My assignment for the week was to locate three academic journal articles about a mass medium that could send undesirable messages. After reading three articles I was able to come to a conclusion about video game violence and its effect on today’s society.
Based on the secondary research I conducted, I believe video games do not increase violence in society. Although many believe violent games like Grand Theft Auto provide a negative message to its users, I think this belief is a simple card stacking theory of ethical reasoning, or a paradigm, that needs to be reexamined.
In the first academic article I read, Stephen Marche gives a general background of video game violence and how purification through violence has become one of America’s central political mythologies. Marche explains how Grand Theft Auto is a form of violence without constraint and it is a way of “potus et exlex”–to lose yourself and get outside of the law. This article gave me a general reason of how people may see violent games as negative, but it left me asking the question: why do people think this way?
In the second article I read, Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson take the stand on telling parents to relax because the fears of harmful effects of video games are no different than “uproars about dime novels, gangster films, and comics” (Kutner & Olson). I agree with this claim because I believe that all forms of violence portrayed on television and in books are just as negative as violent video games.
The last piece I read shows that violent video games are not the problem in our society. Bill Blake calls for a more socially aware form of ethical reasoning capable of framing our critical responses to media content. Blake reasons that there is a pattern of human contempt and social hostility that is growing deep roots in our culture. In regard to Grand Theft Auto, he asks the reader to be honest: “would you actually go out and shoot a stripper or fire a rocket launcher if the chance permitted itself?” (Blake).
In Blake’s article, he is questioning today’s societal paradigm, or a set of boundaries, that portrays the powerful media theory of card stacking. This theory consists of the “selection and use of facts or falsehoods, illustrations or distractions, and logical or illogical statements in order to give the best or worst possible case for an idea, program, person, or product” (Lee and Lee, 1939, p. 95). Blake questions the political falsehoods of this paradigm, and calls for ethical criticism of how we view violence portrayed through the media.
After reading these three articles, especially Blake’s, I have come to the conclusion that violent video games do not have as big of a negative impact on society as we may think. Instead, we need to develop a new paradigm to formulate how we really view violence in the media. The best way to discover whether media have harmful effects on society is through research. The findings about video game violence I examined are relevant to Grand Theft Auto because it is the most criticized mass medium of portrayed violence.
If you still believe violent video games have the most negative impact on society, ask yourself this: what about the violent movies, what about bloody images and the media coverage of the conflict in Iraq, and even the violence and negativity that has spilled over into professional sports? These are all areas that need to be examined when finding where video games fit into the larger picture. Certainly, I believe violent video games do not have a big impact on society. By examining this issue, we question the many paradigms that we live our lives by and gain a more in-depth perspective of the mass media.
Grand Theft Auto has been at the center of video game controversy since its creation. (Image courtesy of pwned.com)
References:
Marche, Stephen (2008). Are Things Getting a Little Violent?. Esquire Aug2008, Vol. 150 Issue 2, p38-39.
Kutner, Lawrence & Olson, K. Cheryl (2008). Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do. Simon & Schuster.
Blake, Bill (2008). Go Ahead, Steal My Car. Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 54 Issue 42. pB6-B7.
Hello, I’m Wai Yen. Your mass media and society professor probably mentioned me a couple of weeks on scientific reporting and video games. I am sorry for not reading your excellent blog post, apparently my google alert didn’t catch your blog.
All of your articles are not academic journal articles, but are magazines and the second is a book. You kept writing Grand Theft Auto as “Grant” Theft Auto. Please be alert for such minor errors.
Despite this, you have written a good post from a different perspective.
Thanks for pointing that out Wai, I appreciate you taking the time to read my post and will look to improve on those points in the future.