Does+Media+Violence+Predict+Societal+Violence

Ferguson, Christopher J. “Does Media Violence Predict Societal Violence?: It depends on what you look at and when” Journal of Communication 65.1 (Feb2015) : pE1-E22. Article.

This article published by the department of psychology at Stetson University discusses the medias influence towards violent action. There have been several research studies done on the relationship between media and real world violence from movies to video games and on. This article discusses and sites several of those studies. While its particular focus is whether media promotes real world violence, I believe this closely ties in to whether this promotion of violence also affects how we react to witnessing said violence. If violence can be correlated with what we see and therefore inspiring our acts in real life, then the same line can be drawn to how we react to witnessing it. While this article discusses the results of studies and breaks them down statistically and by media type, it also goes deeper and discusses theoretical implications of these studies. While worldwide studies have value, I appreciate that this article comes out of Florida and focuses on American subject matter as relates to my thesis.