Dennis, this is an example of bourgeois individualistic fallacy many so-called media experts, especially of the US variety, commit. The essense of this fallacy is to view the effects of the media in isolation from the social context, as basically the medium-individual relationship.
There is suffcient evidence that social ties and communities have a very powerful mediating effect on how broadcasted programs are received by individuals. In other words, the same message can have very different effect on a person in different societies.
As I argued in my previous posts, alienating societies such as the US, reduce the importance of social ties and interaction in people's lives, thus making them more susceptible to media influence. I have a reason to belive that this is an intended effect of government and corporate efforts to make people more easy to manipulate and follow predictable behavior (e.g. cosumerism, compliance with official policies, etc).
However, the unintended consequence is the increased likelihood of undesirable effect of some types of broadcast (video games are a form of broadcast). This is so, because alienated people are more likely to construe their social identity from the material they found in the "virtual space" of the media broadcast. That means thatt the violent characters and themes found in th emedia are more likely to be used as "material" for identities assumed by such alienated individuals.
Moreover, the absence of strong social ties makes social control virtually absent - and that increased the likelihood of people acting out their violent identities.
Under normal circumstances, social ties safeguard against anti-social behavior in two ways. First, the value of community participation increases stakes in following the accepted norms of behavior. In other words, individuals in such communities have much to lose by breaking the rules and casting themselves out. Second, social ties alse create a whole array of informal sanctions desidned to prevent major noncompliance. For example, signs of aggressive behavior my receive informal sanctions thus telling the offending person that such behavior is unacceptable, before it turns into a major outbursts of aggression.
In an alienated society, people tend to form groups based on their artificial identities appropriated from the media (e.g. fans of a rock band, music genre, show, etc.). That promotes segregation and compartmentalisation - that is like-minded individuals clustering together and intereacting mainly with each other - whereas their interaction with those outside such clusters could be quite limited.
One consequence of that segregation and compartmentalization is that elements of created identities can receive social feedback that they would not receive in "normal" communities. For example, young people often act out roles that are a part of their assumed identities (e.g cultural heroes, protagonists of popular stories etc.) which may include both desirable and undesirable behavior. In "normal" communities, the undesirable behavior may receive a negative sanction, and thus it is less likely to be repeated.
My favorite example of that process involves the case of certain Soviet youths who run away from home. When they were finally apprehended, they explained their motives by referring to a film they had seen, in which the protagonist run away from home to join the 1917 revolution. The youths in question did likewise to join the Cuban revolution of which they heard on TV.
While 'support for a revolution' was a desirable attitude in x-USSR, running away from home was not, and the youths received a stern admonition form the authority figures.
In "artificial" identity groups formed in an alienated society - - exceptionalism offered by the assumed identity is an important element that differentiates the members from the rest of society. Therefore, members are likely to give positive sanctions for behavior consistent with those assumed identities, even though (or perhaps especially that) such behavior violates generally accpeted standards. Thus anti-social behavior, such as running away from home, breaking the rules of everyday conduct, or aggresion and violence are likely to be encouraged in such identity groups.
To summarize, the social context must be taken into consideration to examine the effect media have on individual behavior. In alienating societies (such as the US), the media effect on individuals is more likely to produce anti-social behavior than in less-alienating societies (such as Europe or Japan), because of the absence of informal social control mechanisms extered by closely knit communities. That explains why the USers are more likely to be influenced by violent media content than members of other societies.
Wojtek
PS. For these reasons, I have no problems with law suits against authors and media producers alleging that their shows incited violent behavior. According to a recent The Nation's article, such suits are being brought against the makers of particularly violent shows, such as the Natural Born Killers. The media and the movie industry are an integral part of corporate social control apparatus, and holding them accountable helps not hurts the genuine (as opposed to formal) freedom of speech. Media are to freedom of speech what water is to life - in small quantities it is necessary to sustain life, but in large quantities - it kills life by drowning it.