Violence in the Media, History of Research On
Public controversy about violent content in the media has a long history that extends as far back as the first decade of the twentieth century in the United States. The earliest controversies revolved around depictions of criminality in the movies, and the very first case of movie censorship occurred in 1908, when the police in Chicago refused to provide a permit for the public display of the movie The James Boys in Missouri. Authorities objected to the content of the film because it focused on violent lawbreaking (Hoberman, 1998). The scientific study of the effects of media violence may not extend as far back as 1908, but it was only a few years later that media violence became a focus of the first major investigation of the content and effects of movies.
The Payne Fund Studies
As the popularity of movies grew in the 1920s, so too did public pressure on the movie industry to do something about the widespread concerns that were being voiced about the effect that movie depictions of sex and violence had on children. In response to this pressure, William Short, the executive director of the Motion Picture Research Council (a private educational group), invited a number of the most prominent scholars across various disciplines to design and carry out a series of studies into how movies affect children.
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