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10. EFFECTS OF MEDIA VIOLENCE 271

Part of Wertham’s thesis was that a disproportionate amount of comic
book content featured grotesque images of violence that contributed to
juvenile delinquency on the part of young boys, many of whom tended to
be heavy consumers of these images. Although Wertham’s views gained
exposure and forever changed the comic book industry by forcing self-
censorship of content, scholars were reluctant to accept his strong claims
of media impact. They were based on content studies that failed to meet
scientific rigor in terms of sample selection and systematic coding tech-
niques. Claims of impact on juvenile delinquency were similarly tainted
by Wertham’s reliance on anecdotes and testimony from boys who were
being treated for a wide range of psychological problems. Sustained
scholarly interest in the potential impact of media violence did not
emerge until the latter part of the 1950s when the possible effects of televi-
sion on the public began to attract attention from government officials,
who saw it as a negative influence on children and a potential contributor
to juvenile delinquency.

The Rise of TV

The proliferation of TV sets in the 1950s meant that by 1960, 90% of Amer-
ican homes could receive TV signals. This level of saturation set the stage
for a new era of controversy about media violence. Schramm, Lyle, and
Parker (1961) discussed a number of examples of imitative violence that
news sources disseminated in the 1950s. These authors argued that the
apparent connection between exposure to TV violence and imitations of
violent crime was not coincidental.
The U.S. government began to express concern about the effects of
televised violence as early as the 1950s. In their review of the early events
surrounding the government’s role in the media violence issue, Liebert,
Sprafkin, and Davidson (1982) traced the role of Senator Estes Kefauver’s
Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency (which questioned the
need for violence on television) through the 1972 report of the Surgeon
General, a collection of 23 different research projects that were funded by
the National Institute of Mental Health. Although these studies certainly
failed to establish any wide consensus on the effects of televised violence,
they signaled the high priority that this topic would enjoy in the schol-
arly community for years to come. One major line of investigation
launched during this period of time helped to elevate media violence to a
high priority in the scholarly community—a series of content analyses by
George Gerbner and his associates. Gerbner (1972) defined violence as
“the overt expression of physical force against others or self, or the com-
pelling of action against one’s will on pain of being hurt or killed.” Using
this definition, he found that prime-time TV contained about eight