A Content Analysis of Print News Coverage of Media Violence and Aggression Research

We conducted a content analysis of news articles (N = 540) to examine whether news coverage of media violence accurately reflects scientific knowledge about exposure to media violence and its effects on viewer aggression. The analysis revealed that over the past 30 years, news articles generally suggested that a link between media violence and aggression exists. However, the tone shifted sharply back toward a neutral conclusion since 2000. This shift may be attributable to the type of medium discussed (e.g., television vs. video games), the number of unaffiliated sources that are cited in the news article, and the sex of the journalist. Implications for how this news coverage may influence news readers are discussed.     

Identification Matters: A Moderated Mediation Model of Media Interactivity,Character Identification,and Video Game Violence on Aggression

This study examined the effects of interactivity in violent video games on aggression and tested identification as the moderated mediating mechanism. A total of 169 male undergraduate students participated in a 2 media interactivity (enactive mediation vs. observational mediation) × 2 violence (violent vs. nonviolent) experiment. Results supported a moderated mediation model in which the effect of media interactivity on aggressive affect through identification was moderated by violence. When violence was present, interactive play resulted in higher short‐term aggressive affect through higher character identification than when violence was not present. Additionally, an interaction effect between media interactivity and violence was found for automatic self‐concept in which players associated themselves more with the game character's traits than video viewers.     

Children's moral reasoning and their perceptions of television violence

This experiment examined the effect of a child's age on his or her interpretation of an act of interpersonal violence on television. One hundred eighty-four children in 2 age groups were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 viewing conditions in which they watched a violent video clip. The clips depicted identical violent acts; however, punishment (yes/no) of the violent act and provocation (yes/no) for the violent act were manipulated to create the 4 conditions. Following the video clip, children were asked to judge whether the act was right or wrong and why. They then engaged in a test of their willingness to choose aggression as a solution to a hypothetical interpersonal conflict. As predicted, younger children thought that unpunished violence was more right than punished violence. Older children thought that provoked violence was more right than unprovoked violence, although this result only approached significance. Children's willingness to choose a violent story ending to a hypothetical interpersonal conflict was related to their experimental condition for older children but not for younger children.     

Prime-Time Television: Assessing Violence During the Most Popular Viewing Hours

This Study was designed to assess the prevalence and context of violence in prime-time television programming using a random, representative sample of 23 broadcast, independent, and cable channels. Results showed that, regardless of the times of day, viewers are likely to encounter violence in roughly 2 out of 3 programs when they view television. Using social cognitive theory to frame our analysis, we also identified specific channel types and genres that feature potentially harmful depictions of violence during prime time. Specifically, broadcast network and basic cable are the most problematic channel types, and reality television is the most problematic genre. Results are summarized highlight the day parts, channels, and genres that are most likely to contribute to negative effects from prime-time viewing.     

Causes of State Hostility and Enjoyment in Player Versus Player and Player Versus Environment Video Games

Video games have been under scholarly study since the 1980s, but few studies have blended the research areas of video games and aggression and video game enjoyment. This article seeks to determine how certain game play factors affect hostility, enjoyment, and the relationship between the 2 variables. A total of 289 students played games in player‐versus‐player (PvP) and player‐versus‐environment (PvE) situations. Findings indicate that outcome, competitive situation, and genre interact in their influence on state hostility and enjoyment. Results suggest that in some cases, game players are able to enjoy games despite negative experiences, such as losing, but players in PvP situations experience enjoyment‐reducing levels of hostility, contrary to P. Vorderer et al.'s (2004) complex entertainment model.     

A semantic framework for video genre classification and event analysis

Semantic video analysis is a key issue in digital video applications, including video retrieval, annotation, and management. Most existing work on semantic video analysis is mainly focused on event detection for specific video genres, while the genre classification is treated as another independent issue. In this paper, we present a semantic framework for weakly supervised video genre classification and event analysis jointly by using probabilistic models for MPEG video streams. Several computable semantic features that can accurately reflect the event attributes are derived. Based on an intensive analysis on the connection between video genres and the contextual relationship among events, as well as the statistical characteristics of dominant event, a hidden Markov model (HMM) and naive Bayesian classifier (NBC) based analysis algorithm is proposed for video genre classification. Another Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is built to detect the contained events using the same semantic features, whilst an event adjustment strategy is proposed according to an analysis on the GMM structure and pre-definition of video events. Subsequently, a special event is recognized based on the detected events by another HMM. The simulative experiments on video genre classification and event analysis using a large number of video data sets demonstrate the promising performance of the proposed framework for semantic video analysis.     

Indirect Aggression in Animated Disney Films

Children's cartoons have been documented to be some of the most violent TV programs currently on the air, showing nearly 3 times the amount of violence per hour as nonchildren's programming ( Wilson et al., 2002 ). However, violence is not the only form of aggression on TV. Indirect aggression (e.g., gossiping, spreading rumors, social exclusion) has also been found on TV, at rates that exceed the current violence levels (Coyne & Archer, 2004 ). Although indirect aggression (also called relational aggression) has been examined in TV programs popular among adolescents, it has never been examined in children's TV or films. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to examine the frequency and portrayal of indirect aggression in children's animated Disney films. Overall, Disney films portrayed indirect aggression 9.23 times per hour. When character counts were taken into account, indirect aggression was portrayed by males and females at equal levels. Indirect aggression was more likely to be portrayed as unjustified and by "bad" characters. "High SES" characters were also more likely to engage in indirect aggression than "low SES" or "middle-class" characters. Compared with the amount of violence in children's TV programs, the amount of indirect aggression in Disney films was quite low and was usually portrayed in ways that would not facilitate imitation.     

The Effects of Technological Advancement and Violent Content in Video Games on Players' Feelings of Presence, Involvement, Physiological Arousal, and Aggression

The possible impact of technological advancement on video games' effects—particularly in the case of violent games—has often been discussed but has not been thoroughly explored by empirical research. The present investigation employed a 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial experiment to examine the interplay of technological advancement and violence by exposing participants ( N = 120) to either a newer or older version of a violent or nonviolent game and measuring these factors' effects on players' sense of presence, involvement, physiological arousal (measured by skin conductance), self-reported arousal, and affective and cognitive aggression. The results indicate that technological advancement increased participants' sense of presence, involvement, and physiological and self-reported arousal. Neither advancement nor violence had statistically significant effects on accessibility of players' aggressive thoughts, but there is some tentative evidence that violent game content increased players' state hostility. Theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed, and recommendations are made for future research.     

Experiments in televised violence and verbal aggression: two exploratory studies

Within the scarce literature concerning verbal aggression, there is some indication that verbal and physical aggression may have similar inhibitions conditioned to each. Two experiments were carried out to explore this possible relationship. In the first, middle and lower socioeconomic status (SES) adolescent boys were exposed to televised physical aggression with and without consequences to the victim shown. In the second experiment, middle and lower SES adolescent boys were exposed to televised verbal and physical aggression. For both studies, intensity of post-viewing verbal and physical aggression was measured. The hypothesized relationship between physical and verbal aggression was minimally supported. In only the second study was the previously well documented stimulative effect of viewing television violence clearly shown. Several questions are raised and research directions are suggested to better understand verbal aggression as it is related to physical aggression and televised violence.     

The Third-Person effect in perceptions of the influence of television violence

This study examines the third-person effect (the belief that others are more affected by media messages than oneself) for two different effects of televised violence, mean world perceptions and aggression, using attribution theory as an explanatory framework. In telephone interviews with a random sample of 253 community residents, third-person effects, as predicted, were observed for both aggression and mean world perceptions, but were larger for the more socially undesirable influence on aggression and for more distant others (in the U.S. rather than the local community). In addition, those who compared themselves favorably with others perceived a larger third-person effect for aggression. The study also explores the role of other factors in the third-person effect, including demographics and liking for and exposure to televised violence.     

Automatic genre classification of music content: a survey

This paper reviews the state-of-the-art in automatic genre classification of music collections through three main paradigms: expert systems, unsupervised classification, and supervised classification. The paper discusses the importance of music genres with their definitions and hierarchies. It also presents techniques to extract meaningful information from audio data to characterize musical excerpts. The paper also presents the results of new emerging research fields and techniques that investigate the proximity of music genres     

In Defense of Negotiated Readings: How Moderates on Each Side of the Conflict Interpret Intifada News

Based on a study of conversations within 50 Jewish and 15 Arab families in Israel during and after "Mabat," television's evening news program, this article examines the ways in which extremists and moderates in the two communities frame the televised representation of the Israeli-Arab conflict. Practices of partisan journalists who belong to one of the sides in such conflicts between "us" and "them" are shown to reinforce viewers' tendencies to attribute dispositional motives to aggression of the other side (in this case Palestinian uprisers). At the same time, violence on our side (i.e., Israeli soldiers) is explained in situational terms. Analysis of the families' discourse reveals that Jewish and Arab nationalists accept the text at face value: Jewish extremists read it hegemonically while their Arab counterparts decode it oppositionally. Jewish and Arab moderates, on the other hand, negotiate the text and, drawing on their personal and collective experience, invoke various rhetorical strategies to counter the unbalanced picture it presents. The study suggests that awareness and understanding of the constraints of the news genre, and of its social significance, are necessary for literate viewing and critical moderate decoding.     

一种基于粗集理论的视频流派分类方法

视频分类提供了一种管理和利用视频数据的有效手段.现有的视频流派分类方法倾向于使用尽量多的特征,借此更有效地表示视频内容,以保证分类的效果,但提取这些视频特征的代价通常都很高,因此有必要考虑流派分类中的特征选择问题.提出了一种基于粗集理论的方法实现视频特征的选择和流派的分类:通过分析相关文献中所使用的各种特征.提取了多种有效特征构成分类的基础;基于启发式搜索的方法用于发现最优约简,从而实现特征选择;通过约简导出的分类规则实现流派标识的确定.与已有方法分类效果的比较以及与决策树方法的实验对比表明了文中方法的有效性.     

Video handling with music and speech detection

The audio-based approach to video indexing described by the authors detects music and speech independently even when they occur simultaneously. The indexed video segments, when presented on the Video Sound Browser, let users randomly access the video. The Video in Time system provides different video condensation levels based on video structuring that can link the video segments and the director's intentions     

Country music video in the country's Year of the Woman

Because of the success of its new female stars, the country music industry declared 1997 its Year of the Woman. We examined how country video portrays female artists and characters. Research on other genres suggests that women are symbolically annihilated in music video. By analyzing 285 CMT videos, we found that most female artists' videos portrayed women progressively, whereas male artists portrayed them stereotypically. The ratio of male to female artists' videos was 3 to 1. Although the data suggest country videos similar to pop or rock video of the mid-1980s, the country videos were qualitatively different in their portrayal of gender roles.     

More Than Shoot‐Em‐Up and Torture Porn: Reflective Appropriation and Meaning‐Making of Violent Media Content

Media violence research has mainly focused on aggression effects so far. But are audiences' thoughts about violent portrayals actually confined to aggressive fantasies? This study examines more complex thought processes about violent portrayals that involve reflection, meaning‐making, and truth‐seeking about violence as a fact of social reality. We conducted qualitative in‐depth interviews with 39 participants from different backgrounds, including professions at risk for exposure to violence, media professionals, and interviewees from the general population. The interviews revealed three main categories of reflective thoughts about violent media content, including thoughts about (a) the truth value, (b) the life‐world relevance, and (c) the psychological and moral implications of the violence depicted. Participants also discussed unrealistic content features that interfered with meaning‐making.     

Four Decades of Violent Content on Prime-Time Network Programming: A Longitudinal Meta-Analytic Review

This paper uses longitudinal meta-analysis to review 57 content analyses that examined the frequency of violent content on American prime-time network programming between 1960 and 2002. The overall sample is composed of 4,988 hours of broadcasts from 32 seasons. The frequency per hour of most of the expressions of physical aggression, body harm violence as well as exploitative violence, shows a cubic pattern with 2 peaks: in the late 1970s and in the mid-1990s. The demographic composition of violent characters, namely, the share of women and White people among violence perpetrators, fluctuated similarly with the exception of smaller alterations. The discussion suggests sociological, historical, and industry-related explanations to the findings and concludes that throughout most of the years covered in this meta-analysis, TV violence could not be regarded as an accurate indicator of societal violence.     

Techniques for movie content analysis and skimming: tutorial and overview on video abstraction techniques

With the proliferation of digital video, video summarization and skimming has become an indispensable tool of any practical video content management system. This paper provides a tutorial on the existing abstraction work for generic videos and presents state-of-the-art techniques for feature film skimming. The paper also describes the authors' recent work on movie skimming using audiovisual tempo analysis and specific cinematic rules. With the maturity of the movie genre classification, content understanding and video abstraction techniques, an automatic movie content analysis system that facilitates navigation, browsing, and search of desired movie content is possible in the near future     

Video shot detection and condensed representation. a review

There is an urgent need to develop techniques that organize video data into more compact forms or extract semantically meaningful information. Such operations can serve as a first step for a number of different data access tasks such as browsing, retrieval, genre classification, and event detection. In this paper, we focus not on the high-level video analysis task themselves but on the common basic techniques that have been developed to facilitate them. These basic tasks are shot boundary detection and condensed video representation     

Higher-order moments for musical genre classification

This paper presents a study on the performance of the higher-order moments for musical genre classification. Especially the skewness and the kurtosis of the octave-scale subbands are considered. Experimental results on the widely used music datasets show that the higher-order moment features can improve classification accuracy when combined with the conventional lower-order moment features.