely suffer from mental illnesses. “The abnormally high level of school shootings in America is not solely a gun issue a mental health issue, or a media issue, but rather a problem caused by a combination of mental illness problems, social inequality, gun control policies, and the structure of schools”(Gupta, 2016). Structural inequalities in the United States cause stress, which lead people to turn to radical measures. Factors such as economic change, racism and social changes cause constraints on behavior. Mental health is also a leading factor to school shootings. “Metzl and MacLeish’s research shows that up to 60 percent of mass shootings in the United States since 1970 involved shooters displaying symptoms of mental illnesses—including paranoia, depression, and delusions—and the evidence suggests that
One can conclude, with support of the numerous research articles above as well as the supporting theories, that mass media does have an effect on violent behaviour but it is only one factor in a multi-faceted approach to understanding the multiple causes for one to react violently (Huesmann & Taylor 2006).
The health problem I will address is gun violence. Although the community is vast in richness, diversity and culture, it has experienced a recent increase of gun violence. One fifth of community residents reported a surge in violent behaviors. After identifying the health concerns, contributors designated the importance of gun violence to be addressed in the years 2015 thru 2018. Consortiums formed and met separately to address the gun violence and to devise goals along with action plans. We have identified the available statistics (Statistics, PHNAT part 1). According to the CDC (2014), more than 32,000 people were killed by gunfire in 2011, the most recent data available, and more than 70,000 endured nonfatal injuries from guns. The
The first thing to what the next president of the United States should do is try to take a better approach to isis. Isis is one of America's greatest threats, also many places around the world. Isis is killing people, holding people captive, and just putting them through things they don't want to be put through. Many people have died from Isis, and terrorist attacks. Most of them being shootings.