Media Violence Theory

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Media has positive effects on people. There have been many researches to figure out how media affect to the public. Among many media effects, media violence is one of the most serious controversies. Several studies found that the increasing presence of violence in the media promotes and encourages violence of the public and teenagers are affected to by media violence. However, those who do not admit that media effect to the public assert that the viewers have ability to filter violent contents. Despite of the opposition that media have no effects on people, the U.S. government has restricted access to violent contents in the manner of age limits. However, because of the development of file-sharing program online, which is known as P2P, the …show more content…

To explain this concept, social cognitive and social learning theories are needed. According to these theories, people learn not only from their own actions, but also from the environment. For example, the child tends to follow and show analogous behavior with their parents. Likewise, media can provide information when we organize our perceptions of reality. Albert Bandura, who is a pioneer of the theory, he published Bobo dolls study in 1963 to determine if watching aggressive action on film caused the children to imitate the behavior displayed by the film characters in real-life situations (Albert, Dorothea, and Shella A. 1963). He made the child watch how the adult treat the Bobo doll. The adult showed aggressive behavior and used verbally aggressive phrases. They punched, kicked, sit on it, and threw down on the floor. After showing these behaviors, they left the laboratory. The result was that the children, who left in the laboratory alone, showed exactly same aggressive behaviors with the adult. The experiment means that the child observe what other do, save it in memory and imitate the behavior that what they watched. In other words, media can be one of a model that the children follow as if they act like the adult after watching their aggressive

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