Media as a Cause

• 1920-30s: cinema blamed for corrupting youth 

  1950s: horror comics responsible for moral decline 

  1980s: ‘video nasties’ 

  2000s - : computer games/rap music
• 1. Imitation 
  2. Arousal 
  3. Desensitisation 
  4. Transmits knowledge of criminal techniques 
  5. Romantices targets for crime 
  6. Stimulating desire for unaffordable goods 
  7. Portrays police as incompetent 
  8. Glamorises offending
• Schramm et al 1961: ‘for some children, under some conditions, some television is harmful. For some children under the same conditions, it may be beneficial. For most children,  under most conditions, most television is probably neither particularly harmful nor particularly beneficial.’
• Livingstone 1996: despite Schramm et al conclusions, people are still preoccupied with the effects of the media on children because of our desire as a society to regard childhood as an uncontaminated innocence in the private sphere 
• Venebals and thompson copied chucky in the james bulger murder 

  Correlation between violent porn and violent rapists 

  Scarface glamorises crime