CS101 Chapter Notes -David Gauntlett
Document Summary
To explain the problem of violence in society, researchers should begin with that social violence and seek to explain it with reference, quite obviously, to those who engage in it: their identity, background, character and so on. The "media effects" approach, in this sense, comes at the problem backwards, by starting with the media and then trying to lasso connections from there on to social beings, rather than the other way around. Criminologists, in their professional attempts to explain crime and violence, consistently turn for explanations not to the mass media but to social factors such as poverty, unemployment, housing, and the behaviour of family and peers. In more general terms, the "backwards" approach involves the mistake of looking at individuals, rather than society, in relation to the mass media: the effects model treats children as inadequate. The individualism of the psychological discipline has also had a significant impact on the way in which children are regarded in effects research.
