Unit 6 LO3 Comprehensively explain how media audiences respond to media

products with elucidated examples and constantly using subject terminology

Deadline: Friday 17th

Researching Media Effects of Computer Games

There is a lot of discussion around the effects of video games
on their audience. Specifically violent/explicit games such as
Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty have an international spread
audience, which include the harmful content?
Call of Duty has many editions ranging from 16+ to 18+ for
violent and potentially harming content. However, they have
also released a new 12+ Call of Duty Infinite Warfare
PlayStation VR Jackal Experience which means that PlayStation
have potentially listened to these accusations.
Grand Theft Auto has five editions, which are all 18+ for
explicit sexual & violent content.
Why do gamers love video games?
Gamers which love these violent games, must have a reason
why they are so addicted. I highly doubt that all people that
play Call of Duty are blood thirsty rebels. Gamers in general
want to be entertained which quick thrill, which the games
provide. There is an escape from reality, which they can confide
in video games. There is very much accomplishments that
comes along with the violent content. The audience receive a
sense of achievement is through storylines; missions and
levelling up to unlock new features of the games (like new
guns, clothing, characters, coloured weapons etc.). In addition,
many people play video games to play online with their friends,
as it is a way to be social and co-operatively play with friends
or a chance to make new friends, as there is a vast
international audience of these games. I believe that the
audience of these gamers are addicted to the competition of
playing against the vast competitive online. Gamers claim it is
mentally stimulating, essentially makes them, feel better or
happier.
BBFC
In 1984 Parliament passed the Video Recordings Act. This act
stated that, subject to certain exemptions, video recordings
offered for sale or an authority designated by the Secretary of
State must classify hire commercially in the UK. The President
and Vice Presidents of the BBFC were so designated and
charged with applying the new test of suitability for viewing in
the home.
In order to protect children from unsuitable and even harmful
content in films and videos and to give consumers information
they might need about a particular film or video before
deciding whether to view it, the BBFC examines and age rates
films and videos before they are released.
In 2006 BBFC discovered that younger gamers are influenced to
play titles such as Grand Theft Auto by peer pressure and the
negative press coverage of violent titles increases their uptake.

What are the effects of exposure to explicit sexual or

violent content in these video games?
In 2013 more than 1.2 billion people are playing games
worldwide, according to a state of the industry report by Spil
Games. Of those, about 700 million play online games. That
amounts to 44 percent of the world's online population,
according to comScore data cited by Spil Games. Statistics from
BigFishGames.com (2014) state that the average aged gamer is
31. But 29% of gamers are under the age of 18.
In 2014 relating to these statistics the top 5 played games are:-
1. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare 18+
2. Madden NFL 15
3. Destiny
4. Grand Theft Auto V 18+
5. Minecraft
These 18+ rated games have been massively successful due to
well created, challenging games. However, they have
repeatedly had negative media for years creating a moral
panic. This has given the games more exposure, which would
have potentially attracted more gamers.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred in
December 14, 2012. In Connecticut, 20 year old, Adam Lanza
before driving to school he had shot his mother. Then fatally
shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members from his school,
shortly after he shot himself in the head before police arrived.
The headlines to this horrible act was KILLERS CALL OF DUTY
OBSESSION, so there was research on Adam where they found
he played Call of Duty daily, which they blamed everything on.
As there is shooting people in the games he was playing and he
shot people they put games and reality together. That is a very
narrow-minded perception of the fatality. Maybe if guns were
not legal and so accessible he would have no way of shooting
anyone. Also potentially look into school bullying protection,
and he was most probably mentally unstable, and there could
be more work to reach out to such conditions.

Audience Responses
Does the violent and sexual content have negative
effects?

David Morley created the Reception Theory Preferred,

Negotiated and Oppositional Reading.
David Morley found that there were 3 ways to read a text.
Preferred
A preferred reading is the reading which the media producers
want the audience to receive.
For example that would be the news reports after Columbine
pushing ALL blame of the attacks, onto video games, where the
media has intended persuasive purposes.
Negotiated
A negotiated reading is one where the audience accepts the
meaning the media producers intend for the text but it changes
some of the intentions of the text to suit its own position.
So this is partly accepting and partly rejecting the text, based
of the information you have read. Accepting that harmful and
sexual content can have some influence on violent behaviour
in real life, but is not to blame for incidents, as there are so
many more influences.

Oppositional
An oppositional reading is one where the audience reject the
preferred reading of the text and interpret the text in a different way.
Some text can be extremely biased, or purely written to grab attention,
so many viewers may read the information provided and completely
disagree with some of the statements.
For Against
Mentally Stimulating Accused of ruining literacy
level
Sense of Achievement Obesity
Entertaining Infecting minds violent
behaviour
Socialise with friends & people online Anti-Social
behaviour
Interesting Storylines Used as blame for crimes!
Virtual reality is cool Columbine US 1999
Release of stress/anger Builds
anger/stress
Escape from Reality Upsetting to young
audience

There is no real way of proving if video games are directly to

blame for incidents that happen in the real life as there is way
too many variable to put your finger on one cause. But video
games is a sure easy target as they hold content which shows
violent killings and sexual content, which is consumed by the
age restriction and below.

For
1. In 2013, psychologist Simone Khn studied the effects of
prolonged video game exposure on the brains of young
adults. Khn observed her subjects as they played Super
Mario 64 for 30 minutes every day, for two months. After
undergoing MRI scans and being compared to the brains of
a control group, the psychologist discovered that the
prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and cerebellum had all
grown.

The prefrontal cortex is known to be involved in higher

cognitive functions including strategic planning, but also in
cognitive control," Khn says.

"The hippocampus is involved in memory formation," the

psychologist continues," with the right hippocampus
being particularly involved in spatial navigation, namely in
helping us orient ourselves.

"The cerebellum, on the other hand, is known to be involved

with fine motor function, and the region in which we found the
changes after video game playing is, predictably, the region
where the digits of the hands are controlled."

2. Berni Good is a cyberpsychologist who provides bespoke

consultations and psychological services for gamers. She
has studied and collated research from around the world
in an attempt to gauge computer games' effects on our
wellbeing.

Against

1. Dr Mark Appelbaum of the American Psychological

Association (APA) concluded that the research
demonstrated a consistent relation between violent video
game us and increases in aggressive behaviour.
 "Aggressive cognitions and aggressive affect, as wells as
decreases in pro-social behaviour, empathy and sensitivity to
aggression" were also cited as negative consequences of game
playing in the APA report.

2. Earlier this year, an American study found that young

men who play violent video games such as Grand Theft
Auto have a lower capacity for female empathy than those
who play more benign games.

After playing Grand Theft Auto, in which women are presented

as sexual objects, a large sample of teenage boys reported
significantly lower levels of sympathy and compassion when
shown a photo of a female victim of domestic violence.

Task 1 Origin & Credibility if Theorists and

Theories

1. Hypodermic Needle
The theory behind the Hypodermic Needle is simply referencing
the media as a whole as a needle that injects influences, ideas
and information into the viewers brains subconsciously. So if
you repeatedly see violence on screen you will do violent acts
in real life. These viewers are referred to as passive audiences.
So relating this to my case study, the sexual and violent abuse
of Grand Theft Auto would mean that if they beat up strippers
on the game, there are more likely to be aggressive and
offensive to women.
This theory is still quoted during moral panics by parents,
politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why
certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain
media texts.
The son of Dr James Wood and his wife Mary Wood (his cousin),
Alexander was born on 10 December 1817 in Cupar, Fife, and
educated at Edinburgh Academy and Edinburgh University (MD
1839). In 1853, he invented the first hypodermic needle that
used a true syringe and hollow needle.
 The "hypodermic needle theory" implied mass media had
a direct, immediate and powerful effect on its audiences. The
mass media in the 1940s and 1950s were perceived as a
powerful influence on behavior change.

Several factors contributed to this "strong effects" theory of

communication, including:
the fast rise and popularization of radio and television
the emergence of the persuasion industries, such as
advertising and propaganda
the Payne Fund studies of the 1930s, which focused on the
impact of motion pictures on children, and
Hitler's monopolization of the mass media during WWII to
unify the German public behind the Nazi party

2. Uses and gratification

The theory of audience suggests unlike the hypodermic needle
model, that the audience determines what to do with media
rather than the media simply influential the audience directly.
When an audience actively seeks media, they want to gratify a
need. The message of the media is not being forced on them as
such; they are choosing to interpret its message. Basically
media does not fully control a helpless audience; it is more like
the media is subjective per person as they use it to meet
needs.
The pioneers of Uses and gratifications are Herta Herzog, West
& Turner and Wilbur Schramm who developed Needs and
Motivation Theory outlined by Ambrahma Marslow in 1954.
Which argues that people actively looked to satisfy their needs
based on a hierarchy. These needs are organized as Maslow's
Hierarchy of Needs in the form of a pyramid with the largest,
most fundamental needs at the base and the need for self-
actualization at the tip. From the bottom-up the pyramid
contains Biological/Physical, Security/Safety, Social/Belonging,
Ego/Self-Respect and Self-actualization at the top
This new branch of research explores the U&G of starting to
play games online. Achievement, enjoyment and social
interaction are all motivations for starting to play an online
game, and their success at the game as well as the extent to
which their uses were gratified predicted their continuance in
playing
3. Reception Study
Reception theory is a version of reader response literary theory
that emphasizes each particular reader's reception or
interpretation in making meaning from a literary
text. Reception theory is generally referred to as
audience reception in the analysis of communications models.
The cultural theorist Stuart Hall has been one of the main
proponents of reception theory, having developed it for media
and communication studies from the literary and history-
oriented approaches mentioned above. His approach, called
the encoding/decoding model of communication, is a form of
textual analysis that focuses on the scope of "negotiation" and
"opposition" by the audience. This means that a "text" be it a
book, movie, or other creative work is not simply passively
accepted by the audience, but that the reader/viewer interprets
the meanings of the text based on her or his individual cultural
background and life experiences. In essence, the meaning of a
text is not inherent within the text itself, but is created within
the relationship between the text and the reader

4. Passive or active consumption

Passive
A passive consumption is when the audience doesn't engage
or question the media message but just accepts it, this what
media outlets want to achieve when making a film or show as
they want to view to except and not question.
There have been a few studies done on what is called an
audience effect. Those studies seem to show that a passive
audience works well for some performers that dont require a
whole lot of skill.
Active
An active consumption is when the audience will engage and
discuss media messages that come across to them and
sometimes question the media messages through life
experiences.
Active audience theory is seen as a direct contrast to the
Effects traditions, however Jenny Kitzinger argues against
discounting the effect or influence media can have on an
audience, acknowledging that an active audience does not
mean that media effect or influence is not possible. Supporting
this view, other theories combine the concepts of active
audience theory and the effects model, such as the two step
flow theory where Katz and Lazarsfeld argue that persuasive
media texts are filtered through opinion leaders who are in a
position to 'influence' the targeted audience through social
networks and peer groups.
5.
Bibliography
1. http://www.bbfc.co.uk/about-bbfc
2. http://www.pamf.org/parenting-teens/general/media-
web/videogames.html
3. http://www.history.com/topics/columbine-high-school-
shootings
4. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/is-video-
gaming-bad-for-you-the-science-for-and-against/
5. https://mediafort.wordpress.com/tag/active-and-passive-
consumption/
6. https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/communication-
theories/sorted-by-cluster/Mass
%20Media/Hypodermic_Needle_Theory/
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uses_and_gratifications_theor
y#History
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reception_theory