Looking to Media for Causes of Violence
Photo credit Ken at flickr.com/kcdstm/President Obama’s call to ban assault weapons, place limits on high-capacity magazines and enact other controls on gun ownership has upset a lot of powerful interests in Texas.
Some politicians say one of the major causes of gun violence is pop culture — TV, music and video games. KUT’s Nathan Bernier spoke with Dominic Lasorsa, a professor of journalism at the University of Texas who has studied the role of TV violence in society.
There’s some general consensus among researchers who do media violence that media violence can contribute to real-world violence. But I don’t think any of us believe that it’s the cause of real-world violence.
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It would be great if we could learn more about these “little things” that we might do to help stem the growing tide of violent images to which the members of our society are exposed on a daily basis. Media violence research might help us understand better the steps we might take to protect our children better, since the chances of more direct interventions, such as more reasonable regulation of guns and ammunition, continue to face such vehement opposition from those who fear that any move whatsoever to control guns will only open the door to more and more restrictions over time. I am happy to see that we are beginning, at least, to have a dialogue on this important topic. Who knows, perhaps it will lead to reasonable measure to keep us all safer.