Serial and Mass Murder by Elizabeth A. Gurian

Author:Elizabeth A. Gurian [Gurian, Elizabeth A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Criminology
ISBN: 9781351656405
Google: CFQ-EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-09-30T04:25:52+00:00

The Media

As of October 2020, approximately 4.66 billion people (59% of the global population) were active Internet users (Clement, 2020). The worldwide media and entertainment market is expected to be worth $2.2 trillion by 2021 (Gough, 2019) while the video gaming industry is estimated to be worth $200 billion by 2023 (WePC, 2020). Research from the Pew Research Center shows 43% of American adults report they often or sometimes play video games, including on a computer, television, game console, or portable device (Perrin, 2018). Americans under the age of 50 are twice as likely to play games on one of these devices compared to adults aged 50 and older (Perrin, 2018). Men are more likely to play video games than women (Perrin, 2018).

For decades, researchers have explored the relationship between extreme violence, media imagery, and videogames (Anderson & Bushman, 2001; DeLisi, Vaughn & Gentile, 2012; Engelhardt, Bartholow, Kerr & Bushman, 2011). The American Psychological Association (APA), in its 1993 summary report on violence and youth, reported the average American youth witnesses an estimated 200,000 violent acts on television before the age of 18 (APA, 1993). Anderson, Carangey, and Eubanks (2003), in a study exploring violent lyrics in music, found a correlation between aggressive thoughts and emotion and violent lyrics, but not actions. Since the introduction of the rating in 1985, gun violence in top grossing PG-13 films has more than tripled (Romer et al., 2014).

In his congressional testimony after the attack at Columbine, Jenkins (1999) argues:

Various pundits have pointed their fingers at video games, violent movies, television series, popular music, comic books, websites, youth subcultures, and fashion choices to locate the cause of their violent behavior. What have we learned so far? Harris and Klebold played video games […] Harris and Klebold watched a range of films, including The Matrix, which has been the top money earner in four of the last five weeks. They listened to various popular music groups, some relatively obscure (kmfdm), some highly successful (Marilyn Manson). They may have borrowed certain iconography from the Goth subculture, a subculture that has a history going back to the 1980s and which has rarely been associated with violence or criminal activity. They may have worn black trench coats. None of these cultural choices, taken individually or as an aggregate, differentiates Harris and Klebold from a sizable number of American teenagers who also consumed these same forms of popular culture but have not gone out and gunned down their classmates. The tangled relationship between these various forms of popular culture makes it impossible for us to determine a single cause for their actions. Culture doesn’t work that way. Cultural artifacts are not simple chemical agents like carcinogens that produce predictable results upon those who consume them. They are complex bundles of often contradictory meanings that can yield an enormous range of different responses from the people who consume them […] Consuming popular culture didn’t make these boys into killers; rather, the ways they consumed popular culture reflected their drive towards destruction.

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