Mediated Violence

For 30 minutes I watched the adventure cartoon "Superman the animated series." While watching I did a content analysis and noted some of the  violent acts that occurred. What I also noted as well was that most of the times it was males who were committing the violence and often they were rewarded for their behavior. The reward usually involved a matter of escaping or being able to overcome the villain. Punishment for the violence only came in the form of defeat if the other person was considered to be the villain. I also noted there was a lot more physical violence that occurred than any kind of other violent act. And also the physical violence got the quicker reaction as far as gratification or rewards.

I also believe that different age groups will be affected differently when watching this. For one, the younger generation may think nothing of seeing superman beat, punch or kick a villain. Most of the time kids focus is on beating up the bad guy, so for them that may be routine. But however continuously watching might affect their behavior. They might start playing more aggressively with their friends and think that it's appropriate because they saw superman do it on TV. Also the fact that superman is usually rewarded for his violent acts might reinforce more the idea that it's OK to hit others to get your way.Older viewers may not be affected as much, because they're better able to understand that Superman is just a cartoon, not a reality. At a certain age people realize you can't get away with what Superman got away with, there are consequences for everything.

Some theories that might apply to this particular issue of mediated violence, are behavioral theory in the way kids might become more aggressive modeling the behaviors they see in the cartoon. Also desensitization theory because if kids are exposed to violence now overtime, they might think it's less of an issue and more acceptable. And also reinforcement theory, if someone already believes that using violence is the way to get people to do what you want, then seeing this would make the person think it's an accepted opinion to have.

I also did a content analysis for wrestling. This involved lots of physical and verbal violence.I think younger children might be affected the most, particularly younger boys. Boys already play in an aggressive manner, so watching wrestling might reinforce the idea of being aggressive is an accepted behavior. Modeling theory could be used to also explain how children might model what they see the wrestlers do on TV. They might try a "move" on their friends and it might cause harm if they aren't careful. The main concern with wrestling is that younger children don't realize that its fake and that everything is staged. That concept it very hard for them to understand at an early age. So it's easy for them to take wrestling to be a reality.

The violence with wrestling happened a lot more instantaneously. And also there wasn't any real punishment for the violence other than being defeated. And the reward was being able to hold your opponent down the longest. It shows how people can get hurt, but a lot of the times, the wrestlers will get back up and keep fighting. But truth is the consequences of truly fighting with someone how they do could be dangerous. Obviously wrestlers have been trained to do certain stunts, which are not meant to be tried at home.