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The cultural context of media interpretation 325

seen on a televised rerun of the James Dean movie Rebel Without a Cause, is a
dramatic imitative influence of film stimulation” (Bandura, Ross and Ross
1963: 3). Notice that here at the beginning of the journal article, prior to the
presentation of the research, the link between a media presentation and violence
is stated. It clearly establishes the cultural context of the research that follows –
youth violence in American society. Thus, the research is developing the dis-
course that had been stated publicly in the newspaper. Furthermore, the findings
develop the concerns of a society seeking an explanation for the violent behav-
iour of its youth, and focus those concerns on the role of the media.
The public concern about the violence of youth in the United States of
America has pervaded both the research and the government’s interest in the
media (see, for example, the U.S. Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Com-
mittee on Television and Social Behavior 1972, and underlying a number of ref-
erences within Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General 2001). We can
see the same underlying context in a comprehensive review of the media viol-
ence research (Potter 1999). The book states in the very first sentence on page 1:
“Violence in America is a public health problem”. Statistics on murders and
other violent crime in the United Sates of America are described, along with a
particular focus on teenagers. Thus, Potter is explicitly concerned about “the
problem of violence in our culture” (1999: 2, my italics). So we should not be
surprised at the lack of an index entry for ‘culture’ in this book, and that of
Bryant and Zillman (1994), as the focus of the book is within the specific con-
text of youth violence in the United States of America.
Potter (1999) is expressing concerns that are part of a public debate within
American society that engages the US administration as well. The Surgeon Gen-
eral’s Report on Youth Violence (2001) also focuses on the violence of youth in
American society as a problem for examination and explanation. The first para-
graph of the preface to this report notes the events in the Columbine high school
in April 1999 when two students used guns to kill twelve fellow students and a
teacher before turning the guns on themselves. Thus, it is the discourse within
the culture of the United States of America that provides the impetus for the re-
port. Whilst the report is not specifically about media portrayals of violence, ex-
posure to television violence at an early age (6–11 years) is seen as one of the
risk factors in youth violence (see Chapter 4, Box 4.1 of the report).
The issue for the modern global media environment is that the cultural con-
text may often be lost when a text enters a different culture. An American author
writing for an American audience does not need to spell out the concerns about
the effects of the media within their common society – although clearly Potter
helpfully does. The difficulty is that this society is not necessarily the same so-
ciety for the reader as the author, when the book enters the global market. Whilst
gun crime is an issue in Britain, its scale is minimal in comparison to Potter’s
figures from the United States with many British people never having had ac-