ASA Article on the Politicization of Video Games and Violence

[mykevermin]

Hug the nearest sociologist to you. Not because we're on your side, but because people such as the author of this article realize that all the claims of relationships between video games and violence are politically driven, made in the absence of evidence, or a combination of the two. Unlike Jack Thompson, unlike the myriad politicians posturing as guardians of moral superiority, and unlike psychologists and their shit-ass laboratory studies on video games and aggressive tendencies.

http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/Winter07ContextsFeature.pdf

It's a short read. Enjoy, I hope.

[mykevermin]

I'm bumping this because it's something you should try to read if you have the time.

so...yeah, bump.

[The Crotch]

If it ever loads, I'll comment.

[mykevermin]

Link's not working? Huh. I'll see if I can host it somewhere.

[Ugamer_X]

Link's not working? Huh. I'll see if I can host it somewhere.
Workin' fine for me.

Good article, made some points I had never realized before. Especially the difference in the characterization of violent black youth and violent white youth.

[Dead of Knight]

I knew there was a reason I really like sociology, yet absolutely hate psychology. Damn dirty hippies.

[The Crotch]

Okay, I've finally managed to read it. I had to laugh at some of the headlines mentioned, if only to avoid crying. Good find.

[Apossum]

The link worked fine for me.


Great article... "Contemporary folk devils" sums it up perfectly. that'd be great if this article got some recognition and helped people realize the futility of blaming interactive media for outrageous acts like school shootings.

Likewise, psychological studies that isolate the variables of media and acts of violence (or whatever the hell they are measuring in these studies) are also pretty ridiculous...There's no simple, 1:1 explanation when a kid decides to shoot up his school. you'd think this would be a pretty intuitive fact.

*hugs self*

[mykevermin]

I knew there was a reason I really like sociology, yet absolutely hate psychology. Damn dirty hippies.

Please, sister. There's plenty of filthy hippies in sociology.

I don't dislike psychology, but I don't have much respect for the lab research they've done on video games and aggression. Some of it is "we took a random sample of college students, randomly assigned them to play GTAIII or Tetris for 30 minutes, then measured their heart rate. If we find the GTA group had a higher heart rate than the other group, than we can claim that games lead to violence." This was the lab method of a paper I read (it was earlier than GTAIII, but you get the idea). It has a lot of methodological and research problems with it, such as:

1) confounds gamers and nongamers
2) assumes all gamers are alike and inseparable
3) assumes that heart rate is a useful and meaningful proxy for "aggression"
4) imposes the idea that violent images matter more than gameplay with regards to creating aggression (I don't know about you, but I find Tetris pretty blody frustrating at times) on the research itself
5) assumes that "heightened heart rate" is a meaningful indicator of anything at all (it would not only be pretty silly to claim that heart rate->aggression->crime and violence, but it's contrary to other studies of criminals that suggests they have *lowered* heart rates because of their difficulty satisfying impulses for adventure (which is why they're committing crimes instead of riding bikes off ramps or something))
6) Completely ignores causation - as the article in the OP says, anyone doing more than claiming correlation is a liar. Do video games make people aggressive and violent criminals, or do violent and aggressive criminals pick up games as a satisfying activity? In any case, the truth of the relationship here is the small side of the big story: the majority of gamers are nonviolent people who aren't kiling their classmates.

My post-doc research (I hope) is going to be on identifying typologies of gamers and their characteristics. Games aren't going anywhere for a long long time, so if we're going to have debates over its effects, we might as well know something about the people playing them.

Dok, you're at OSU, right? You have a great soc dept. I really like Bianchi and Shelly, and respect Schwirian and Curry. Check 'em out if you need some humanities credits.

[Dead of Knight]

Dok, you're at OSU, right? You have a great soc dept. I really like Bianchi and Shelly, and respect Schwirian and Curry. Check 'em out if you need some humanities credits.

I took honors sociology 101 for a humanities credit. I had Dr. Rachel Dwyer. She was wonderful. I was wanting to take my second writing course in the sociology department (many departments offer courses that cover the second writing course requirement) but it didn't fit into my schedule. :cry: I'm taking economics instead.

[lordxixor101]

Interesting read,

Though I agree, I doubt this will change. There are certain stereotypes that are exploited by politicians. Video games aren't the only thing. Why don't you think Social Security is honestly being fixed, because of politics. It can be fixed, but it won't be easy, and no one wants to do it, since voters often rarely look at all issues, and only look at themselves (what do I get out of this).

Video games will be picked on like Rock music was in the 60's. It's easy to do, people who actually vote agree, and you don't piss anyone off (well, you piss gamers off, but gamers don't vote en masse, so you don't count).

Nothing would shut Hilary Clinton up faster than Take 2 sending her a nice fat donation. Do that, and now all of a sudden, video games might be more of a victim of politicians than a cause.

I don't worry too much about this, because I think, in 10 years or so, as more gamers hit 40+, they will be considered more important in the polls, and politicians won't want to upset them.

[elwood731]

While I will agree with the article that most media reports on the subject matter are simplistic at best, I also find the article to be rather simplistic in its dismissal of research. I always find it hilarious when kids tell me that the media doesn't affect them. Then why does advertising work? So that whole argument is pointless.

The better argument is that playing a single session of Doom or GTA will not make someone a killer, and that is true. Anyone who argues differently isn't really using common sense. The bigger question is what does years of exposure to violent content do to a person? We know that exposure to media can produce immediate responses. Go to a car race and then watch the people drive out of the parking lot afterward. What we expose ourselves to does produce momentary reactions, at the least. Same reason we feel in a good mood after a particularly uplifting film.

Saying that a decline in murder rates shows that games don't have an influence is also flawed as that could be do to a variety of factors, including as argued by Freakanomics, Roe v. Wade (though others this assertion is also dubious).

The real issue is that much of the media should be more responsible and at least put some thought into what they produce. That doesn't always happen, unfortunately.

[mykevermin]

While I will agree with the article that most media reports on the subject matter are simplistic at best, I also find the article to be rather simplistic in its dismissal of research. I always find it hilarious when kids tell me that the media doesn't affect them. Then why does advertising work? So that whole argument is pointless.

The better argument is that playing a single session of Doom or GTA will not make someone a killer, and that is true. Anyone who argues differently isn't really using common sense. The bigger question is what does years of exposure to violent content do to a person? We know that exposure to media can produce immediate responses. Go to a car race and then watch the people drive out of the parking lot afterward. What we expose ourselves to does produce momentary reactions, at the least. Same reason we feel in a good mood after a particularly uplifting film.

Saying that a decline in murder rates shows that games don't have an influence is also flawed as that could be do to a variety of factors, including as argued by Freakanomics, Roe v. Wade (though others this assertion is also dubious).

The real issue is that much of the media should be more responsible and at least put some thought into what they produce. That doesn't always happen, unfortunately.

It's media and politicians, really. Politicians put up phony things to defend (military spending, prisoner treatment, wasteful social services, etc.) that can only be argued in one way if a candidate wants to be electable. Consider a politician who argues that we need to restructure our criminal justice system to put more people in rehabilitation than prison, shorten sentences, increase social service programs for inmates following release (and before release), and other plans such as that, which are shown to be empirically viable in the criminology literature for reducing reoffense rates. Good plans based on solid evidence, right? The only thing his/her opponent has to say is "my opponent wants to coddle criminals, put them back on the streets sooner, give them all kinds of handouts, and be soft on crime." The sensible opponent has just lost that election, in every case (it's a hypothetical because so few, if any, politicians are willing to take a stance that argues we need to improve our CJ system by making the rules more flexible). Anyway, I digress...

While I'm far too tired to address Levitt and Dubner's world's-most-popular-bad-sociology-book (Freakonomics) right now, I will say that the article from Contexts doesn't argue that the media doesn't affect us. It is arguing that there is no consensus on how it does, and whom it does it to. For as media-saturated as we are these days, social scientists have very little clarity on how media effects people.

[Apossum]

I've been playing Ninja Gaiden for the past few years...I'm not a ninja yet.

kidding aside, this article inspired me to research people's reactions to headlines for my soc methods class. Pretty sure I'm going to use Colombine shooting headlines - one that implies videogames caused it and one that passively mentions that the kids were fans of Doom. not sure exactly how it's all going to work out yet, as it needs to be in experiment form and I only have a few days to do it...

In any case, many thanks for posting this Myke!

Fun Fact: the article "Bloodlust video games put kids in the crosshairs" that the author referenced was written by our very own Jack Thompson.

[elwood731]

It's media and politicians, really. Politicians put up phony things to defend (military spending, prisoner treatment, wasteful social services, etc.) that can only be argued in one way if a candidate wants to be electable. Consider a politician who argues that we need to restructure our criminal justice system to put more people in rehabilitation than prison, shorten sentences, increase social service programs for inmates following release (and before release), and other plans such as that, which are shown to be empirically viable in the criminology literature for reducing reoffense rates. Good plans based on solid evidence, right? The only thing his/her opponent has to say is "my opponent wants to coddle criminals, put them back on the streets sooner, give them all kinds of handouts, and be soft on crime." The sensible opponent has just lost that election, in every case (it's a hypothetical because so few, if any, politicians are willing to take a stance that argues we need to improve our CJ system by making the rules more flexible). Anyway, I digress...

While I'm far too tired to address Levitt and Dubner's world's-most-popular-bad-sociology-book (Freakonomics) right now, I will say that the article from Contexts doesn't argue that the media doesn't affect us. It is arguing that there is no consensus on how it does, and whom it does it to. For as media-saturated as we are these days, social scientists have very little clarity on how media effects people.
I don't think too many scientists have claimed that violent media causes all violence in the world. This would be illogical since violence existed even before the printed word. What they have claimed is there is a link between being exposed to violent media and violent behavior. This has basically been proven in lab experiments duplicated multiple times. Expose people to violent media and they will act more violently...at least in the short term. I don't think any have really claimed proof of a link term link, but have simply pointed out that it might exist. There also aren't many reputable scientists claiming "video games made me do it" as a viable criminal defense. That's my problem with the article, it confuses the subject matter almost as much as the media outlets it blasts. People want to take media violence as an all or nothing subject. Either it creates killers or it has no influence at all. The truth, like in most things, probably lies in the middle somewhere.

[mykevermin]

I hope I didn't imply that people argue that violent media causes all violence. That's simply a silly thing to say.

As for lab experiments, read the first big-ol' post of mine above. The one study I've read focused on measuring heart rate 15 minutes after playing games. The study just wrangled up some random college students (which is fine for research design, I suppose, but doesn't answer if people who are prone to violent behavior select game playing more than those who don't), gave half a puzzle game and half a violent game. There were statistically significant differences in the heart rate (simple t-tests comparing the avg heart rate for the group). That's it. To say that violent games make people more excited than nonviolent games is fine from that conclusion, but to make any association between what happens at the time of playing games and non-gaming behavior (crime, deviance, violence, etc.) is completely erroneous, logically, and the assumption that an excited heart rate is a suitable catalyst to criminal behavior is equally absurd. They have high heart rates, nothing else.

If you have some studies to link to, I'd love to see them. The article discusses how flimsy the studies that exist are (as above), how they don't use sound research design, and their conclusions are contradictory or nonexistent. There's no conclusive evidence, one way or another.

As for the article's confusion, they're putting up two sources of poor discussion: the media ("games made me do it") and researchers ("video games may be able to do it"). They're discussing those separately, even if the lines aren't perfect, IMO. I didn't see the "all or nothing" theme in the article, but I'll look back at it.

My understanding of the article was "we don't know shit, but these media and these academics are saying we do. They're full of it."

[elwood731]

My understanding of the article was "we don't know shit, but these media and these academics are saying we do. They're full of it."
That's my point--this assertion isn't true. Researchers do know something about violent media. I would suggest starting with violent TV studies and going from there. It's not like this is a recent field.

[mykevermin]

I'll tell you what: cite me 2-3 sources in media studies. Refereed journal articles from the social sciences with research content that show a positive effect of violent TV on real-life violence. I'll gladly read them and discuss them with you here.

This isn't an area where there is consensus at all; that's the point I'm making. The psycholgists' research on heart rates and violent games may have good points for discussion, but what does it do to help us identify the link b/w violent media and violent behavior?