Validity

Klaus Krippendorff

University of Pennsylvania

In mathematics, an argument is valid if its conclusion is logically entailed by its premises. In the social sciences, empirical research proceeds analogously from data to the scientific theories or answers research questions. However, social researchers tackle many more uncertainties than mathematicians do. For once, the social sciences are inductive and theorize statistical phenomena, hence social theories need to embrace probabilistic notions of validity. Moreover, if data are of questionable validity, their methodologically conclusive analysis is not likely to yield valid conclusions.

Validity should not be confused with → Reliability. Data are reliable to the extent to which the process of generating them is replicable. Replicability says nothing about what data are about. By contrast, data are valid to the extent to which they accurately represent the phenomena of analytical interest. A theory is valid to the extent to which it is corroborated by independently obtained evidence. In → Measurement Theory, a test is valid to the extent it measures what it claims it measure.

Four major kinds of validity can be distinguished. Logical validity concerns the conclusiveness of propositions derived from known premises. Logic has little to do with what resides outside its discourse but informs scientific argumentation and writing. Face validity is obvious or common truth. Researchers invoke face validity when they accept data, methods, and conclusions because they make sense to them without feeling the need to give reasons for their assessments. The use of face validity in research is more common than seen. Social validity, also called “pragmatic validity,” is the quality of research results to speak to current public concerns or contribute to prevailing social issues (Riffe et al. 1998). Justifications of research projects to funding agencies almost always rely on claims of their potential value and social impacts. Empirical validity is the primary concern of all sciences. It is the degree to which independently available evidence supports various stages of the research process and withstands the challenges of additional data, competing theories, and alternative experiments or measurements.

Several methods have been used to assess empirical validity. Based on a recommendation by the American Psychological Association (1999), we can distinguish the following: (1) content validity refers to phenomena that must be read or interpreted in order to become data. Most theories in social research are based on written documents, communications, and representations, including assertions by interviewees. To capture their meanings in the form of analyzable data requires culturally competent observers or readers. The results obtained from such data need to be interpreted as well – unlike meter readings; (2) sampling validity responds to media biases, and institutional reasons for selectively preserving records of analytical interests; (3) semantic validity responds to whether the categories of an analysis are commensurate with the categories of the object of inquiry; (4) construction and use is concerned with how a research process – its algorithms and networks of analytical steps – relates to or models structures in the object of an analysis. Simulation studies, for example, define a dynamics that takes off from how variables in its object of attention are related; (5) structural validity relies on demonstrating the structural correspondence of the research methods and the way the phenomena represented by the data relate to claims made by research results; (6) functional validity is the degree to which a method of analysis is vindicated by repeated successes rather than validated by structural correspondences (Janis 1965).

Correlative validity is established by correlating the research results with variables concurrent with but extraneous to the way these results were obtained. Its purpose is to confer validity to the research results from measures known to be valid. An important systematization of correlative validity is the multitrait-multimethod technique (Campbell & Fiske 1959). It distinguishes: (1) convergent validity, the degree to which research results correlate with other variables known to measure the same or closely related phenomena; (2) discriminant validity, the degree to which research results are distinct from or unresponsive to unrelated phenomena and hence do not correlate with the research results; and (3) predictive validity, the degree to which research results pertain to anticipated but not yet observed phenomena, whether at a future point in time or elsewhere.

References and Suggested Readings

1. American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, and National Council on Measurement in Education (1999). Standards for educational and psychological testing. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
2. Campbell, D. T. & Fiske, D. W. (1959). Convergent and discriminant validation by the multitrait-multimethod matrix. Psychological Bulletin, 56(2), 81–105.
3. Headland, T. N., Pike, K. L., & Harris, M. (eds.) (1990). Emics and etics: The insider/outsider debate. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
4. Janis, I. L. (1965). The problem of validating content analysis. In H. D. Lasswell, N. Leites et al. (eds.), Language of politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 55–82.
5. Krippendorff, K. (2013). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology, 3rd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
6. Riffe, D., Lacy, S. & Fico, F. G. (1998). Analysing media messages: Using quantitative content analysis in research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Video Games

Kimberly Gregson

Ithaca College

A game is a voluntary activity with rules and some sought-after outcome. A video game is a game played on some electronic device. Computer or video games have been around since at least 1962, when MIT student Steve Russell programmed Spacewar! There was no keyboard, no joystick, and no sound; instead users toggled built-in switches to move the rocket ships. Ten years later, Nolan Bushnell, Atari founder, successfully introduced a version of Pong (electronic Ping-Pong). The first home console units were introduced in the 1970s and the well-known arcade game PacMan was introduced in 1980, followed by Donkey Kong in 1981 (→ Digital Media, History of).

A 2013 Entertainment Software Association report shows that in 2012, the video game industry in the US saw about US$23 billion in sales. Video games are often classified into casual, serious, and educational games with casual ones being by far in the lead. Puzzle, board, card, trivia games or game shows are the most often online games played. Players use consoles, computers, and mobile devices for playing video games. The increased capacity in data transfer on the Internet increased the market share of online games where players in distant places compete or cooperate in games of all kinds (e.g. Minecraft). People wo have increased their time spent with video games report that they reduced the time spent with (non-digital) board games, watching TV, and going to the movies. In 2013, the average age of video game players in the US was 30 years and, almost half were women. Gamers are not anymore sitting in a dark room at home: 36 percent are playing on their smartphone and 25 percent on a wireless device (Entertainment Software Association 2013).

Video games have influenced movies, too (→ Cinema). One of the earliest movies based on a video game was Super Mario Brothers. No less than 16 Pokemon movies, based on Nintendo’s video game have been released in the United States. The most successful movie on the international market was Prince of Persia – The Sands of Time, based on a game by Ubisoft, that grossed more than US$300 million.

The amount of attention paid to video games as a part of → popular culture is mirrored by the attention paid by academics to video games and the effects they have on the people who play games (→ Youth Culture; Violence as Media Content, Effects of). Research on the effects of playing video games has either concentrated on the production of aggression and hostility, or on positive effects like cognitive, social, emotional and motivational benefits (Granic et al. 2014).

References and Suggested Readings

1. Entertainment Software Association (2013). 2013 sales, demographic and usage data. Essential facts about the computer and video game industry. At www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2013.pdf, accessed August 28, 2014.
2. Granic, I., Lobel, A., & Engels, R. C. M. E. (2014). The benefits of playing video games. American Psychologist, 69(1), 66–78.
3. Shafer, D. M. (2012). Causes of state hostility and enjoyment in player versus player and player versus environment video games. Journal of Communication, 62, 719–737.
4. Shaw, A. (2013). Rethinking game studies: A case study approach to video game play and identification. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 30(5), 347–361.

Violence against Journalists

John Nerone

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Violence against journalists is universal, found everywhere there is journalism. But the level and type of violence vary according to a series of factors, involving the general level of violence in a society or political system, the level of professionalism in the news media, and the extent to which violent action is useful in representing public opinion. Violence against journalists almost always includes a symbolic dimension; in some cases, the violence is primarily symbolic.

Several organizations track violence against journalists worldwide.These organizations note that, especially in conflict zones, journalists are increasingly subject to violent attack. Wartime and social upheaval have always produced violence against journalists. Autocracies use violence to stifle criticism (→ Freedom of the Press, Concept of), and crime reporting can also be glamorously dangerous. In China, for instance, a rapidly expanding media system at the beginning of the twenty-first century produced a wave of exposés of local corruption, and the targets of the exposés frequently became violent.

Violence operates at the boundaries of the → public sphere and can be a form of policing. In any political system, the media are involved in the representation of → public opinion. Historically, political forces attempt to capture the representation of public opinion through various means: making news, exerting political or economic pressure, winning elections. When peaceful means fail, violence becomes useful (→ Freedom of Communication). Violence has been used to try to exclude ideas and groups from public discussion. Such exclusionary violence often appears to be a surrogate for government censorship (→ Censorship, History of).

Violence against the press is a common feature in many countries with diverse populations. Communal media in India, for instance, have experienced violence similar to that visited upon African-Americans in the US south at the end of the nineteenth century. Such actions often look like spontaneous popular outbursts (→ Mediated Populism); they are usually carefully scripted to do so. The line between public and private has also been a site of violence (→ Privacy). The subjects of personal criticism in the press, whether private or public figures, have often struck back. Also, the publicists for labor movements have been targets of violence as labor activists have targeted anti-labor newspapers. Further, movements that feel themselves neglected by the news media will sometimes commit acts of spectacular violence to claim coverage for themselves.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Committee to Protect Journalists (2006). Attacks on the press in 2006. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
2. Nerone, J. (1994). Violence against the press: Policing the public sphere in U.S. history. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3. Reporters without Borders (2011). Annual reports. At http://en.rsf.org/safety-of-journalists.html, accessed August 28, 2014.

Violence as Media Content

Nancy Signorielli

University of Delaware

Most of what we know about violence in the media comes from studies of violence on television. While some studies of television violence were conducted during the 1950s and 1960s, most of the information about the amount of violence on television in the US comes from the long-term research conducted as part of the Cultural Indicators (CI) Project’s analysis of samples of prime-time network programs (1967–2013; → Cultivation Effects) and the National Television Violence Study’s (NTVS) short-term analysis of a larger sample of network and cable channels from the mid-1990s (→ Cable Television). In the UK, information about television violence comes from an analysis of samples of programs from the mid-1990s. Knowledge about television violence in other countries (e.g., Japan or the Netherlands) comes from studies looking at violence in samples of programs taken at one point in time. Most of these studies, whether conducted in the US or in other countries, focus on physical violence (hurting or killing) because emotional violence is extremely difficult to define and isolate in a consistent way.

Amount of Violence in Television Programming

The CI studies show that the levels of violence on television are quite high and have been relatively stable for the past 45 years. Signorielli (2003) found in samples of prime-time programs broadcast between 1993 and 2002 that violence appeared in 6 out of 10 programs at an average rate of 4.5 acts of violence per program. Current ongoing research by Signorielli finds similar levels of violence in the most recent samples of prime-time network programs. In the UK, Gunter et al. (2003) sampled programming for 20 days in both 1994–1995 and 1995–1996. In both samples, the percentage of programs with violence was considerably smaller than in the US studies (37 and 45 percent of the programs were violent).

Japanese television programs are considerably more violent than programs in most other countries, but quite similar to US programming (Iwao et al. 1981). Japanese television violence, however, tends to be more graphic than violence seen in other countries. Violence in the programming seen in the Netherlands is similar in level to that seen in the US. Canadian, Finnish, and Korean programming is considerably less violent than US programming.

Overall, the US studies, particularly those conducted in the 1990s, show stability in the amount of violence on television: violence appears in roughly 6 out of 10 programs. Consequently, whether viewers watch network broadcast channels or cable channels, it is relatively difficult to avoid violence. From an international perspective, countries that import considerable amounts of programming from the US have levels of violence on television similar to those seen in the US, whereas those that do not import many programs have lower levels of violence. One of the reasons for the high level of violence in imported (typically US) programs is that violence transcends language barriers – it is relatively easy to translate, because pictures are self-explanatory.

The Context of Violence

The NTVS study with data from 1994–1995 found that the context in which violence is presented poses risks for viewers. In particular, three-quarters of the violent scenes were committed by characters who were not punished, negative consequences of violence were rarely presented, one-quarter of the violent incidents involved the use of a handgun, and fewer than 1 in 20 programs emphasized anti-violence themes.

Similarly, CI research also found that violence tends to lack context and that most programs do not show any long-term consequences of violence, such as remorse, regret, or sanctions. The lack of contextual elements is not limited to US programming. The UK study found that programming does not show violence that is particularly harmful and that there was little evidence of blood, gore, and pain. Most of the motives for violence in UK television were related to evil and destruction. The major situations in which violence occurred were interpersonal disputes and crime, followed by scenes focusing on power and self-preservation.

Who is Involved?

CI studies show that television violence illustrates and provides lessons about power. Violence illustrates who is on top and who is at the bottom, who gets hurt and who does the hurting, and who wins and who loses. These studies consistently find a power structure related to character demographics, with earlier studies finding women and minorities more likely to be hurt than to hurt others. Recent studies, however, find that during prime time, men are now more likely than women to be hurt (victimized) and/or hurt others (commit violence).

In the programs of the 1980s, men were slightly less likely to be involved in violence than in the programs of the 1970s. During the 1990s, the ratios of hurting to being hurt changed from the patterns seen in the 1970s and 1980s for women but not for men. Today, for every 10 male characters who hurt or kill, 11 are victimized, the same ratio found in the earlier samples. For women, however, instead of 16 women being victimized for each woman who hurts or kills, the odds are even – women are equally likely to hurt or kill and to be hurt or killed. Moreover, although whites are a little more likely to be victimized than to hurt others, the odds for minority characters are even (→ Sex Role Stereotypes in the Media). Overall the research shows that more men than women and more whites than minorities are involved in violence. Similarly, studies conducted in the UK found that women were much less likely to be involved in violence.

Overall, the consensus of findings from studies of media content indicated that contemporary television programs and video games may not adequately support or reinforce the lesson that ‘crime does not pay.’ Thus, the environment of violent entertainment in which many people, including children, spend most of their free time may be potentially harmful. Finally, the lack of realistic contexts for violence on television may signal that aggression and violence are acceptable modes of behavior (→ Violence as Media Content, Effects of; Violence as Media Content, Effects on Children of).

References and Suggested Readings

1. Gerbner, G., Morgan, M., & Signorielli, N. (1994). Television violence profile no. 14: The turning point. Philadelphia: Annenberg School for Communication.
2. Gunter, G., Harrison, J., & Wykes, M. (2003). Violence on television: Distribution, form, context, and themes. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
3. Hetsroni, A. (2007). Four decades of violent content on prime-time network programming: A longitudinal meta-analytic review. Journal of Communication, 57(4), 759–784.
4. Iwao, S., deSola Pool, I., & Hagiwara, S. (1981). Japanese and U.S. media: Some cross-cultural insights into TV violence. Journal of Communication, 31(2), 28–36.
5. Kapoor, S., Kang, J. G., Kim, W. Y., & Kim, S. K. (1994). Televised violence and viewers’ perceptions of social reality: The Korean case. Communication Research, 11, 189–200.
6. Mustonen, A. & Pulkkinen, L. (1993). Aggression in television programs in Finland. Aggressive Behavior, 19, 175–183.
7. Signorielli, N. (2003). Primetime violence, 1993–2002: Has the picture really changed? Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 47(1), 36–57.
8. Simonds, G. (2012). The aesthetics of violence in contemporary media. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
9. Timmer, J. (2013). Television violence and industry self-regulation: The V-Chip, television program ratings, and the TV Parental Guidelines Oversight Monitoring Board. Communication Law and Policy, 18(3), 265–307.
10. Wilson, C., Robinson, T., & Callister, M. (2012). Surviving Survivor: A content analysis of antisocial behavior and its context in a popular reality television show. Mass Communication and Society, 15(2), 261–283.

Violence as Media Content, Effects of

Michael Kunczik

Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (Emeritus)

Astrid Zipfel

Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf

Discussion of the harmful effects of media violence is as old as the media themselves. There is no medium that has not been suspected of stimulating real-world aggression. Apart from television, research has also focused on violent content in music and music videos, the Internet, and especially computer games (→ Video Games). Typically, studies examine media depictions of personal violence (i.e., intended physical and/or psychic damaging of persons, living beings, and inanimate objects by another person).

Theories of Pro-Social and Antisocial Effects

Research on the effects of mediated violence has been conducted within several theoretical frameworks. According to catharsis theory the viewing of media violence would lead to an engagement in fantasy aggression that permits the discharge of aggressive tendencies. Catharsis theory could not be confirmed by methodologically sound research. The simple assumption that media violence is imitated directly through a suggestion process has also been refuted. There may be special conditions that allow imitation of violent acts as well as suicide – however, media content seems to be only one of many more important causes or the final trigger for a previously planned action.

Habituation theory emphasizes long-term effects in the form of desensitization. Whereas viewing media violence seems actually to reduce physiological and emotional reactions to the respective content, evidence is scarce that it also affects attitudes towards violence in real life, diminishes empathy, and reduces the inhibition threshold for one’s own aggressive behavior. Cultivation theory assumes that heavy television viewers suffer from a distorted view of social reality. Viewing violence thus may cultivate fear of crime and the belief that the world is a mean and scary place (→ Cultivation Effects). Research is currently concentrating on intervening variables (e.g., experience of victimization).

According to excitation transfer theory different types of media content (violence, but also eroticism, humor, sports, etc.) cause a state of unspecific arousal that intensifies any (not necessarily violent) subsequent actions (→ Excitation and Arousal). Priming theory assumes that violent media stimuli can activate violent associations (thoughts, emotions, behavior) in the individual´s brain, and in the short term (in case of repeated stimulation perhaps even in the long term), unconsciously influence the perception of situations and the choice of behavioral options (→ Priming Theory).

Bandura’s theory of social learning seems to be the most appropriate approach to explain the heterogeneous results of medium-to-long-term studies on media violence. It postulates that people adopt patterns of behavior by observing other people’s actions (in reality or in the media; → Reality and Media Reality). However, these patterns do not necessarily have to be acted out. Normally, they remain latent. Violent actions usually underlie inhibiting conditions (e.g., social norms, fear of punishment, feelings of guilt). They only transfer into manifest action under adequate conditions, especially if the role model and/or the observer experiences or expects success or rewards (or at least no punishment). Social learning theory also considers attributes of media content (e.g., comprehensibility, justification), attributes of the observer (e.g., character, cognitive abilities, former experiences), and social conditions (e.g., socialization, values).

The general aggression model is an integrative model that tries to combine different concepts. It suggests that behavior results from personal and situational factors that affect cognitions, emotions, and arousal, thereby influencing the appraisal of a situation and the subsequent choice of behavioral options. Environmental reactions to this behavior lead to reinforcement or inhibition of the chosen behavior in the future. Repeated exposure to violent stimuli helps to develop easily accessible aggression-related knowledge structures that may be reinforced by successful application and that become increasingly complex, automatized, and resistant to change. Together with desensitization effects, this may lead to an aggressive personality.

Effects Strength and Future Research

Most researchers agree that media violence may cause negative effects. However, correlations found in empirical studies on television violence are usually quite small, and no more than 9 percent of a person´s total aggression is explained by media violence (Comstock 2004, Ferguson & Kilburn 2009, Anderson et al. 2010). Although it is often assumed that because of interactivity computer games (→ Computer Games and Child Development) should be far more dangerous, particularly strong effects of computer-game violence have not been found (Sherry 2007; Ferguson & Kilburn 2009).

The small effects point to the fact that media violence is only one factor within a complex set of causes for real-world aggression. However, the small correlation between media violence and violent behavior that holds true for the average of recipients does not mean that strong effects for particular forms of media contents and for particular recipients cannot be found.

According to the present state of knowledge (Kunczik & Zipfel 2010), the context of violent depictions is much more important than their sheer amount. Violent content presents a higher risk if it shows violence in a realistic and/or humorous way, if violent behavior seems justified and is committed by attractive, successful protagonists with whom the recipient can identify, and especially if violence is not punished and does not harm the victim visibly.

Concerning the recipient, negative effects of media violence are most likely to occur to young, male, socially deprived heavy viewers/players who already possess a violent personality, grow up in violent families with high media (violence) usage, experience much violence from their parents and in school, and belong to aggressive and/or delinquent peer groups. As the “downward spiral model” (Slater 2003), supported by longitudinal studies, postulates, there is a mutual interplay between preferences for violent media content and violent behavior. Already aggressive recipients are attracted to media violence, and this content may intensify aggressive tendencies.

If children grow up in a violent social environment aggressive media protagonists are particularly interesting and useful for them. They are exposed to a ‘double dose’ of violent role models because the behavior of violent media characters is affirmed by real-life experience. That way, violent media content and one’s own violent experiences may interact and reinforce each other. To further explore the role of moderating factors and their Interaction remains an important scientific task to be fulfilled.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Anderson, C. A., Shibuya, A., Ihori, N. et. al (2010). Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behaviour in eastern and western countries: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 151–173.
2. Comstock, G. A. (2004). Paths from television violence to aggression: Reinterpreting the evidence. In L. J. Shrum (ed.), The psychology of entertainment media: Blurring the lines between entertainment and persuasion. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 193–211.
3. Ferguson, C. J. & Kilburn, J. (2009). The public health risks of media violence: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Pediatrics, 154, 759–763.
4. Huesmann, L. R., Dubow, E. F., & Yang, G. (2013). Why it is hard to believe that media violence causes aggression. In K. E. Dill (ed.), The Oxford handbook of media psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 159–171.
5. Kirsh, S. J. (2012). Children, adolescents, and media violence: A critical look at the research, 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
6. Kunczik, M. & Zipfel, A. (2010). Medien und Gewalt: Befunde der Forschung 2004–2009 [Mass media and violence: Research findings 2004–2009]. Bonn: Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend.
7. Riddle, K. W., Potter, J., Metzger, M. J., Nabi, R. L., & Linz, D. G. (2011). Beyond cultivation: Exploring the effects of frequency, recency, and vivid autobiographical memories for violent media. Media Psychology, 14(2), 168–191.
8. Sherry, J. L. (2007). Violent video games and aggression: Why can’t we find effects? In R. W. Preiss, B. M. Gayle, N. Burrell, M. Allen, & J. Bryant (eds.), Mass media effects research: Advances through meta-analysis. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 245–262.
9. Slater, M. D. (2003). Alienation, aggression, and sensation seeking as predictors of adolescent use of violent film, computer, and website content. Journal of Communication, 53, 105–121.

Violence as Media Content, Effects on Children of

Brad Bushman

Ohio State University

L. Rowell Huesmann

University of Michigan

Many children today spend more time consuming media than they spend attending school, or in any other activity except for sleeping. By media we mean any form of mass communication such as television, the Internet, video and computer games (→ Video Games), comic books, and radio. Violence is a dominant theme in most forms of media. For example, content analyses show that about 60 percent of television programs in the USA contain violence, and so do about 70–90 percent of the top-selling video games. By violence we mean an extreme act of physical aggression, such as assaulting another person (→ Violence as Media Content; Violence as Media Content, Effects of).

Types of Violent Media Content

For decades researchers have investigated the short- and long-term effects of media violence (→ Media Effects, History of). These researchers have found evidence for at least two important short-term effects and three important long-term effects. The short-term effects are ‘priming effect’ (→ Priming Theory) and ‘mimicry effect.’ The long-term effects are the ‘mean-world effect’ (→ Cultivation Effects); the ‘observational learning effect,’ and a ‘desensitization effect.’

Regarding the short-term effects, experimental studies on priming effects have shown that exposing participants of any age to violent media for relatively short amounts of time (e.g., 20 minutes) causes increases in their aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, and aggressive behaviors (→ Experiment, Laboratory). For example, exposure to violent media makes people more willing to shock others or blast others with loud noise. The exposure to violent media activates these aggressive ideas and thoughts in the mind (primes them), which in turn makes aggressive behavior more likely. Experiments on mimicry effects have shown that even very young children will immediately mimic violent or nonviolent behaviors they see being done in the mass media. Bandura et al. (1963) first showed this for nursery school children hitting Bobo dolls, but others have shown the same effect with nursery school children hitting other children. The propensity to mimic facial expressions and simple observed behaviors seems to be a ‘hard-wired’ process that emerges in infancy. It is differentiated from ‘imitation,’ which is a longer-term process requiring encoding of a → script, its retention in memory, and its use at a later time.

In the area of long-term effects research has shown that heavy TV viewers are more fearful about becoming victims of violence, are more distrustful of others, and are more likely to perceive the world as a dangerous, mean, and hostile place (mean-world syndrome). This process seems to begin early in childhood, with even 7–11-year-olds displaying this pattern. In general, the mean-world syndrome only seems to apply to appraisals of environments with which people have relatively little experience. More recent theoretical approaches to imitation have distinguished immediate copying of observed behaviors (mimicry) from delayed copying (imitation, or observational learning). Often what is acquired in observational learning is not a simple behavior but behavioral scripts, beliefs, → attitudes, and other cognitions that make a class of behaviors (e.g., aggressive behaviors) more likely.

A number of longitudinal studies have now shown that exposure to media violence in childhood has a significant impact on children’s real-world aggression and violence when they grow up (Anderson et al. 2003; → Longitudinal Analysis). For example, in one study children exposed to violent media were significantly more aggressive 15 years later. Importantly, this study also found that aggression as a child was unrelated to exposure to violent media as a young adult, effectively ruling out the possibility that this relationship is merely a result of more aggressive children consuming more violent media (Huesmann et al. 2003).

The effects of violent video games on children’s attitudes toward violence are of particular concern. Violent video games encourage players to take the perpetrator’s perspective. Exposure to violent TV programs and films increases people’s pro-violence attitudes, but exposure to violent video games has the additional consequence of teaching decreased empathy for victims. For instance, in one study, children who saw a violent movie were then less willing to intervene when they saw two younger children fighting (Drabman & Thomas 1974; → Computer Games and Child Development). In part, this impact occurs because exposure to violent media desensitizes people emotionally to violence and makes them more tolerant of their own aggression (see below). However, a more important process is likely that violent media teaches children that violent behavior is an appropriate means of solving problems, the violent scripts they can use to solve social problems, and that good consequences can come from behaving violently. In addition, the more realistic a game is perceived to be, the greater the player’s immersion, and the greater the immersion, the more cognitive aggression is generated in the player (McGloin et al. 2013).

Moderators and Size of Violent Media Effects

Not all forms of violence are alike. Media that glamorize violence and feature attractive role models (e.g., ‘good guys’) may have a particularly strong influence, especially when the model’s behaviors are reinforced. Whether someone is more likely to become an aggressor or a victim may also depend on whom they identify with, the perpetrators of violence, or their victims. However, for practical purposes, the sheer amount and variety of violence children are exposed to make it likely that all children are vulnerable to these effects in varying degrees. Both boys and girls, more and less intelligent children, and aggressive and nonaggressive children are affected. The long-term effects are greater for children than for adults (Bushman & Huesmann 2006).

Not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer, but smoking is an important risk factor for the disease. Similarly, not everyone who consumes violent media becomes aggressive, but violent media is an important risk factor for aggression. Research has clearly shown that effects of violent media content are not restricted to people who are genetically or biologically predisposed to be aggressive (and thus also exposing themselves to more violence; see Bushman & Huesmann 2014).

References and Suggested Readings

1. Anderson, C. A., Berkowitz, L., Donnerstein, E. et al. (2003). The influence of media violence on youth. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4, 81–110.
2. Anderson, C. A., Shibuya, A., Ihori, N. et al. (2010). Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behaviour in eastern and western countries: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 151–173.
3. Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1963). Imitation of film-mediated aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66, 3–11.
4. Bushman, B. J. & Huesmann, L. R. (2006). Short-term and long-term effects of violent media on aggression in children and adults. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 160, 348–352.
5. Bushman, B. J. & Huesmann, L. R. (2014). Twenty-five years of research on violence in digital games and aggression revisited: A reply to Elson and Ferguson. European Psychologist, 19(1), 47–55.
6. Carnagey, N. L., Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2007). The effect of video game violence on physiological desensitization to real life violence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 489–496.
7. Drabman, R. S. & Thomas, M. H. (1974). Does media violence increase children’s toleration of real-life aggression? Developmental Psychology, 10, 418–421.
8. Huesmann, L. R., Moise-Titus, J., Podolski, C. L., & Eron, L. D. (2003). Longitudinal relations between children’s exposure to TV violence and their aggressive and violent behavior in young adulthood: 1977–1992. Developmental Psychology, 39, 201–221.
9. Huesmann, L. R., Dubow, E. F., & Yang, G. (2013). Why it is hard to believe that media violence causes aggression. In K. E. Dill (ed.), The Oxford handbook of media psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 159–171.
10. Kirsh, S. J. (2012). Children, adolescents, and media violence: A critical look at the research, 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
11. McGloin, R., Farrar, K., & Krcmar, M. (2013). Video games, immersion, and cognitive aggression: Does the controller matter? Media Psychology, 16(1), 65–87.
12. Meirick, P. C., Sims, J. D., Gilchrist, E. S., & Croucher, S. M. (2009). All the children are above average: Parents’ perceptions of education and materialism as media effects on their own and other children. Mass Communication and Society, 12(2), 217–237.

Visual Communication

Michael Griffin

Macalester College

In communication and media studies the term ‘visual communication’ did not come into use until after World War II and has been used most often to refer to ‘pictures,’ still and moving, rather than the broader concept of ‘the visual.’ Studies of visual communication arose primarily in response to a lack of attention to the pictorial in mass communication research. The study of visual communication comprises such wide-reaching and voluminous literatures as art history; the philosophy of art and aesthetics; → semiotics, cinema studies, television and mass media studies; the history and theory of → photography; the history and theory of → graphic design and typography; the study of word–image relationships in literary, aesthetic, and rhetorical theory (→ Rhetorical Studies); the development and use of charts, diagrams, cartography, and questions of geographic visualization; the physiology and psychology of visual → perception; and the impact of new visual technologies, including → digital imagery.

The Pictorial Turn

The rise of contemporary visual communication studies was preceded by centuries of thought and writing concerning the arts and the visual image. Yet the last decades of the twentieth century saw a renewed philosophical concern with the visual that Mitchell (1994) calls “the pictorial turn.” This increased attention to the visual can be seen as an outgrowth of scholarship on photography, which since the middle of the nineteenth century has continually explored and revisited the nature of the photographic image as a reflection of reality. Whether couched in terms of art vs. science, pictorial expression vs. mechanical record, or trace vs. transformation, the practice of photography has been dogged by ongoing contradictions between the craft of picture-making and the status of photographs as technological recording. Similarly, the extensive literature of → film theory has revolved around questions of cinema’s proper aesthetic status.

An important foundation for the development of visual communication studies, film theory synthesized a body of concepts and tools borrowed from the study of art, psychology, sociology, language, and literature, and work in visual communication has often returned to these various sources for new applications to photography, design, electronic imaging, or virtual reality. Central issues have included the distinction between formative and realist theories, and the scope and centrality of narrative, issues that have preoccupied the philosophy of representation more generally (→ Realism in Film and Photography; Reality and Media Reality).

Theoretical Approaches

The precise nature of visual images as copies or records continues to be a defining issue for visual communication studies in an era of ubiquitous photo-electronic reproduction, with various technical advances promising ever more convincing images and simulations of the external world. Against the commonsense assumptions so often made that visual media give us a window on reality, from the beginning photography and film studies have interrogated the ways in which such ‘windows’ are created and structured to shape our view.

British → cultural studies also incorporated work on film and photography to analyze the culturally constructed nature of visual representation, what many Anglo scholars increasingly called ‘lens theory.’ Concurrently, interest in the psychology of the visual made its way through art history to visual media studies. For instance, Gombrich makes the case that picture forms of all kinds are conventionally constructed according to learned schemata, not simply copied from nature (→ Art as Communication). Pictures rarely stand alone, and rarely communicate unambiguously when they do. Together with film theory, semiotics, and the social history of art, the psychology of visual representation has contributed to an eclectic body of theory and research on which communications scholars have drawn for conceptualizing approaches to visual communication analysis.

The social history of art offers models for investigating relationships between the production of images and the social contexts of their sponsorship, use, and interpretation. Alpers has explored the relation between picture-making and description. Baxandall’s (1972) study of painting and experience in fifteenth-century Italy provides a historical ethnography of patronage, contractual obligations, and viewer expectations, mapping a social world of visual communication (→ Ethnography of Communication). Becker’s Art Worlds (1982) applies a similar approach to twentieth-century social worlds of artistic production, with specific attention paid to photography.

Related to these extra-textual studies of visual communication practice and meaning is a long history of attention to the intertextual relationships between word and image. Whether in studies of the relationship between religious painting and scripture, pictures and narrative, or in attempts to pursue the study of iconology (the general field of images and their relation to discourse), the existence of pictures within larger multi-textual contexts has led to several rich traditions of scholarship.

Influenced by these parallel developments, social communication theorists in anthropology and sociology took an interest in the social and discursive role of visual images. In the 1960s and 1970s scholars studied the cultural codes and social contexts of image-making within particular communities, sub-cultures, and social groups. This movement was influenced by work in the psychology of art and representation, film theory, symbolic interactionism, semiotics, and the social history of art.

Current and Future Research Topics

The key issues for visual communication in the new millennium are surprisingly similar to those of 30 years ago, although greater attention is being paid to these issues within communications studies itself. A still largely unmet challenge for visual communication scholars is to scan, chart, and interrogate the various levels at which images seem to operate: as evidence in visual rhetoric, as simulated reality bolstering and legitimizing the presence and status of media operations themselves, as abstract symbols and textual indices, or as ‘stylistic excess’ – the self-conscious performance of style. These issues are perhaps more significant than ever for the processes of ‘remediation’ that characterize new digital media and the emphases on ‘transparent immediacy’ and ‘hypermediacy’ that distinguish digital visualization.

There is an issue of particular concern to visual communication researchers as we proceed into an era of increasingly convincing virtual realism on the one hand, and an increasingly systemic textualization of images in cyberspace on the other. It is not just what we can do with new digital technologies of manipulation but to what purposes we seek to use the production of images in a ‘post-photographic age.’

Finally, in that emerging condition often referred to as the ‘global media environment’, visual images have become a new sort of transnational cultural currency. Not the ‘universal language’ that promoters such as Eastman Kodak claimed for photography earlier in the century, but a currency of media control and power, indices of the predominant cultural visions of predominant media industries.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Alpers, S. (1983). The art of describing: Dutch art in the seventeenth century. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
2. Baxandall, M. (1972). Painting and experience in fifteenth-century Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3. Becker, H. S. (1982). Art worlds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
4. Gombrich, E. H. (1972). The visual image. Scientific American, 227(3), 82–96.
5. Griffin, M. (ed.) (1992). Visual communication studies in mass media research, Parts I and II. Communication (special double issue), 13(2/3).
6. Gross, L. (1981). Introduction. In S. Worth, Studying visual communication. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 1–35.
7. Lester, P. (2013). Visual communication: Images with messages, 6th edn. Andover: Cengage Learning.
8. Mitchell, W. J. T. (1994). Picture theory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
9. Worth, S. (1981). Studying visual communication. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Visual Culture

Lisa Cartwright

University of California, San Diego

Visual culture is an area of study focused on practices of looking and the role of → visual representations in the arts, popular and alternative media cultures, institutional and professional contexts, and everyday life. Art history, film and media studies, → cultural studies, sociology, and anthropology are some of the fields in which visual culture study is conducted. Forms of visual representation studied include museum display, fine art, film and television, old and new media, computer and → video games, digital culture, medical images such as X-rays and sonograms, and → advertising (→ Art as Communication; Cinema; Digital Imagery; Television, Visual Characteristics of).

The study of visual culture emphasizes the relationship of looking and visual representation to forms of knowledge, power, experience, and ideology in everyday life and culture in different historical periods – within and among social groups including nations, communities, workplaces, audiences, and members of institutions such as schools, churches, and cultural organizations. Research in visual culture tends toward qualitative and interdisciplinary methods informed by poststructural critical theory and cultural studies (→ Structuralism; Qualitative Methodology).

Visual culture emerged as an area of study in the period during which electronic and digital media became pervasive components of industrialized cultures. Individual works of fine art were subject to more pervasive reproduction and circulation with the rise of digital imaging and the world wide web, changing the status of the original work of art. Mechanical forms of reproduction such as → photography and motion-picture film converged with digital media in production and exhibition processes. With the increased and enhanced presence of visual media forms in everyday life, the visual became a more crucial area of research in many fields. Visual culture has achieved recognition as a viable approach in many of the traditional disciplines including literature, history, art history, film and media studies, and communication studies.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Dikovitskaya, M. (2005). Visual culture: The study of the visual after the cultural turn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
2. Fuery, K. & Fuery, P. (2003). Visual culture and critical theory. London: Edward Arnold.
3. Morra, J. & Smith, M. (eds.) (2006). Visual culture: Critical concepts in media and cultural studies, 4 vols. London: Routledge.
4. Sturken, M. & Cartwright, L. (2001). Practices of looking: An introduction to visual culture, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Visual Representation

Carey Jewitt

University of London

The study and conceptualization of visual representation were primarily associated with art and art history prior to the twentieth century, and drew on the analytical tools of iconology with a focus on the artist’s intention and perception (→ Iconography). With the advent of →  semiotics, followed by other theories of the visual, the twentieth century marked a broadening in conceptions of visual representation from the realm of art to the realm of the everyday. This includes studies of images in film, the use of photography, advertising, scientific imagery, learning and development, and the representation of social identities. This expansion of the domain of the visual has influenced how visual representation is theorized and approached, including a shift in focus from the image to contexts of production and viewers. Today a range of theories is applied to understanding the visual, including theories drawn from anthropology, art history, cognitive psychology, cultural studies, linguistics, psychoanalytical theories, and sociology.

The twenty-first century is marked by a plethora of imaging and visual technologies, and in contemporary western society everyday life is saturated with the images that these technologies make available. Studies of late twentieth-century culture have noted a “turn to the visual” (Mirzoeff 1999) in which the modern world has become a visual phenomenon; a world that conflates looking, seeing, and knowing to become a “vision machine” created through new visualizing technologies in which people are all caught (Virilio 1994).

There is a general agreement that the meaning of an image is ‘made’ at three sites. First, semiotics proposes that there is a wide range of visual, pictorial, material, and symbolic → signs that are conventional in the way that they simplify, and yet bear some kind of resemblance to, an object or quality in the ‘real’ world that they signify. What is depicted in an image and how it is represented are an obvious starting point for understanding the process of visual representation. Second, the economics, motives, and intentions of those who produce and disseminate visual representations are aspects of the site of production. That is, visual representations need to be understood in context because these social factors and experiences are not separate from the signifying systems of the visual, but structure it. Third, understanding the agency of the viewer demands a shift of analytical emphasis away from the image or text to the social identities and experiences of the viewer. From this perspective, meaning is understood as constituted in the articulation between the viewer and the viewed, between the power of the image to signify, and the viewer’s capacity to interpret meaning.

Signification and how to theorize the relationship between referent, signifier, and signified are central to the way visual representation is conceptualized. Current theories of → perception, structuralism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism theorize their relationship in different ways (→ Postmodernism and Communication). This influences how the power of visual representation is understood to shape people’s experience of the world, what the world is, and what it can be.

The visual produces as well as represents culture, constituting (and constituted by) its relations of power and difference, so that cultures of everyday life are entwined with practices of representation. In the ways that people are depicted, vision is complicit with power and discipline through surveillance (→ Propaganda, Visual Communication of). Understanding visual representation as embodying and constituting ideologies shows how ways of investing meaning in the world are realized in visual representations. Looking at how representations attempt to fix difference offers a way of conceptualizing the complex relationship of power and representation. Visual representations are, then, a discursive means by which a dominant group works to establish and maintain hegemonic power within a culture in which meaning is constantly reproduced and remade as signs are articulated and rearticulated. Images are thus a site of struggle for meaning, a site of power, and constitutive of society.

References and Suggested Readings

1. Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
2. Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: A grammar of visual design. London: Routledge.
3. Lester, P. (2013). Visual communication: Images with messages, 6th edn. Andover: Cengage Learning.
4. Mirzoeff, N. (1999). An introduction to visual culture. London: Routledge.
5. Mitchell, W. J. T. (1995). Picture theory: Essays on verbal and visual representation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
6. Virilio, P. (1994). The vision machine. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.