"Understanding Television's Influences and Effects"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that David Gauntlett in his book "Moving Experiences: Understanding Television's Influences and Effects" dismisses all the models collectively known as the "effects model" in which real life violence is shown to be the effect of televised violence. The author points out Gauntlett's claim that the effects model works backwards because adherents of the effects model blame violence not on real factors, such as poverty and unemployment, but on television. The paper relates Gauntlett's statement that the effects model also insults the judgment and intelligence of children; he compares this treatment of children as inadequate because of the habitual portrayal in psychology of children as 'non-adults' thus using adult values to measure children.

From the Paper:

"Furthermore, Gauntlett claims that the effects model is selective in how it is applied to violence. For example, while fictional violence is lambasted, actual portrayals of violence on the news are mysteriously permitted as having no negative effect on children. While NYPD Blue or Homicide may negatively affect young viewers and encourage them to commit crimes, other programs, such as the on-air suicide assisted by Dr.Jack Kevorkian on "60 Minutes", will not affect children at all. Similarly, news stories of violence in Northern Ireland and Bosnia will not incite children to pick up guns to become snipers, but the same scenes on a made-for-television movie will have devastating results."

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