Ill Effects: The Media Violence Debate (Communication and Society) - 2nd Edition

240 Pages·2001·2.18 MB·English

by  Martin Barker & Julian Petley

ILL EFFECTS

‘…A refreshing guide to what has often been a stale, circular
argument, batted between different shades of moral
opportunism in the papers—most of whose pundits have never
seen the “immorality” in question.’
Tom Dewe Mathews, Independent on Sunday

Ill Effects revisits the ‘media effects’ debate. It asks why, when a particularly
high-profile crime of violence is committed, there are those who blame film,
television, video, pop music and, more recently, the Internet.
Ill Effects considers how the ‘media effects’ controversy has developed
and combines a discussion about the responses to the shootings at Columbine
High School, an analysis of the 1998 Home Office report on video violence
and an exploration of why the Internet is being demonised, along with an
analysis of fans’ responses to supposedly dangerous films such as Reservoir
Dogs, Natural Born Killers and Man Bites Dog.
In this new edition, the authors question why the popular press continues
to peddle a cruel caricature of the way in which the media supposedly affects
behaviour. They argue that there needs to be a change in the very questions
that are asked about the influence of the media; rather than fruitlessly
searching for evidence of ‘harm’, there needs to be a better understanding of
the ways in which people actually use and interact with so called ‘violent’
media. Exploring what ‘violence’ means to different audiences, Ill Effects
includes a guide to the important new research which is beginning to make a
difference to the arguments about the influence of the media.
Contributors: Martin Barker, Sara Bragg, David Buckingham, Thomas Craig,
David Gauntlett, Annette Hill, Patricia Holland, Mark Kermode, Graham
Murdock, Julian Petley, Sue Turnbull
Editors: Martin Barker is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the
University of Aberystwyth. Julian Petley teaches Communications and Media
Studies in the Department of Human Sciences at Brunel University.
COMMUNICATION AND SOCIETY
Series Editor: James Curran
GLASNOST, PERESTROIKA AND THE THE CRISIS OF PUBLIC
SOVIET MEDIA COMMUNICATION
Brian McNair Jay G.Blumler and Michael Gurevitch
PLURALISM, POLITICS AND THE GLASGOW MEDIA GROUP READER,
MARKETPLACE VOLUME 1
The regulation of German Broadcasting News content, language and visuals
Vincent Porter and Suzanne Hasselbach Edited by John Eldridge
POTBOILERS GLASGOW MEDIA GROUP READER,
Methods, concepts and case studies in popular VOLUME 2
fiction Industry, economy, war and politics
Jerry Palmer Edited by Greg Philo
COMMUNICATION AND THE GLOBAL JUKEBOX
CITIZENSHIP The international music industry
Journalism and the public sphere Robert Burnett
Edited by Peter Dahlgren and Colin Sparks INSIDE PRIME TIME
SEEING AND BELIEVING Todd Gitlin
The influence of television TALK ON TELEVISION
Greg Philo Audience participation and public debate
CRITICAL COMMUNICATION Sonia Livingston and Peter Lunt
STUDIES AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL
Communication, history and theory in America COMMUNICATION
Hanno Hardt Brian McNair
MEDIA MOGULS MEDIA EFFECTS AND BEYOND
Jeremy Tunstall and Michael Palmer Culture, socialization and lifestyles
FIELDS IN VISION Edited by Karl Erik Rosengren
Television sport and cultural transformation WE KEEP AMERICA ON TOP OF THE
Garry Whannel WORLD
GETTING THE MESSAGE Television journalism and the public sphere
News, truth and power Daniel C.Hallin
The Glasgow Media Group A JOURNALISM READER
ADVERTISING, THE UNEASY PERSUASION Edited by Michael Bromley and Tom O’M alley
Its dubious impact on American society TABLOID TELEVISION
Michael Schudson Popular journalism and the ‘other news’
NATION, CULTURE, TEXT John Langer
Australian cultural and media studies INTERNATIONAL RADIO
Edited by Graeme Turner JOURNALISM
TELEVISION PRODUCERS History, theory and practice
Jeremy Tunstall Tim Croook
NEWS AND JOURNALISM IN THE UK MEDIA, RITUAL AND IDENTITY
A textbook, second edition Edited by Tamar Liebes and James Curran
Brian McNair DE-WESTERNIZING MEDIA STUDIES
WHAT NEWS? Edited by James Curran and Myung-Jin Park
The market, politics and the local press BRITISH CINEMA IN THE FIFTIES
Bob Franklin and David Murphy Christine Geraghty
IN GARAGELAND ILL EFFECTS
Rock, youth and modernity The media/violence debate, second edition
Johan Fornäs, Ulf Lindberg and Ove Sernhede Edited by Martin Barker and Julian Petley
ILL EFFECTS
The media/violence debate
Second edition
Edited by Martin Barker
and Julian Petley

London and New York
First published 1997
Second edition first published 2001
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
© 1997, 2001 Martin Barker and Julian Petley, for selection and editorial
matter
© 1997, 2001 Contributors, individual chapters
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Ill effects: the media/violence debate/[edited by] Martin Barker
and Julian Petley. –2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Violence in mass media. 2. Mass media—Influence. 3. Mass
media—Social aspects. I. Barker, Martin. II. Petley, Julian.
P96.V5 I55 2001
303.6–dc21 00–045952
ISBN 0-203-46509-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-77333-0 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-22512-4 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-22513-2 (pbk)
CONTENTS
List of contributors vii
Introduction: from bad research to good—a guide for the perplexed 1
MARTIN BARKER AND JULIAN PETLEY
1 The Newson Report: a case study in ‘common sense’ 27
MARTIN BARKER
2 The worrying influence of ‘media effects’ studies 47
DAVID GAUNTLETT
3 Electronic child abuse? Rethinking the media’s effects on
children 63
DAVID BUCKINGHAM
4 Living for libido; or, ‘Child’s Play IV’: the imagery of
childhood and the call for censorship 78
PATRICIA HOLLAND
5 Just what the doctors ordered? Media regulation, education
and the ‘problem’ of media violence 87
SARA BRAGG
6 Once more with feeling: talking about the media violence
debate in Australia 111
SUE TURNBULL
v
CONTENTS
7 I was a teenage horror fan: or, ‘How I learned to stop worrying
and love Linda Blair’ 126
MARK KERMODE
8 ‘Looks like it hurts’: women’s responses to shocking entertainment 135
ANNETTE HILL
9 Reservoirs of dogma: an archaeology of popular anxieties 150
GRAHAM MURDOCK
10 Us and them 170
JULIAN PETLEY
11 Invasion of the Internet abusers: marketing fears about the
information superhighway 186
THOMAS CRAIG AND JULIAN PETLEY
12 On the problems of being a ‘trendy travesty’ 202
MARTIN BARKER (WITH JULIAN PETLEY)
Index 225
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CONTRIBUTORS
Martin Barker is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of
Wales, Aberystwyth. He has a long history of researching censorship
campaigns, ranging from the 1950s campaigns against ‘horror comics’
to the video nasties campaign of 1984/5. Recently, he has been studying
the audiences for attacked media, in particular investigating the reception
of action-adventure movies (published with Kate Brooks as Knowing
Audiences: Judge Dredd, its Friends, Fans and Foes, 1997) and of David
Cronenberg’s Crash, excoriated by among others the Daily Mail in 1996/
7 (the findings of this are to be published in 2001). In 2000 he published
(with a contribution from Thomas Austin) From Antz To Titanic:
Reinventing Film Analysis.
Sara Bragg taught Media Studies to adults and to 16- to 19-year-olds for five
years before beginning doctoral research on youth audiences, media
violence and education, at the Institute of Education in London. She has
published articles based on her research in teaching journals. ‘It makes
you feel like a man: teaching and watching horror’ was reprinted in Where
we’ve been: articles from the ENGLISH AND MEDIA MAGAZINE
(1996).
David Buckingham is Professor of Education at the Institute of Education,
University of London, where he directs the Centre for the Study of Children,
Youth and Media (www.ccsonline.org.uk/mediacentre). He has undertaken
several major research projects on young people’s relationships with the
media and on media education, and has lectured on these topics in more
than 20 countries world-wide. He is the author of numerous books,
including Children Talking Television (1993), Moving Images (1996),
The Making of Citizens (2000) and After the Death of Childhood (2000).
He is currently directing a project investigating the changing relationships
between ‘education’ and ‘entertainment’, and continuing research into
the role of media in informal learning.
Thomas Craig, after leaving university in 1995, began working as a manager
for Britain’s largest firm of video game retailers. One year later, in the
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CONTRIBUTORS
light of growing public and media criticism of the games industry, he
returned to education. He now teaches Media and Cultural Studies at
Nottingham Trent University. His publications include Four Gothic Tales
(The English Association, 1996) and, more recently, ‘Ben Dover in
cyberspace: British pornographic films on the Internet’, which appeared
as part of the third volume of The Journal of Popular British Cinema
(2000). He is currently conducting research into moral panics surrounding
the popularity of role-playing games, and will be publishing a critical
guide to the works of Thomas Pynchon later this year.
David Gauntlett is Lecturer in Social Communications at the Institute of
Communications Studies, University of Leeds. His interest in the social
impact of communications is reflected in his books: Moving Experiences
(1995), a detailed critique of media effects studies; Video Critical (1997),
which presented a new audience research method; and TV Living:
Television, Culture and Everyday Life (with Annette Hill, 1999), a study
of diaries kept by 500 people over five years. He has recently edited an
introduction to the Internet and society, Web. Studies: Rewiring Media
Studies for the Digital Age (2000). His next book will be Media, Gender
and Identity: A New Introduction. He produces the award-winning
websites www.theory.org.uk and www.newmediastudies.com, both of
which contain material on media influences.
Annette Hill is Reader in Mass Media at the University of Westminster. She is
the author of Shocking Entertainment: Viewer Response to Violent Movies
(1997), and the co-author (with David Gauntlett) of TV Living: Television,
Culture and Everyday Life (1999) as well as several articles on media
audiences and popular culture. She is also the editor of Framework: The
Journal of Cinema and Media.
Patricia Holland is a freelance writer and lecturer. She is the author of What
is a Child?: Popular Images of Childhood (1992) and The Television
Handbook (2nd edition 2000) and has published many articles on media,
childhood and popular imagery. She is currently researching television
history at Bournemouth University.
Mark Kermode is a freelance film journalist and broadcaster. He has written
and presented numerous television documentaries including The Fear of
God: 25 Years of The Exorcist and Poughkeepsie Shuffle: Tracing the
French Connection for BBC 2, and On the Edge of Blade Runner for
Channel 4. He introduces the Extreme Cinema series on the FilmFour
Channel and Channel 4, and his radio work includes writing and presenting
Celluloid Jukebox for BBC Radio 2. He is the author of a BFI Modern
Classics volume on The Exorcist.
Graham Murdock is Reader in the Sociology of Culture at Loughborough
University and Professor of Communication at the University of Bergen.
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CONTRIBUTORS
Julian Petley teaches Communications and Media Studies in the Department
of Human Sciences at Brunel University. He is currently writing a book
on media censorship for Routledge, for whom he is also co-editing a
book on the British horror film. He is Chair of the Campaign for Press
and Broadcasting Freedom and is a regular contributor to Index on
Censorship.
Sue Turnbull is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media Studies at La
Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. A former secondary school
teacher, she has published a number of essays on the topic of media
violence and censorship in Australia and has a particular interest in the
history of audience research. She is currently working on a book about
crime fiction readerships, entitled Fatal Fascinations, while plotting
further investigations into the representation of crime on television and
its reception.
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