TV & violence & studies

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Mon Apr 1 12:15:35 PST 2002


On Mon, 1 Apr 2002, Greg Schofield wrote:


> I can assure you that TV in Japan makes what we get in Australia (which
> is mostly US TV) look mild and petit vis a vis violence. Yet Japan is
> undeniably one of the least violent countries in the world (as per
> personal assaults).
>
> I thought the purposes of these experiements was to show a causual
> relationship between representations of violence and socially expressed
> "violence"? In which case Japan does offer a direct contradiction.
>

--Only if the U. S. and Japan are equivalent in every other way, besides prevalence of violent media. The difference in aggressive conduct could be due to any of numerous cultural and/or historical factors that overwhelm the causal effects of media violence. The media hypothesis is typically stated "media violence is one of many causal factors that provoke real-life aggression". Thus the Japan case (or any cross- cultural research) provides no clear evidence in favor of or against the hypothesis.

Miles



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