Research Project: Media Violence's Effect On Viewer's Aggression - Essay.

There are many examples that exposure to media like on television cause aggression and its effects on views as strong as the effect of cigarette smoking causing cancer (Freedman, 2007). Short-term and long-term effects of violent media use on aggressive behaviour have been demonstrated by numerous studies across age, culture, gender, even personality types. The effects are minor, but they accumulate to produce significant changes in behaviour over time influencing the viewers and the society both at once (Anderson, 2016). He adds in his journal publication that the reason for the short term aggression is because of:

• Imitation of the viewed contents
• Influence of the observed attitudes, expectation of benefits from aggression
• Excitement after observations
• Demonstration of the contents

Violent media content can influence someone in a way that it leads to behave viewers in an aggressive or violent way, ignore other people’s needs and feelings, or they feel more isolated and scared of their surroundings (Network, 2016).

Emanuel Tanay says anything that promotes something can be called propaganda. What we call entertainment is really propaganda for violence. If you manufacture guns, you don’t need to advertise, because it is done by our entertainment industry.

This project will focus on the following research questions,

1.Do viewers’ aggression and influence of media content dependent on age factors?

2.Do media contents and viewers aggression playing roles in increasing crime in the society?

3.Are there any other factors that motivate to the viewers to commit violent aggression over explicit media contents?

4.Are there any alternatives to bring back people’s psychological stability from psychological influence?

Research methodology

Media violence and its effect on viewer’s aggression

The project will be seeking to prove the following hypothesis. The hypotheses will be proven null or alternative after the research project is carried out. They include;

1. Viewers aggression and influence on media content depends on the age factor
2. Media content and viewers’ aggression may play a primary role in increasing crime in the society
3. There are other factors that motivate the viewers to commit violence over the explicit media contents.
4. There are other alternatives to bringing back people’s psychological stability from psychological influence.

Research methodology is of great importance and it is an integral part in the research work. When proper considerations of research are taken into consideration, they can be justified to produce very good results in implementation period of the research. A particular work of research will always focus on developing and implying on the appropriate methods of research and strategies to make sure that there is a positive outcome from the conducted research.

For this research, quantitative methods are going to be used. For this reason, the data shall be collected by use of the questionnaires. The open ended questionnaires are going to be used. The researcher will identify and write down some questions that the respondents will respond to. The questions on the questionnaire will have to be well formatted to avoid bias and to cover the whole scope of the research question. There will also be some questionnaires with closed ended questions. These questions will not demand much from the respondents. Many of them will be yes-no questions and others which will be objective based. The questionnaire will be administered o the selected sample size within the specified time and then, the data collected through them will be quantified for analysis. As a researcher in the quantitative research methodology, I will also try to make items of the questionnaire to also focus and consider the thoughts, believes, views, emotion, intelligence and perception of the respondents and other researchers over the research topic (Creswell, 2013, p.450. In the methodology part of the research, there will be focus and consideration of the numeric data and the statistical formulas which will be applied to analyze the information that shall be gathered for getting a potential outcomes of the research.

The research will be directed to the population of Australia. The population for the study has been identified to be Australian Continent and more specifically, the media centers and the citizens of Australian states. Since the study will be focusing on the young ones or the children, the youth and the age, the scope will be extended to generalize the ones who will be included in the samples after the sampling procedures to represent the whole continent of Australia. Though the population being so large, it will be sampled to obtain a desirable sample size.

The sampling procedure for this research will be random sampling. From the population of interest, the researcher will have to give all the population items the equal chances to participate as the samples. The samples will be collected from the population in Australian states. From New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia, there will be selection of samples randomly from all these parts. The young people, that is, children and youths together with the aged adults will be a part of purposive sampling as it will be outlined on the sample size. In conjunction to random sampling, there will be a merge with purposive sampling. There will have to be specifications of the samples which will be appropriate to participate in the exercise. This will be possible if the research will incorporate the random sampling in the same capacity with random sampling (Etikan, Musa, and Alkassim, 2016, p.3). The samples selected randomly will then be purposively given their questionnaires. It means that the questionnaires for the media station participants will be different from those of the viewers. The viewers will be purposively identified according to the levels of knowledge about the media.

Research design

The sample for the research will be 100 children, 100 youths, 50 aged adults and 50 media presenters.  They will represent the whole population of Australia. Among the total of 300 samples, they are going to be represented from the 5 states of Australia, that is, 60 from New South Wales, 60 from Queensland, 60 from Tasmania, 60 from Victoria and 60 from western Australia.

The research project is estimated to have some variables. Some of these variables are dependent and others are independent on each other. The independent variables do not rely on any other variable, they are standalones. The dependent variables rely on the independent variables in the research. For them to be accounted for, they have to be considered in the context of the independent variables. However, the independent variable affects the independent variable (Bryman, 2015, p.92.

For this project, the variables are Media violence and viewer’s aggression. The media violence is the independent variable for the research project. The viewer’s aggression is the dependent variable. The viewers’ aggression is as a result of the violence that is portrayed in the media. This violence is affects the society, ranging from the young to the aged and therefore, it affects the aggression of those who views it and therefore the independent variable.

The data collected from the survey questionnaire will have to be evaluated and measured for analyzed. The quantitative approach will demand statistical measurement levels. The ordinal level of measurement will be applied. The measurement will depict the ordered relationship between and among the variables of the research, that is, media violence as the independent variable and the viewer’s aggression as the dependent variable, observations. The data that is going to be obtained in the field will have to be quantified and the hypothesis will be proven if the measured variable will bring the study t a prove on the validity of the research questions and the hypotheses to be tested (Aubinet, Vesala and Papale, 2012, p.193). The measurement therefore will be ordered according to how they influence the viewers towards aggression.

The data analysis procedures are to be taken with a lot of concern. The procedures that are to be followed have to ensure that there is an approved degree of validity. The instruments that are to be used to analyze the data as well should be valid, scientific and well prepared so as the findings would be applicable, practical, valid and reliable in making recommendations of the research. Validity will therefore be to examine the relevance of the selected analytical approaches and designs for this research (Meeker, and Escobar, 2014, p 179). The researcher ought to balance the techniques in order to avoid overgeneralization and biasness in interpretation of the data.

The data collected from the selected samples will be quantified. It will required inform of numbers of quantities. Quantifying the data will lead to achieve the data that can be analyzed through the quantitative data methods. The data will be collected from the samples each representing the population it was obtained from. Data will be analyzed by use of scientific methods and scientific tools. One of the tools to be used in data analysis will be the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. The tool will be used in analyzing the quantitative data of the research (Treiman, 2014, p.103).

Population of interest

After data is analyzed, it will be interpreted through the descriptive methods. The theories in sociology and media will be used in proving the hypothesis. The theoretical framework will as well be considered in the analysis and interpretation of the data.

The presentation the information will be in pie charts, graphical presentations will also be applicable as well as findings and recommendations will be provided in proving the subject matter and answering the research questions and hypothesis testing.

Conclusion

All in all, the research is expected to provide much insight in the field of media and society. The claim from the research hypothesis is that, media violence, or the content portrayed by the media concern violence of people as individuals or as groups has much to do with the aggression of the people who view it. Media has a great content that is generally meant to entertain the audience and the viewers of the media sites, channels and stations (Christopher, 2008, p.315). However, the content has some impact to the psychology of people. According the psychologist theories, what people see with their eyes and what is heard and felt, impacts to the character of an individual. For the operant behaviors of human being, it can be justified that the content that media presents to the general public, impacts what the audience do or act at certain contexts and situations (Shira et al., 2014, p.61)

On this ground, the researches that had been carried out earlier on the media violence and its effect on viewer’s aggression lacks some details on quantifying the intensity of the aggression cause by the media violence content. Therefore, this research is based on that aspect. It will gather all the available information from the viewer’s aggression and the frequency that the media Is found to display such content (Kaplan, Oct, 2017). After all, the research will benefit the people in media departments and the quality assurance teams of the media companies together with the system administrator so that, it will help them to improve the media presentation of specific context where violence id portrayed.

References

Alper, J. S. (1995). Television violence and children. Its effects need to be seen in the context ofotherinfluences on children's mental health, 273-274

Shira Dvir Gvirsman, L. Rowell Huesmann, Eric F. Dubow, Simha F. Landau, Khalil Shikaki, and Paul Boxer. (2014). The Effects of Mediated Exposure to Ethnic-Political Violence on Middle East Youth’s Subsequent PostTraumatic Stress Symptoms and Aggressive Behavior. Communication Research, 961-990

Kaplan, A. (2012, Oct 05). Psychiatric Times. Retrieved 04 29, 2017, from Violence in the Media: What Effects on Behavior? | Psychiatric Times: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/child-adolescent-psychiatry/violence-media-what-effects-behavior

Graycar, A. (1996). The Portrayal of. Australian Institute of Criminology.

Alper, J. S. (1995). Television violence and children. Its effects need to be seen in the context ofotherinfluences on children's mental health, 273-274.

American Associtation of Pediatrics. (2001). Commettee in Public Education. Media Violence, 1222-1226.

Craig A. Anderson, Nicholas L. Carnagey, Janie Eubanks. (2003). Exposure to Violent Media: The Effects of Songs With Violent Lyrics on Aggressive Thoughts and Feeling. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 960-971.

Bushman, B. J. (2016). Violent Media and Hostile Appraisals: A Meta-Analytic Review. Aggressive Behavior, 605-613.

Christopher J. Ferguson , Amanda M. Cruz , Daniel Martinez , Stephanie M. Rueda , Diana E. Ferguson & Charles Negy. (2008). Personality, Parental, and Media Influences on Aggressive Personality and Violent Crime in Young Adults. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 315-414.

Aubinet, M., Vesala, T. and Papale, D. eds., 2012. Eddy covariance: a practical guide to measurement and data analysis. Springer Science & Business Media.

Meeker, W.Q. and Escobar, L.A., 2014. Statistical methods for reliability data. John Wiley & Sons.

Bryman, A., 2015. Social research methods. Oxford university press.

Treiman, D.J., 2014. Quantitative data analysis: Doing social research to test ideas. John Wiley & Sons.

Etikan, I., Musa, S.A. and Alkassim, R.S., 2016. Comparison of convenience sampling and purposive sampling. American Journal of Theoretical and Applied Statistics, 5(1), pp.1-4.

Creswell, J.W., 2013. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications.