Page 577 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| V olence and Med a: From Med a Effects to Moral Pan cs

of understanding of the complex reality of childhood in the modern world. But
seeing technology and media violence as destroying the innocence of childhood
is just as misleading as assuming that children are powerful liberators of mod-
ern technology and can easily withstand onslaughts of media violence. What
is required, as Gerard Jones points out in Killing Monsters: Why Children Need
Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence, is for children to feel safe in
playing with their fantasy monsters, whether it is in a book, on television, in
film, or a video game. Playing with and killing monsters in a fantasy world may
be just another way to keep these monsters from becoming our everyday harsh
realities.
see also Children and Effects; Government Censorship and Freedom of
Speech; Media Literacy; Obscenity and Indecency; Pornography; Presidential
Stagecraft and Militainment; Representations of Masculinity; Representations
of Race; Representations of Women; Sensationalism, Fear Mongering, and
Tabloid Media; Shock Jocks; Video Games; Women’s Magazines; Youth and
Media Use.

Further reading: Anderson, Craig A., and B. J. Bushman. “The Effects of Media Violence
on Society.” Science 295 (2002): 2377–78; Anderson, Craig A., and B. J. Bushman.
“Human Aggression.” Annual Review of Psychology 53 (2002): 27–51; Bandura, Albert.
Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973; Ban-
dura, Albert. Social Learning Theory. New York: General Learning Press, 1977; Barker,
Martin, and Julian Petley, eds. Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate. New York: Rout-
ledge, 2001; Becker, Howard. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York:
Free Press, 1997; Buckingham, David. After the Death of Childhood: Growing up in the
Age of Electronic Media. Malden, MA: Polity, 2005; Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and
Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1972;
Feshbach, Seymour, and Robert D. Singer. Television and Aggression: An Experimen-
tal Field Study. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1971; Freedman, Jonathan L. Media Vio-
lence and Its Effect on Aggression: Assessing the Scientific Evidence. Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2002; Gerbner, George, Larry Gross, Michael Morgan, and Nancy
Signorielli. “Growing Up with Television: The Cultivation Perspective.” In Media Ef-
fects: Advances in Theory and Research, ed. Jennings Bryant and Dolf Zillman, 17–41.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994; Glassner, Barry. The Culture of Fear: Why
Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things. New York: Basic Books, 1999; Goldstein,
Jeffrey H. “Does Playing Violent Video Games Cause Aggressive Behavior?” Playing
by the Rules: The Cultural Policy Challenges of Video Games Conference, Cultural Policy
Center, University of Chicago, October 27, 2001, http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/
conf2001/papers/goldstein.html; Goldstein, Jeffrey H. Why We Watch: The Attractions
of Violent Entertainment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998; Goode, Erich, and
Nachman Ben-Yehuda. Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. New York:
Blackwell Press, 1994; Gauntlett, David. “The Worrying Influence of ‘Media Effects’
Studies.” In Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate, ed. Martin Barker and Julian Pet-
ley, 47–62. New York: Routledge, 2001; Jenkins, Henry. Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers:
Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2006; Jones,
Gerard. Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe
Violence. New York: Basic Books, 2002; Schechter, Harold. Savage Pastime: A Cultural
History of Violent Entertainment. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005; Springhall, John.