Violence in the Media?

I missed this lecture due to illness but decided to go do some research about this topic.

I have to admit I did a project in my ALevel art in showing the influences of the media on children. I looked closely at two children aged 2 and 5 at the time. The older of the two was already showing media influence, actually due to disney, through what she was wearing and how she acted. Even at that young age she was already concious about her image and even weight. A tad worrying I have to admit.

I had a look on a paper called "research on the effects of media violence" to give me some background knowledge on the subject. Personally I feel it is a vicious circle. On one side people blame the media for being to violent, and that people are imitating what they see on television. On the other side, the media says they are reflecting what happens in real life and what the people wanna see. So the media is showing violence carried out by people, people then are influenced by this and commit more, so the media shows more...et cetera. Personally I don't feel you can blame media too much for what people do. So many reasearchers have looked into this and the results don't all point in one direction. They contradict and confuse.

So does media influence people, do people influence media? Does watching more tv at a young age teach you more bad habits than good? I think it's all down to who you want to blame.