“Violence in our society has reached epidemic proportions. ... Violence in the media for entertainment purposes has been established as a major contributing factor.” —Deborah Prothrow-Stith “The pathologies that affect...

On April 20, 1999, two teenagers armed with semiautomatic weapons and explosives killed thirteen people at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. The teenagers, both students at Columbine, then took their own lives. The high school massacre in...

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...

According to Harold Lasswell (1948), communication in society serves three essential functions:(1) the surveillance of the environment, (2) the correlation of adaptive responses to the environment, and (3) the transmission of social inheritance. The...

There is much concern over the negative effects of television viewing on children. Children who watch more television are at a greater risk of experiencing a host of negative outcomes compared to children who watch less television. The good news is...

Researchers study how drugs, alcohol, and tobacco are portrayed on television, in movies, in songs, and in other forms of media. According to some studies, media containing scenes or conversations about these substances can affect drinking, smoking,...

The rise of mass media (press, film, radio, television, etc.) during the twentieth century has been accompanied by continuous claims and debate concerning their effects. The term ‘effects’ refers to two different things: the potential to...

Desensitization is a psychological process that has often been involved in explaining viewers' emotional reactions to media violence. Research on emotional reactions to violent messages has been concerned with the possibility that continued...

In psychology, communication theory and sociology, media influence or media effects refers to the theories about the ways the mass media affect how their audiences think and behave. The shift of media and media industry over the past few years into new...