Portrayal of violence

ON MEDIA VIOLENCE: W. James Potter; Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd., M32 Market, Greater Kailash I, New Delhi-110048. $29.95.

THE PORTRAYAL of violence in mass media, particularly television programmes, has of late become a cause for concern in our country.Violence in the American society has come to be viewed as a public health problem for which, besides many apparent factors such as poverty, breakdown of the nuclear family and fall in traditional values, the mass media is regarded as a major cause.

One may argue that the media only depicts what is happening in real life. But the truth, as pointed out in the introductory chapter of the book under review, is that the media amplify and reconfigure the violence in real life and use violence as a staple in telling fictional stories to entertain the viewers. The continuous pumping in of these messages has a range of negative effects on society. This is indicated by the increase in crime rate and the fear psychosis among teenagers in the U.S., which has earned the dubious distinction of being the world leader in the prevalence of violence on television.

The author is a well-known name in the area of mass communication and had been one of the principal investigators on the national television violence study.

He begins by presenting a review of the findings of the research on media violence conducted so far, which has provided a solid knowledge base. He then focusses on the conceptual limitations of these research studies brought out by the disagreement among the scholars on certain key issues. These include the very definition of violence in media portrayals and the questions as to what factors lead to various effects and what constitutes an effect from exposure to media violence. This leads him to propose a rethinking not only on many of the prevailing ideas and concepts but also on the methodology of the studies. Based on these he propounds a lineation perspective, which he describes as a blend of explanations and speculations, the former highlighting what is known already and the latter providing directions for what needs to be known. In short, the lineation theory seeks to be inclusive, trying to avoid excluding any key ideas on media violence.

In conclusion, he calls for a shift to a new perspective on media violence thinking and research. He does not recommend a paradigm shift but wants the researchers to build on the foundation of the research so far conducted and focus on new questions as well as a deeper analysis of the older questions.

How can television programmes provide us with useful warning about the risk of the content in their narratives? Can exposure to some violence have positive effects and if so what are those positive outcomes and how can we increase their prevalence? What strategies can we use to protect children from negative effects of exposure to violence? Do risks of exposure continue even when someone has reached adulthood and if so, what strategies can they adopt to protect themselves from negative effects? He seeks to address these questions in this volume.

In his view, the second phase of research should address the following questions: what percentage of children will exhibit a disinhibition effect after being exposed to media violence portrayed in a particular web of context? What degree of sensitisation is there to victims in the general population of television viewers?

Within the contextual web of violent portrayals, what is the strength of justification, relative to other elements in the web? The focus should be on assessing how much of the processes and effects operate in the aggregate and how much is traceable to differences in interpretations among individuals.

In India the problem of media violence may not be of the same magnitude as in the U.S. But it has of late begun to be felt with the small screen aping the full-length films in showing scenes of violence and torture. In this context this book will be of relevance. Though written in the U.S. setting, it can be a useful resource material for Indian social scientists in their study of the emerging situation in India and recommending suitable remedial measures.

B. S. PADMANABHAN

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