The horrific events that took place in Colorado brought forth the question of what role violence plays in the media. After reading countless studies on the effects of violence in movies it seems that this may have played a role in the shooting, since the gun man reportedly was calling himself "the joker" to authorities while he was being arrested. I found an interesting article and while it is way to early to learn the exact motivations behind this event it does bring forth some interesting notions of how connected audience members can be to characters in the media and what a profound effect media can have over individuals. Regardless of what you guys think I thought I would pass it along.
Dark Knight Rises Tragedy: Can Violent Entertainment Be Blamed?
Thanks for sharing this, Brittany, When senseless acts of violence occur, there are often two voices that become prominent in the conversation: one claiming that violent media leads to aggressive behavior, and the other pointing out that there are plenty of people for whom this isn't true (thus implying that the media aren't to blame). These are not mutually incompatible statements, though.
ReplyDeleteAs we are learning in class re: sexual media content, there are many individual differences that increase or decrease the likelihood that sexual media content will have an impact on a given individual. The same is true of the effects of violent media; in fact, as Ward (2003) notes in the overview piece we read at the beginning of the semester, many of the theories (e.g., cultivation, social learning theory, priming) that are used to explain the effects of sexual media were first used to explain the effects of violent media.
As horrible as this story is, it provides an excellent illustration of the role of identification in media effects, as you allude to in your post. At the risk of trivializing this case, the gunman referring to himself as "The Joker" is no different than a Sex and the City fan referring to herself as "a Carrie." And just as preexisting individual differences likely influence whether one identifies as a Carrie, a Miranda, a Charlotte, or a Samantha (or some combination, or none of them), so, too, might we expect them to influence whether one identifies with Batman, Catwoman, or The Joker.
This is also leading me to think about something we haven't discussed in class: identification isn't inherently good or bad. If the gunman's identification with The Joker is indeed partially responsible for the crime, then I think we can all agree that identification was, in this case, a Really Bad Thing. But it needn't be.
To bring this back to sexual media content: I'm wondering if people can think of examples of when identification with a character featured in sexual media content might lead to positive and/or negative outcomes?