Summary
Contents
Subject index
This definitive examination of a contemporary social issue asks questions such as: How much media violence is there? What are the meanings conveyed in the way violence is portrayed? What effect does it have on viewers? Divided into four parts, the book reviews research on media violence; re-examines existing theories of media violence; considers methodological tools used to assess media, and introduces the concept of Lineation Theory, a perspective and new theoretical approach explaining media violence.
The Industry's Perspective
The Industry's Perspective
Criticism of violent messages has been around as long as the mass media has. In 1885, Mark Twain's book Huckleberry Finn was criticized for portraying Huck as faking his own death by killing a pig and smearing the pig's blood along with some of his own hair on an ax. The critic complained that boys who read this story would repeat this behavior (Bianculli, 1992). At the turn of the 20th century, the fear was that newspapers that printed gruesome and sensational stories would debase the morals of their readers. Film has also been criticized. A 1991 Associated Press poll found that 82% of Americans feel that movies are too violent (O'Donnell, 1992). With the increasing popularity of television, criticism ...
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