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Violence, Media Effects, and Criminology

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Violence, Media Effects, and Criminology

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"Other, more recent, incidents have echoed similar claims suggesting that popular culture has a nefarious influence on consumers."

Source: Article
Author: Nickie D. Phillips
Value: provides another case study relating to how the media inspired a violent crime, offers the perspectives of many phycologists

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Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology

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PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE (oxfordre.com/criminology). (c) Oxford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 10 October 2020

Abstract and Keywords

Debate surrounding the impact of media representations on violence and crime has raged for decades and shows no sign of abating. Over the years, the targets of concern have shifted from film to comic books to television to video games, but the central questions remain the same. What is the relationship between popular media and audience emotions, attitudes, and behaviors? While media effects research covers a vast range of topics-from the study of its persuasive effects in advertising to its positive impact on emotions and behaviors-of particular interest to criminologists is the relationship between violence in popular media and real-life aggression and violence. Does media violence cause aggression and/or violence?

The study of media effects is informed by a variety of theoretical perspectives and spans many disciplines including communications and media studies, psychology, medicine, sociology, and criminology. Decades of research have amassed on the topic, yet there is no clear agreement about the impact of media or about which methodologies are most appropriate. Instead, there continues to be disagreement about whether media portrayals of violence are a serious problem and, if so, how society should respond.

Conflicting interpretations of research findings inform and shape public debate around media effects. Although there seems to be a consensus among scholars that exposure to media violence impacts aggression, there is less agreement around its potential impact on violence and criminal behavior. While a few criminologists focus on the phenomenon of copycat crimes, most rarely engage with whether media directly causes violence. Instead, they explore broader considerations of the relationship between media, popular culture, and society.

Keywords: media exposure, aggression, violence, criminal behavior, popular culture, media violence, media and crime, copycat crimes

Media Exposure, Violence, and Aggression

On Friday July 22, 2016, a gunman killed nine people at a mall in Munich, Germany. The 18-year-old shooter was subsequently characterized by the media as being under psychiatric care and harboring at least two obsessions. One, an obsession with mass shootings, including that of Anders Breivik who ultimately killed 77 people in Norway in 2011, and the other an obsession with video games. A Los Angeles, California, news report stated that the gunman was "an avid player of first-person shooter video games, including 'Counter-Strike,'" while another headline similarly declared, "Munich gunman, a fan of violent video games, rampage killers, had planned attack for a year"(CNN Wire, ; Reuters, ). This high-profile incident was hardly the first to link popular culture to violent crime. Notably, in the aftermath of the 1999 Columbine shooting massacre, for example, media sources implicated and later discredited music, video games, and a gothic aesthetic as causal factors of the crime (Cullen, ; Yamato, ). Other, more recent, incidents have echoed similar claims suggesting that popular culture has a nefarious influence on consumers.

Media violence and its impact on audiences are among the most researched and examined topics in communications studies (Hetsroni, ). Yet, debate over whether media violence causes aggression and violence persists, particularly in response to high-profile criminal incidents. Blaming video games, and other forms of media and popular culture, as contributing to violence is not a new phenomenon. However, interpreting media effects can be difficult because commenters often seem to indicate a grand consensus that understates more contradictory and nuanced interpretations of the data.

In fact, there is a consensus among many media researchers that media violence has an impact on aggression although its impact on violence is less clear. For example, in response to the shooting in Munich, Brad Bushman, professor of communication and psychology, avoided pinning the incident solely on video games, but in the process supported the assertion that video gameplay is linked to aggression. He stated,

Others, too, have reached similar conclusions with regard to other media. In 2008, psychologist John Murray summarized decades of research stating, "Fifty years of research on the effect of TV violence on children leads to the inescapable conclusion that viewing media violence is related to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behaviors" (Murray, , p. 1212). Scholars Glenn Sparks and Cheri Sparks similarly declared that,

In 2014, psychologist Wayne Warburton more broadly concluded that the vast majority of studies have found "that exposure to violent media increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior in the short and longterm, increases hostile perceptions and attitudes, and desensitizes individuals to violent content" (Warburton, , p. 64).

Criminologists, too, are sensitive to the impact of media exposure. For example, Jacqueline Helfgott summarized the research:

In his book, Media Coverage of Crime and Criminal Justice, criminologist Matthew Robinson stated, "Studies of the impact of media on violence are crystal clear in their findings and implications for society" (Robinson, , p. 135). He cited studies on childhood exposure to violent media leading to aggressive behavior as evidence. In his pioneering book Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice, criminologist Ray Surette concurred that media violence is linked to aggression, but offered a nuanced interpretation. He stated,

The uncertainties about the strength of the relationship and the lack of evidence linking media violence to real-world violence is often lost in the news media accounts of high-profile violent crimes.

Media Exposure and Copycat Crimes

While many scholars do seem to agree that there is evidence that media violence-whether that of film, TV, or video games-increases aggression, they disagree about its impact on violent or criminal behavior (Ferguson, ; Gunter, ; Helfgott, ; Reiner, ; Savage, ). Nonetheless, it is violent incidents that most often prompt speculation that media causes violence. More specifically, violence that appears to mimic portrayals of violent media tends to ignite controversy. For example, the idea that films contribute to violent crime is not a new assertion. Films such as A Clockwork Orange, Menace II Society, Set it Off, and Child's Play 3, have been linked to crimes and at least eight murders have been linked to Oliver Stone's 1994 film Natural Born Killers (Bracci, ; Brooks, ; PBS, ). Nonetheless, pinpointing a direct, causal relationship between media and violent crime remains elusive.

Criminologist Jacqueline Helfgott defined copycat crime as a "crime that is inspired by another crime" (Helfgott, , p. 51). The idea is that offenders model their behavior on media representations of violence whether real or fictional. One case, in particular, illustrated how popular culture, media, and criminal violence converge. On July 20, 2012, James Holmes entered the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises, the third film in the massively successful Batman trilogy, in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. He shot and killed 12 people and wounded 70 others. At the time, the New York Times described the incident,

The dyed hair, Holme's alleged comment, and that the incident occurred at a popular screening led many to speculate that the shooter was influenced by the earlier film in the trilogy and reignited debate around the impact about media violence. The Daily Mail pointed out that Holmes may have been motivated by a 25-year-old Batman comic in which a gunman opens fire in a movie theater-thus further suggesting the iconic villain served as motivation for the attack (Graham & Gallagher, ). Perceptions of the "Joker connection" fed into the notion that popular media has a direct causal influence on violent behavior even as press reports later indicated that Holmes had not, in fact, made reference to the Joker (Meyer, ).

A week after the Aurora shooting, the New York Daily News published an article detailing a "possible copycat" crime. A suspect was arrested in his Maryland home after making threatening phone calls to his workplace. The article reported that the suspect stated, "I am a [sic] joker" and "I'm going to load my guns and blow everybody up." In their search, police found "a lethal arsenal of 25 guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition" in the suspect's home (McShane, ).

Though criminologists are generally skeptical that those who commit violent crimes are motivated solely by media violence, there does seem to be some evidence that media may be influential in shaping how some offenders commit crime. In his study of serious and violent juvenile offenders, criminologist Ray Surette found "about one out of three juveniles reports having considered a copycat crime and about one out of four reports actually having attempted one." He concluded that "those juveniles who are self-reported copycats are significantly more likely to credit the media as both a general and personal influence." Surette contended that though violent offenses garner the most media attention, copycat criminals are more likely to be career criminals and to commit property crimes rather than violent crimes (Surette, , pp. 56, 63; Surette ).

Discerning what crimes may be classified as copycat crimes is a challenge. Jacqueline Helfgott suggested they occur on a "continuum of influence." On one end, she said, media plays a relatively minor role in being a "component of the modus operandi" of the offender, while on the other end, she said, "personality disordered media junkies" have difficulty distinguishing reality from violent fantasy. According to Helfgott, various factors such as individual characteristics, characteristics of media sources, relationship to media, demographic factors, and cultural factors are influential. Overall, scholars suggest that rather than pushing unsuspecting viewers to commit crimes, media more often influences how, rather than why, someone commits a crime (Helfgott, ; Marsh & Melville, ).

Given the public interest, there is relatively little research devoted to exactly what copycat crimes are and how they occur. Part of the problem of studying these types of crimes is the difficulty defining and measuring the concept. In an effort to clarify and empirically measure the phenomenon, Surette offered a scale that included seven indicators of copycat crimes. He used the following factors to identify copycat crimes: time order (media exposure must occur before the crime); time proximity (a five-year cut-off point of exposure); theme consistency ("a pattern of thought, feeling or behavior in the offender which closely parallels the media model"); scene specificity (mimicking a specific scene); repetitive viewing; self-editing (repeated viewing of single scene while "the balance of the film is ignored"); and offender statements and second-party statements indicating the influence of media. Findings demonstrated that cases are often prematurely, if not erroneously, labeled as "copycat." Surette suggested that use of the scale offers a more precise way for researchers to objectively measure trends and frequency of copycat crimes (Surette, , p. 8).

Media Exposure and Violent Crimes

Overall, a causal link between media exposure and violent criminal behavior has yet to be validated, and most researchers steer clear of making such causal assumptions. Instead, many emphasize that media does not directly cause aggression and violence so much as operate as a risk factor among other variables (Bushman & Anderson, ; Warburton, ). In their review of media effects, Brad Bushman and psychologist Craig Anderson concluded,

Surette, however, argued that there is no clear linkage between media exposure and criminal behavior-violent or otherwise. In other words, a link between media violence and aggression does not necessarily mean that exposure to violent media causes violent (or nonviolent) criminal behavior. Though there are thousands of articles addressing media effects, many of these consist of reviews or commentary about prior research findings rather than original studies (Brown, ; Murray, ; Savage, ; Surette, ). Fewer, still, are studies that specifically measure media violence and criminal behavior (Gunter, ; Strasburger & Donnerstein, ). In their meta-analysis investigating the link between media violence and criminal aggression, scholars Joanne Savage and Christina Yancey did not find support for the assertion. Instead, they concluded,

Researchers continue to measure the impact of media violence among various forms of media and generally stop short of drawing a direct causal link in favor of more indirect effects. For example, one study examined the increase of gun violence in films over the years and concluded that violent scenes provide scripts for youth that justify gun violence that, in turn, may amplify aggression (Bushman, Jamieson, Weitz, & Romer, ). But others report contradictory findings. Patrick Markey and colleagues studied the relationship between rates of homicide and aggravated assault and gun violence in films from 1960-2012 and found that over the years, violent content in films increased while crime rates declined. After controlling for age shifts, poverty, education, incarceration rates, and economic inequality, the relationships remained statistically non-significant (Markey, French, & Markey, , p. 165). Psychologist Christopher Ferguson also failed to find a relationship between media violence in films and video games and violence (Ferguson, ).

Another study, by Gordon Dahl and Stefano DellaVigna, examined violent films from 1995-2004 and found decreases in violent crimes coincided with violent blockbuster movie attendance. Here, it was not the content that was alleged to impact crime rates, but instead what the authors called "voluntary incapacitation," or the shifting of daily activities from that of potential criminal behavior to movie attendance. The authors concluded, "For each million people watching a strongly or mildly violent movie, respectively, violent crime decreases by 1.9% and 2.1%. Nonviolent movies have no statistically significant impact" (Dahl & DellaVigna, p. 39).

High-profile cases over the last several years have shifted public concern toward the perceived danger of video games, but research demonstrating a link between video games and criminal violence remains scant. The American Psychiatric Association declared that "research demonstrates a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior, aggressive cognitions and aggressive affect, and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy and sensitivity to aggression . . ." but stopped short of claiming that video games impact criminal violence. According to Breuer and colleagues, "While all of the available meta-analyses . . . found a relationship between aggression and the use of (violent) video games, the size and interpretation of this connection differ largely between these studies . . ." (APA, ; Breuer et al., ; DeCamp, ). Further, psychologists Patrick Markey, Charlotte Markey, and Juliana French conducted four time-series analyses investigating the relationship between video game habits and assault and homicide rates. The studies measured rates of violent crime, the annual and monthly video game sales, Internet searches for video game walkthroughs, and rates of violent crime occurring after the release dates of popular games. The results showed that there was no relationship between video game habits and rates of aggravated assault and homicide. Instead, there was some indication of decreases in crime (Markey, Markey, & French, ).

Another longitudinal study failed to find video games as a predictor of aggression, instead finding support for the "selection hypothesis"-that physically aggressive individuals (aged 14-17) were more likely to choose media content that contained violence than those slightly older, aged 18-21. Additionally, the researchers concluded,

Others, such as scholars Martin Barker and Julian Petley, flatly reject the notion that violent media exposure is a causal factor for aggression and/or violence. In their book Ill Effects, the authors stated instead that it is simply "stupid" to query about "what are the effects of [media] violence" without taking context into account (p. 2). They counter what they describe as moral campaigners who advance the idea that media violence causes violence. Instead, Barker and Petley argue that audiences interpret media violence in a variety of ways based on their histories, experiences, and knowledge, and as such, it makes little sense to claim media "cause" violence (Barker & Petley, ).

Given the seemingly inconclusive and contradictory findings regarding media effects research, to say that the debate can, at times, be contentious is an understatement. One article published in European Psychologist queried "Does Doing Media Violence Research Make One Aggressive?" and lamented that the debate had devolved into an ideological one (Elson & Ferguson, ). Another academic journal published a special issue devoted to video games and youth and included a transcript of exchanges between two scholars to demonstrate that a "peaceful debate" was, in fact, possible (Ferguson & Konijn, ).

Nonetheless, in this debate, the stakes are high and the policy consequences profound. After examining over 900 published articles, publication patterns, prominent authors and coauthors, and disciplinary interest in the topic, scholar James Anderson argued that prominent media effects scholars, whom he deems the "causationists," had developed a cottage industry dependent on funding by agencies focused primarily on the negative effects of media on children. Anderson argued that such a focus presents media as a threat to family values and ultimately operates as a zero-sum game. As a result, attention and resources are diverted toward media and away from other priorities that are essential to understanding aggression such as social disadvantage, substance abuse, and parental conflict (Anderson, , p. 1276).

Theoretical Perspectives on Media Effects

Though the methodologies of the Payne Fund Studies and Bandura studies were heavily criticized, concern over media effects continued to be tied to larger moral debates including the fear of moral decline and concern over the welfare of children. Most notably, in the 1950s, psychiatrist Frederic Wertham warned of the dangers of comic books, a hugely popular medium at the time, and their impact on juveniles. Based on anecdotes and his clinical experience with children, Wertham argued that images of graphic violence and sexual debauchery in comic books were linked to juvenile delinquency. Though he was far from the only critic of comic book content, his criticisms reached the masses and gained further notoriety with the publication of his 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent. Wertham described the comic book content thusly,

Wertham's work was instrumental in shaping public opinion and policies about the dangers of comic books. Concern about the impact of comics reached its apex in 1954 with the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. Wertham testified before the committee, arguing that comics were a leading cause of juvenile delinquency. Ultimately, the protest of graphic content in comic books by various interest groups contributed to implementation of the publishers' self-censorship code, the Comics Code Authority, which essentially designated select books that were deemed "safe" for children (Nyberg, ). The code remained in place for decades, though it was eventually relaxed and decades later phased out by the two most dominant publishers, DC and Marvel.

Wertham's work, however influential in impacting the comic industry, was ultimately panned by academics. Although scholar Bart Beaty characterized Wertham's position as more nuanced, if not progressive, than the mythology that followed him, Wertham was broadly dismissed as a moral reactionary (Beaty, ; Phillips & Strobl, ). The most damning criticism of Wertham's work came decades later, from Carol Tilley's examination of Wertham's files. She concluded that in Seduction of the Innocent,

Tilley linked Wertham's approach to that of the Frankfurt theorists who deemed popular culture a social threat and contended that Wertham was most interested in "cultural correction" rather than scientific inquiry (Tilley, , p. 404).

Over the decades, concern about the moral impact of media remained while theoretical and methodological approaches to media effects studies continued to evolve (Rich, Bickham, & Wartella, ). In what many consider a sophisticated development, theorists began to view the audience as more active and multifaceted than the mass society perspective allowed (Kitzinger, ). One perspective, based on a "uses and gratifications" model, assumes that rather than a passive audience being injected with values and information, a more active audience selects and "uses" media as a response to their needs and desires. Studies of uses and gratifications take into account how choice of media is influenced by one's psychological and social circumstances. In this context, media provides a variety of functions for consumers who may engage with it for the purposes of gathering information, reducing boredom, seeking enjoyment, or facilitating communication (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, ; Rubin, ). This approach differs from earlier views in that it privileges the perspective and agency of the audience.

Another approach, the cultivation theory, gained momentum among researchers in the 1970s and has been of particular interest to criminologists. It focuses on how television television viewing impacts viewers' attitudes toward social reality. The theory was first introduced by communications scholar George Gerbner, who argued the importance of understanding messages that long-term viewers absorb. Rather than examine the effect of specific content within any given programming, cultivation theory,

In other words, he argued, television viewers are, over time, exposed to messages about the way the world works. As Gerbner and colleagues stated, "continued exposure to its messages is likely to reiterate, confirm, and nourish-that is, cultivate-its own values and perspectives" (p. 49).

One of the most well-known consequences of heavy media exposure is what Gerbner termed the "mean world" syndrome. He coined it based on studies that found that long-term exposure to media violence among heavy television viewers, "tends to cultivate the image of a relatively mean and dangerous world" (p. 52). Inherent in Gerbner's view was that media representations are separate and distinct entities from "real life." That is, it is the distorted representations of crime and violence that cultivate the notion that the world is a dangerous place. In this context, Gerbner found that heavy television viewers are more likely to be fearful of crime and to overestimate their chances of being a victim of violence (Gerbner, ).

Other researchers found that exposure to media violence creates a desensitizing effect, that is, that as viewers consume more violent media, they become less empathetic as well as psychologically and emotionally numb when confronted with actual violence (Bartholow, Bushman, & Sestir, ; Carnagey, Anderson, & Bushman, ; Cline, Croft, & Courrier, ; Fanti, Vanman, Henrich, & Avraamides, ; Krahé et al., ). Other scholars such as Henry Giroux, however, point out that our contemporary culture is awash in violence and "everyone is infected." From this perspective, the focus is not on certain individuals whose exposure to violent media leads to a desensitization of real-life violence, but rather on the notion that violence so permeates society that it has become normalized in ways that are divorced from ethical and moral implications. Giroux wrote,

For Giroux, the danger is that the normalization of violence has become a threat to democracy itself. In our culture of mass consumption shaped by neoliberal logics, depoliticized narratives of violence have become desired forms of entertainment and are presented in ways that express tolerance for some forms of violence while delegitimizing other forms of violence. In their book, Disposable Futures, Brad Evans and Henry Giroux argued that as the spectacle of violence perpetuates fear of inevitable catastrophe, it reinforces expansion of police powers, increased militarization and other forms of social control, and ultimately renders marginalized members of the populace disposable (Evans & Giroux, , p. 81).

Criminology and the "Media/Crime Nexus"

Most criminologists and sociologists who focus on media and crime are generally either dismissive of the notion that media violence directly causes violence or conclude that findings are more complex than traditional media effects models allow, preferring to focus attention on the impact of media violence on society rather than individual behavior (Carrabine, ; Ferrell, Hayward, & Young, ; Jewkes, ; Kitzinger, ; Marsh & Melville, ; Rafter, ; Sternheimer, ; Sternheimer ; Surette, ). Sociologist Karen Sternheimer forcefully declared "media culture is not the root cause of American social problems, not the Big Bad Wolf, as our ongoing public discussion would suggest" (Sternheimer, , p. 3). Sternheimer rejected the idea that media causes violence and argued that a false connection has been forged between media, popular culture, and violence. Like others critical of a singular focus on media, Sternheimer posited that overemphasis on the perceived dangers of media violence serves as a red herring that directs attention away from the actual causes of violence rooted in factors such as poverty, family violence, abuse, and economic inequalities (Sternheimer, , ). Similarly, in her Media and Crime text, Yvonne Jewkes stated that U.K. scholars tend to reject findings of a causal link because the studies are too reductionist; criminal behavior cannot be reduced to a single causal factor such as media consumption. Echoing Gauntlett's critiques of media effects research, Jewkes stated that simplistic causal assumptions ignore "the wider context of a lifetime of meaning-making" (Jewkes, , p. 17).

Although they most often reject a "violent media cause violence" relationship, criminologists do not dismiss the notion of media as influential. To the contrary, over the decades much criminological interest has focused on the construction of social problems, the ideological implications of media, and media's potential impact on crime policies and social control. Eamonn Carrabine noted that the focus of concern is not whether media directly causes violence but on "how the media promote damaging stereotypes of social groups, especially the young, to uphold the status quo" (Carrabine, , p. 34). Theoretically, these foci have been traced to the influence of cultural and Marxist studies. For example, criminologists frequently focus on how social anxieties and class inequalities impact our understandings of the relationship between media violence and attitudes, values, and behaviors. Influential works in the 1970s, such as Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order by Stuart Hall et al. and Stanley Cohen's Folk Devils and Moral Panics, shifted criminological critique toward understanding media as a hegemonic force that reinforces state power and social control (Brown, ; Carrabine, ; Cohen, ; Garland, ; Hall et al., /1973, ). Since that time, moral panic has become a common framework applied to public discourse around a variety of social issues including road rage, child abuse, popular music, sex panics, and drug abuse among others.

Into the 21st century, advances in technology, including increased use of social media, shifted the ways that criminologists approach the study of media effects. Scholar Sheila Brown traced how research in criminology evolved from a focus on "media and crime" to what she calls the "media/crime nexus" that recognizes that "media experience is real experience" (Brown, , p. 413). In other words, many criminologists began to reject as fallacy what social media theorist Nathan Jurgenson deemed "digital dualism," or the notion that we have an "online" existence that is separate and distinct from our "off-line" existence. Instead, we exist simultaneously both online and offline, an

The changing media landscape has been of particular interest to cultural criminologists. Michelle Brown recognized the omnipresence of media as significant in terms of methodological preferences and urged a move away from a focus on causality and predictability toward a more fluid approach that embraces the complex, contemporary media-saturated social reality characterized by uncertainty and instability (Brown, ).

Conclusion

Over the years, from films to comic books to television to video games to social media, concerns over media effects have shifted along with changing technologies. While there seems to be some consensus that exposure to violent media impacts aggression, there is little evidence showing its impact on violent or criminal behavior. Nonetheless, high-profile violent crimes continue to reignite public interest in media effects, particularly with regard to copycat crimes.

At times, academic debate around media effects remains contentious and one's academic discipline informs the study and interpretation of media effects. Criminologists and sociologists are generally reluctant to attribute violence and criminal behavior directly to exposure to violence media. They are, however, not dismissive of the impact of media on attitudes, social policies, and social control as evidenced by the myriad of studies on moral panics and other research that addresses the relationship between media, social anxieties, gender, race, and class inequalities. Scholars who study media effects are also sensitive to the historical context of the debates and ways that moral concerns shape public policies. The self-regulating codes of the film industry and the comic book industry have led scholars to be wary of hyperbole and policy overreach in response to claims of media effects. Future research will continue to explore ways that changing technologies, including increasing use of social media, will impact our understandings and perceptions of crime as well as criminal behavior.

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Violence, Media Effects, and Criminology

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Debate surrounding the impact of media representations on violence and crime has raged for decades and shows no sign of abating. Over the years, the targets of concern have shifted from film to comic books to television to video games, but the central questions remain the same.

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"The internet is now the place where the seeds of extremism are planted and watered, where platform incentives guide creators toward the ideological poles, and where people with hateful and violent beliefs can find and feed off one another."

Source: Article & Case Study
Author: Kevin Roose
Value: describes a specific crime committed, suggests how media played a major role in the violence, and how media impacted others' schemas and thoughts towards the crime

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The Shift

A prayer after leaving a tribute near Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Saturday. Forty-one people died there, the authorities said. Credit... Cornell Tukiri for The New York Times

Before entering a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, the site of one of the deadliest mass murders in the country's history, a gunman paused to endorse a YouTube star in a video that appeared to capture the shooting.

"Remember, lads, subscribe to PewDiePie," he said.

To an untrained eye, this would have seemed like a bizarre detour.

But the people watching the video stream recognized it as something entirely different: a meme.

Like many of the things done before the attack on Friday - like the posting of a 74-page manifesto that named a specific internet figure - the PewDiePie endorsement served two purposes. For followers of the killer's videostream, it was a kind of satirical Easter egg. "Subscribe to PewDiePie," which began as a grass-roots online attempt to keep the popular YouTube entertainer from being dethroned as the site's most-followed account, has morphed into a kind of all-purpose cultural bat signal for the young and internet-absorbed.

For everyone else, it was a booby trap, a joke designed to ensnare unsuspecting people and members of the media into taking it too literally. The goal, if there was one, may have been to pull a popular internet figure into a fractious blame game and inflame political tensions everywhere.

In a tweet early Friday morning, PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, said, "I feel absolutely sickened having my name uttered by this person."

New Zealand authorities have identified an accused gunman as Brenton Harrison Tarrant, 28, but it remains unclear if he acted alone.

The details that have emerged about the Christchurch shooting - at least 49 were killed in an attack on two mosques - are horrifying. But a surprising thing about it is how unmistakably online the violence was, and how aware the shooter on the videostream appears to have been about how his act would be viewed and interpreted by distinct internet subcultures.

In some ways, it felt like a first - an internet-native mass shooting, conceived and produced entirely within the irony-soaked discourse of modern extremism.

The attack was teased on Twitter, announced on the online message board 8chan and broadcast live on Facebook. The footage was then replayed endlessly on YouTube, Twitter and Reddit, as the platforms scrambled to take down the clips nearly as fast as new copies popped up to replace them. In a statement on Twitter, Facebook said it had "quickly removed both the shooter's Facebook and Instagram accounts and the video," and was taking down instances of praise or support for the shooting. YouTube said it was "working vigilantly to remove any violent footage" of the attack. Reddit said in a statement that it was taking down "content containing links to the video stream or manifesto."

Listen to 'The Daily': The Mosque Attacks in New Zealand

One of the deadliest mass shootings in the country's history bore the stamp of online extremism.

Back to The Daily

transcript

Listen to 'The Daily': The Mosque Attacks in New Zealand

Hosted by Michael Barbaro, produced by Annie Brown, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson and Jonathan Wolfe, and edited by Lisa Tobin

One of the deadliest mass shootings in the country's history bore the stamp of online extremism.

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is "The Daily."

Today: The death toll from a mass shooting targeting Muslims in New Zealand rose from 49 to 50 over the weekend, after officials found another body at the Al Noor Mosque, where most of the deaths occurred. Kevin Roose on why this attack was made by and for the internet. It's Monday, March 18.

archived recording 1

Farid, would you mind just telling us one more time of what happened in the mosque?

archived recording (farid ahmed)

When shooting started, it started from the hallway. So I could hear, so [IMITATING GUNFIRE]

Then magazine is finished. Then he refill again and came back again.

archived recording 2

I saw all the plastering coming down from the wall and the ceiling.

archived recording 3

O.K.

archived recording 4

And that was when I knew it was from the gun shot.

So immediately -

archived recording 5

When he was shooting at me - and there's a fence here. He was shooting at me. I ducked here and I come here. And I find the gun somewhere here and a dead body here as well.

archived recording 6

I feel now - I repeated the story a lot. But this is a good idea to say that -

michael barbaro

Over the weekend, through dozens of interviews with survivors, a story began to emerge of what happened on Friday inside the mosques in Christchurch.

archived recording 1

Was that your regular mosque or were you visiting that mosque?

archived recording (farid ahmed)

Regular mosque. Yeah.

michael barbaro

The shooting began at the Al Noor Mosque, where Farid Ahmed and his wife, Husna, who had moved to New Zealand from Bangladesh, were attending afternoon prayer.

archived recording (farid ahmed)

The ladies' room was on the right-hand side. So all the ladies were there. And my wife is always a leading person for ladies. She had a philosophy. She always used to tell me, I don't want to hold any position. And I want to prove that you don't need to have any position to help people. She was like a magnet. And exactly the same thing happened. The shooting started. She started instructing several ladies and children to get out. And she was screaming, Come this way, hurry up," this and that. You know, she was doing all these things. And then she took many children and ladies into a safe garden. Then she was coming back, checking about me, because I was in the wheelchair.

archived recording

Do you mind me asking why you're in a wheelchair?

archived recording (farid ahmed)

I was run over by a car. He was the drunk driver. And it was 1998 and it happened.

archived recording

I'm sorry.

archived recording (farid ahmed)

It's O.K.

archived recording

So she went out of the mosque and then she came back in?

archived recording (farid ahmed)

Yeah. She was coming back. And once she was approaching the gate, then she was shot.

archived recording

She came back into to fetch you?

archived recording (farid ahmed)

Yes. Yes.

michael barbaro

Farid learned hours later that Husna was one of the 42 people police say were killed at the mosque.

archived recording (farid ahmed)

So she was busy with saving lives, you know, forgetting about herself. And that's what she is. She always has been like this.

michael barbaro

Six minutes after firing the first shot, and as police raced toward Al Noor Mosque, the shooter drove to a second mosque, the Linwood Mosque, four miles east.

damien cave

And tell me - I'm sorry, what was your name?

abdul aziz

Abdul Aziz.

damien cave

And the mosque that you go to, is it mixed, Pakistani? I mean, that mosque - who was there that day?

abdul aziz

That mosque, we got from every race, from Malaysia, from Philippines, from Afghanistan, from every sort of country.

michael barbaro

My colleague Damien Cave spoke with Abdul Aziz, who was praying at the Linwood Mosque with his four sons when he heard gunshots. Aziz ran toward the shots, grabbing the first thing he could find, a credit card machine, which he flung at the attacker. The shooter dropped a gun, and Aziz picked it up.

abdul aziz

And I pick up the gun and I checked that it had no bullets. And I was screaming to the guy, "Come here! I'm here." I just wanted to put more focus on me than go inside the masjid. But unfortunately he just got himself to the masjid, and I heard more shooting sound. And I see the shooting inside the masjid.

michael barbaro

Moments later, when the gunman went to his car to retrieve more weapons, Aziz followed him.

abdul aziz

This guy tried to get more gun from his car. When he see me, I'm chasing with the gun. He sat on his car. And I just got that gun and throw in his window like an arrow and blast his window. And he thought I probably shot him or something. And the guns come back and just, he drives off.

michael barbaro

Aziz used the gun to shatter the gunman's car window, which many witnesses believe is what prompted him to speed away rather than re-enter the mosque and kill more people.

abdul aziz

Any brother would do the same thing. So if you was there, you would do the same thing.

damien cave

Have you - can I ask you -

michael barbaro

Minutes later, video shows the suspect being pulled by police from his car two and a half miles down the road, where two more guns and homemade explosives were also found.

archived recording (jacinda ardern)

I want to speak specifically about the firearms used in this terrorist act. They were two semi-automatic weapons and two shotguns.

michael barbaro

On Sunday, New Zealand's prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said that the suspect, an Australian citizen, would be tried in New Zealand, and that her government would meet today to discuss the country's gun laws.

archived recording (jacinda ardern)

I can tell you one thing right now. Our gun laws will change.

michael barbaro

Funerals for all 50 victims are expected to be held in the coming days.

archived recording (jacinda ardern)

As the police commissioner confirmed this morning, 50 people have been killed and 34 people remain in Christchurch Hospital, 12 of them in the intensive care unit in critical condition. A 4-year-old girl remains in critical condition at Starship Hospital in Auckland.

michael barbaro

Islamic burial rituals typically require bodies to be buried as soon as possible, and usually within 24 hours. But New Zealand authorities say that the process of identifying the victims and returning them to their families could take several more days.

archived recording (jacinda ardern)

It is the expectation that all bodies will be returned to families by Wednesday. I want to finish by saying that while the nation grapples with a form of grief and anger that we have not experienced before, we are seeking answers.

michael barbaro

Kevin, I want to talk to you about the moments before this mass shooting began. What do you know about those?

kevin roose

Well, what we know comes from a video that was live-streamed on Facebook while this was all happening by the gunman. He taped himself in the car on his way over to the mosque, listening to music, talking. And right before he gets out of the car and goes into the mosque, he pauses and says, "Remember, lads, subscribe to PewDiePie." And when I heard that, I just, like, I knew, oh, this is something different than we're used to.

michael barbaro

What do you mean? What is PewDiePie, and why does that reference matter?

kevin roose

So PewDiePie is this really popular YouTube personality. He has the most subscribers of anyone on YouTube. Some people think he's offensive. Some people really like him. He's got this whole fan base. And a few months ago, his fans started sort of spamming this phrase, "subscribe to PewDiePie," in an attempt to kind of keep him from being eclipsed by another account that was going to have more followers than him.

michael barbaro

O.K.

kevin roose

So it sort of became this competition, and then it became this joke. And now "subscribe to PewDiePie" is just kind of like a thing that people say on certain parts of the internet. It's just kind of like a signifier, like, I understand the internet, you understand the internet. This is how we're going to signal to each other that we understand the internet.

michael barbaro

O.K. And this is what he's signaling in saying that?

kevin roose

Yeah. So I have that in my head. And then I see all these other signs that something is weirdly kind of internet-y about all of this. Like, there's this post on 8chan, which is kind of like a scummy message board that lots of extremists and weirdos go on. And in the post, the gunman links to the Facebook stream before it happens.

michael barbaro

The Facebook stream that he will record of the massacre itself.

kevin roose

Exactly. And then he pastes a bunch of links to copies of his manifesto. He has a 74-page manifesto that he wrote. And some of this stuff was fairly standard hard-right ideology, very fascist, very white nationalist. Muslims are kind of like the primary target for white nationalists around the world, calling them invaders, saying they're taking over. You know, this is a sort of classic white nationalist trope. And then there was all this kind of meta-humor, saying that he was radicalized by video games, which is another thing that internet extremists love to sort of troll the media with. Like, you know, he posted previews of his gun on Twitter. The whole thing just kind of felt like it just set this shooting up as, like, almost an internet performance, like it was native to the internet, and it was born out of and aimed into this culture of extremely concentrated internet radicalism.

michael barbaro

But underneath it all is white nationalism, white supremacy, whatever you want to call it, a kind of racism that has always existed. So why does the internet's role in this feel especially different to you?

kevin roose

I want to make clear that this is not just a tech story, right. There's a real core of anti-Muslim violence here, Islamophobia, far-right ideology. That's all very, very important, and we should focus there. But I think there's this other piece that we really need to start grappling with as a society, which is that there's an entire generation of people who have been exposed to radical extremist politics online, who have been fed a steady diet of this stuff. It's transformed by the tools that the internet provides. So I've talked to a lot of white nationalists, unfortunately. And when I asked them how they got into this, a lot of them will say, I found a couple of videos on YouTube. And then I found some more videos on YouTube, and it kind of started opening my eyes to this ideology. And pretty soon, you're a white nationalist. And that's different from, historically, how extremism has been born. I mean -

michael barbaro

What do you mean?

kevin roose

You know, if you go to the library and you take out a book about World War II, right as you're about to finish it, the librarian doesn't say, here, here's a copy of "Mein Kampf." You might like this. There's not this kind of algorithmic nudge toward the extremes that really exists on social media and has a demonstrated effect on people.

michael barbaro

Walk me through this algorithmic nudge. I want to make sure I understand what you're referring to.

kevin roose

This is pretty specific to YouTube, but that's where a lot of this stuff happens. So on YouTube there's this recommendations bar. And after a video plays, another one follows it. And historically, the way that this algorithm that chose which video came next worked is it would try to keep you on the site for as long as possible, try to maximize the number of videos you watch, the amount of time you spent, which would maximize the ad revenue. Right. It would maximize lots of things. And so it turned out that what kept people on the site for longer and longer periods of time was gradually moving them toward more extreme content. You start at a video about spaceships, and you'd end on something that was questioning whether the moon landing was a hoax. Or you'd start at a video about some piece of U.S. history and, you know, five videos later you're at kind of a 9/11 conspiracy theory video. Just these kind of gradual tugs toward the stuff that the algorithm decides is going to keep you hooked. And in a lot of cases, that means making it a little more extreme.

michael barbaro

And what's the white nationalist version of this nudge?

kevin roose

There's a ton of white nationalism on YouTube. YouTube, from the conversations I've had with people in this movement, is sort of central to how these ideas spread. Like, you start watching some videos about politics. Maybe they're about Trump. Then you start watching some videos by sort of more fringey, kind of far-right characters, and all of a sudden you are watching someone's video who is espousing open white nationalism. And you're not exactly sure how you got there, but you keep watching. And for some percentage of people, you internalize that.

michael barbaro

So it's a kind of computer-driven on-ramp or onboarding.

kevin roose

Yeah. And this has been studied. Like, this is a well-documented phenomenon, and YouTube has done some things to try to fix the algorithm and make it so that it's not sending you down these rabbit holes. But it's still a pretty observable effect.

michael barbaro

And what's your understanding of why these platforms didn't act years ago to police, to delete these hate-filled videos, this content that through these algorithmic nudges you described directs people further and further towards extremism?

kevin roose

They had no reason to. I mean, they were making a lot of money. They saw their responsibility as providing a platform for free speech. They were very hesitant to kind of seem like they were censoring certain political views. They were committed to free speech. And I think that's kind of the original sin that's baked into all of this. It's like, part of how this was born is this idea that we just provide the platform, and if people signal to us that they like something, we'll show them more of it. And maybe we'll show them something that pushes the envelope a little bit more. And we're not optimizing for truth. We're not optimizing for things that we think are healthy for people. We're just giving them what they want. And they're trying to change that now, some of them. There's a reckoning now where these platforms have come to understand that this is the role that they've played and that they're trying to correct it. But there's a lot of people who have already been sucked up into this world, who have been radicalized, and who may not be coming back. It's going to be very, very tricky to slow the thing that has been set into motion. And I don't even know if it's possible.

michael barbaro

At this point.

kevin roose

Yeah.

These platforms played a pivotal role, have played, are playing a pivotal role in how these extremist groups gather momentum and share their ideas and coalesce into real movements and grow. And, like, that's the part that I don't think they've completely reckoned with, and I don't think we've completely reckoned with. I think we're still sort of coming to terms with the fact that there's this pipeline for extremism. And we know how it runs. We know where it happens. We know who's involved. And we know that sometimes it has these devastating, tragic consequences. What I've been thinking is just how inevitable this feels.

michael barbaro

What do you mean?

kevin roose

I've been watching these people in these kind of dark corners of the internet multiplying and hardening and becoming more extreme, and, like, it was inevitable. This is the nightmare. Right? This is the worst possible version of something that could happen and be broadcast on the internet. And it's not getting better. And it's going to be with us for a long time.

michael barbaro

But it also strikes me that in a way, and in a pretty awful way, this gunman and the way he has approached this massacre is kind of reflecting back how the internet functions. Because I'm thinking about him making a video of this attack, which, in a sense, means he's making content that feeds that loop that we're discussing, perhaps feeds this algorithm that possibly fed him - that he's basically putting something back into the system.

kevin roose

Yeah. And I saw this happening on these platforms, like, in real time. So -

michael barbaro

You mean on Friday?

kevin roose

Yeah. So if you went onto 8chan, which is the website where all the stuff was posted, the comments below this post were all about, let's save these videos so that we can re-upload them somewhere else -

michael barbaro

Wow.

kevin roose

- in case 8chan gets taken down. Let's spread this. Let's seed this all over the internet. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind that this guy was very aware of how his video and his manifesto would kind of filter through the internet and get refracted and picked up and analyzed. This was a very deliberate act, not only of murder and violence, but also of media creation. I mean, this was, in a way, engineered for internet virality.

michael barbaro

And then it did go viral.

kevin roose

Yes. Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, all the platforms, tried to take down the video as soon as it popped up, but it just kept popping back up. It's very hard to contain. So it's still out there. I mean, yeah, I'm looking at, right now, something posted, you know, six hours ago. It's the video of the shooting, and it's still up. And I don't think it'll ever fully disappear.

michael barbaro

Kevin, thank you very much.

kevin roose

Thank you.

Even the language used to describe the attack before the fact framed it as an act of internet activism. In a post on 8chan, the shooting was referred to as a "real life effort post." An image was titled "screw your optics," a reference to a line posted by the man accused in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting that later became a kind of catchphrase among neo-Nazis. And the manifesto - a wordy mixture of white nationalist boilerplate, fascist declarations and references to obscure internet jokes - seems to have been written from the bottom of an algorithmic rabbit hole.

It would be unfair to blame the internet for this. Motives are complex, lives are complicated, and we don't yet know all the details about the shooting. Anti-Muslim violence is not an online phenomenon, and white nationalist hatred long predates 4Chan and Reddit.

But we do know that the design of internet platforms can create and reinforce extremist beliefs. Their recommendation algorithms often steer users toward edgier content, a loop that results in more time spent on the app, and more advertising revenue for the company. Their hate speech policies are weakly enforced. And their practices for removing graphic videos - like the ones that circulated on social media for hours after the Christchurch shooting, despite the companies' attempts to remove them - are inconsistent at best.

We also know that many recent acts of offline violence bear the internet's imprint. Robert Bowers, the man charged with killing 11 people and wounding six others at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, was a frequent user of Gab, a social media platform beloved by extremists. Cesar Sayoc, the man charged with sending explosives to prominent critics of President Trump last year, was immersed in a cesspool of right-wing Facebook and Twitter memes.

People used to conceive of "online extremism" as distinct from the extremism that took form in the physical world. If anything, the racism and bigotry on internet message boards felt a little less dangerous than the prospect of Ku Klux Klan marches or skinhead rallies.
[Read about the challenges of reporting on a shooting that was set up "as almost an internet performance."]

Now, online extremism is just regular extremism on steroids. There is no offline equivalent of the experience of being algorithmically nudged toward a more strident version of your existing beliefs, or having an invisible hand steer you from gaming videos to neo-Nazism. The internet is now the place where the seeds of extremism are planted and watered, where platform incentives guide creators toward the ideological poles, and where people with hateful and violent beliefs can find and feed off one another.

So the pattern continues. People become fluent in the culture of online extremism, they make and consume edgy memes, they cluster and harden. And once in a while, one of them erupts.

In the coming days, we should attempt to find meaning in the lives of the victims of the Christchurch attack, and not glorify the attention-grabbing tactics of the gunman. We should also address the specific horror of anti-Muslim violence.

At the same time, we need to understand and address the poisonous pipeline of extremism that has emerged over the past several years, whose ultimate effects are impossible to quantify but clearly far too big to ignore. It's not going away, and it's not particularly getting better. We will feel it for years to come.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Mass Murder of, and for, the Internet (Published 2019)

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The Shift Before entering a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, the site of one of the deadliest mass murders in the country's history, a gunman paused to endorse a YouTube star in a video that appeared to capture the shooting. "Remember, lads, subscribe to PewDiePie," he said.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Encyclopedia of Theoretical CriminologyMass Media and Crime

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The Encyclopedia of Theoretical CriminologyMass Media and Crime

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"The media are credited with being the most influential force in terms of our individual perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors, and the most powerful in shaping socio‐structural elements of society, including responses to crime."

Source Type: Journal Article
Author: Rae Taylor
Value: explores individual impact of the media and the impact on a society as a whole, describes different aspect of the media (such as framing effects, the notion of 'newsworthiness,' and a "CSI effect")

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Mass Media and Crime

First published:

Abstract

Mass media refers to media directed at a large audience. In addition to being the key source of information and entertainment in our society, the media are credited with being the most influential force in terms of our individual perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors, and the most powerful in shaping socio‐structural elements of society, including responses to crime. Scholars have determined that the relationship between the mass media, crime, and criminal justice is reciprocal whereby crime and justice affect media content, and vice versa. The social construction of crime in the media, framing practices used by the media in covering crime, criteria for newsworthiness, crime content in the media versus official data, effects of media on fear of crime victimization, and the notion of a "CSI Effect" are explored.

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First published: Mass media refers to media directed at a large audience. In addition to being the key source of information and entertainment in our society, the media are credited with being the most influential force in terms of our individual perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors, and the most powerful in shaping socio‐structural elements of society, including responses to crime.

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Does Media Violence Cause Violent Crime?

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Does Media Violence Cause Violent Crime?

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"When integrated with other long-term studies on the development of crime, it is concluded that the link between media violence and crime is weak after other environmental factors are taken into consideration."

Source Type: Journal Article
Author: Sarah M. Coyne
Value: compares various longitudinal studies, describes the development of media relating to crime, defines "violent" criminal behavior, provides compelling statistics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Stay Informed
Register with NCJRS to receive NCJRS's biweekly e-newsletter JUSTINFO and additional periodic emails from NCJRS and the NCJRS federal sponsors that highlight the latest research published or sponsored by the Office of Justice Programs.

NCJRS Abstract

The document referenced below is part of the NCJRS Virtual Library collection. To conduct further searches of the collection, visit the Virtual Library. See the Obtain Documents page for direction on how to access resources online, via mail, through interlibrary loans, or in a local library.

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NCJRS Abstract - National Criminal Justice Reference Service

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Stay Informed Register with NCJRS to receive NCJRS's biweekly e-newsletter JUSTINFO and additional periodic emails from NCJRS and the NCJRS federal sponsors that highlight the latest research published or sponsored by the Office of Justice Programs. The document referenced below is part of the NCJRS Virtual Library collection.

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Teens’ Attention to Crime and Emergency Programs on Television as a Predictor and Mediator of Increased Risk Perceptions Regarding Alcohol-Related Injuries

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Teens’ Attention to Crime and Emergency Programs on Television as a Predictor and Mediator of Increased Risk Perceptions Regarding Alcohol-Related Injuries

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"Attention to crime and emergency shows was predictive of increased concern and other risk perceptions regarding alcohol-related incidents."

Source Type: Study
Author: Michael D. Slater and Parul Jain
Value: explores a specific criminal behavior (underage drinking and assault), provides reliable statistics, supports different solutions to preventing alcohol induced crime

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Abstract

This study examined the hypotheses that media exposure and attention would predict, and partially mediate, the effects of various individual-difference variables on alcohol-related risk perceptions among teen viewers of crime and emergency (e.g. medical drama) shows on television. Risk perceptions including perceived severity, perceived alcohol-attributable fraction of incidents involving alcohol, controllability, and concern regarding alcohol-related crime, assaults, and other injuries were the outcome measures. Attention to crime and emergency shows was predictive of increased concern and other risk perceptions regarding alcohol-related incidents. Attention also partially mediated the effects of demographic and other individual difference variables on adolescents' risk perceptions regarding alcohol-related injuries. The findings a) suggest emergency and medical drama television narratives can at times have incidental positive impacts on health-related attitudes and b) provide further evidence regarding the endogenous nature of media use variables in influencing such attitudes.

Alcohol is the drug of choice among youth and causes the death of 5000 people under the age of 21 every year (NIAAA, 2006). Recent estimates suggest about 10.8 million alcohol users in the age group of 12-20, with a substantial percentage reporting binge and heavy drinking (see SAMHSA, 2006). Underage drinking is related to brain damage, social developmental issues, risky sexual behavior, and dependence on alcohol in adulthood (NIAAA, 2006).

Examination of entertainment media effects on alcohol risk perceptions among adolescents, then, is of substantive importance because such risk perceptions are predictive of their alcohol and other substance use behaviors ( Bachman, Johnston, O'Malley, 1991; Brown, Schulenberg, Bachman, O'Malley, Johnston., 2001). Entertainment media may impact people's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, including those related to health risk perceptions. Intentional efforts to influence viewers' pro-social health-related attitudes and behaviors via entertainment-education ( Singhal & Rogers, 2002) are relatively well-studied. Research has also looked extensively into the effects of unintended negative consequences of exposure to entertainment media ( Collins. et al., 2005; Collins et al., 2007; Dalton et al., 2003; Kean & Albada, 2003), especially among adolescents. In this study, in contrast, we examine possible incidental prosocial effects on perceptions of alcohol-related risks associated with viewing of crime and emergency dramas among adolescent viewers.

We conduct this examination from the perspective of theoretical models emphasizing the endogenous nature of media use variables ( Slater, 2007). In particular, Slater & Rasinski (2005) found that exposure and attention to crime news and emergency entertainment shows both predicted alcohol-related risk perceptions among adults, and partially mediated the effects of various individual-difference variables that also predicted such risk perceptions; Slater, Hayes, and Ford (2007) also found that attentiveness to crime and accident news mediated the impact of sensation-seeking and negative personal experience on adolescent risk perceptions. The present research provides a test of endogenous effects of crime and emergency show viewing on risk perceptions among a national random sample of adolescents.

Unintended Negative Impacts of Entertainment Dramas on Health-Related Outcomes

There is a growing body of literature that implicates entertainment dramas in television or the movies with negative health-related outcomes among youth. Exposure to sexualized media appears to influence adolescents' sex-related attitudes and behavior ( Brown, L'Engle, Pardun, Kenneavy, & Jackson, 2006; Collins et al., 2004). Within the realm of adolescents and substance use, there is evidence based on extensive content analyses and panel survey designs that exposure to smoking in R-rated movies increases adolescent smoking uptake ( Sargent et al., 2007), consistent with results from experimental research ( Pechmann & Shih, 1999). Other studies have also highlighted the frequency of media portrayals of alcohol use ( Christenson, Henriksen, & Roberts, 2000; Greenberg, Rosaean, Worrell, Salmon, Volkman, 2009). Evidence for the effects of movies with alcohol use portrayed parallel to those for smoking have been more recently reported providing evidence for the prospective association between exposure to alcohol in movies and early onset of teen drinking ( Sargent, Wills, Stoolmiller, Gibson, & Gibbons, 2006; see Brown & McDonald [1995] for a review). We emphasize that we are not arguing here that television viewing is protective with respect to adolescent alcohol outcomes; rather, we are advancing a narrower proposition that crime and emergency service dramas in particular may have unintended prosocial effects. Medical dramas and other emergency shows, given their focus on dramatic medical emergencies and crime, are more likely to portray negative outcomes often associated with alcohol use, such as motor vehicle crash injuries, assaults, and other mishaps.

Among well-established media effects theories, exemplification ( Zillman & Brosius, 2000) offers a plausible account of the possible effects of attentive viewing of medical and emergency service dramas. It may be that there are vivid exemplars of crimes and accidents that are alcohol-related that are more accessible in memory to attentive viewers of such dramas. Or, it may be simply having exemplars in memory of such accidents and crimes, and awareness of the possible contribution of alcohol, can increase associations in memory between risks and alcohol use. Similar mechanisms have been proposed and tested by researchers examining social cognitive mechanisms that might explain cultivation effects ( Gerbner et al., 2002) who find that viewers of a given genre have information consonant with genre content more accessible in memory ( Shrum, 1995).

Finally we note that crime and emergency shows (such as CSI) are among the most popular shows on TV among adults age 18-49 ( Nielson, 2009a), and adolescent viewing largely parallels viewing reported for the rest of the household ( Nielson, 2009b). It can therefore reasonably be assumed that adolescents are often viewing these popular medical and other emergency service prime-time dramas, and their effects are worthy of study.

Intentional Efforts to Influence Pro-social Health Attitudes and Behaviors through Entertainment Programming

There is ample evidence that pro-social effects of entertainment media are plausible. Entertainment-education is the use of entertainment media content-typically dramas on television or radio-to influence prosocial attitudes and behaviors through modeling of and reinforcement of such attitudes and behaviors in the context of the entertainment story line ( Rogers & Singhal, 2003). Internationally, entertainment-education campaigns have been focused on promoting behaviors such as family planning in developing countries including India ( Singhal and Rogers, 1989) and Mexico ( Nariman, 1993); HIV and AIDS awareness in Tanzania ( Vaughn et al., 2000) and Nigeria ( Lapinski & Nwulu, 2008); and enhancing collective self-efficacy against spousal abuse in Korea ( Rogers & Singhal, 2003) among others.

Given the success of entertainment-education programming in the developing world, this strategy has been increasingly used in the United States in the hopes that exposure to such programming will promote the adoption of healthy attitudes and behaviors ( Dutta, 2007; Valente et al., 2007). More recently American audiences have started to witness entertainment-education campaigns to promote various healthy and prosocial behaviors such as organ donation ( Morgan, Harrison, Chewning, Davis, & DiCorcia, 2007; Movius, Cody, Huang, Berkowitz, Morgan, 2007); HPV and emergency contraception awareness ( Brodie et al., 2001); and HIV and AIDS related information ( Rideout, 2008) among other topics.

The research on entertainment-education clearly evidences the potential effect of entertainment programming that is carefully scripted and produced with the intention of pro-social influence on attitude and behavior; it appears as well that specific health-relevant story lines in commercial American television can have effects similar to traditional E-E on story-relevant health-related attitudes. However, it is unclear whether some entertainment programming-notably crime and emergency dramas-has, as a genre, the potential to have pro-social influence absent such intentional scripting and production, or storyline-specific effects. This is the question being examined here.

Exposure and Attention to Crime and Emergency Shows

Exposure and attention to a given media programming genre can be thought of as necessary conditions for the effects of narrative persuasion ( McGuire, 1989). Obviously, media content cannot influence a media consumer if they are not exposed to that content (except via impact on other viewers, but that is not a topic under study here). People are exposed to a great deal of media content; as McGuire (1989) points out, only what content viewers or readers actually attend to is likely to have much of an impact. Attention is a psychological process through which we devote our sensory and mental resources to, and cognitively and emotionally engage with, elements from external environment, in this case, crime and emergency television shows ( Anderson & Kirkorian, 2006). Therefore, the cultivation or exemplification effects of shows dramatically portraying violent crime victimization and various kinds of unintended injury should be a function of the degree to which adolescents are exposed to such programs and the amount of attention paid to the programs.

We propose the following hypotheses tentatively for exposure and more confidently for attention because given prior research, it appears that attention more so than exposure is the variable of greatest influence among adolescents at least with respect to news ( Slater, Hayes, & Ford, 2007). A possible reason for this is that adolescents may not always have full control over television choices in the home, rendering exposure error-prone in terms of reflecting their actual engagement with the media content. For example in about 50% of the homes television is always on and in about 60% of the homes it is on during meal times ( Roberts, Foehr, & Rideout, 2005). Even when they have such control, as when they have a television in the bedroom ( Roberts, Foehr, & Rideout, 2005), it is possible that they may spend much of their viewing time multitasking and not focused on the television content ( Roberts & Foehr, 2008). This data suggests that adolescents might be getting exposed to the programming as a function of television set being on but they might not be paying attention to the content. Thus we propose the following hypotheses with respect to the impact of crime and emergency shows, the first more tentatively, and the second with more confidence:

H1: Greater exposure to crime and emergency entertainment shows would positively predict alcohol-related risk perceptions a) perceived severity; b) perceived controllability; c) perceived alcohol-attributable fraction; and d) perceived concern of alcohol-related injuries and crashes in adolescents after controlling for individual difference variables (i.e., demographics, sensation seeking, and prior experience with alcohol).

H2: Greater attention to crime and emergency entertainment shows would positively predict alcohol-related risk perceptions including a) perceived severity; b) perceived controllability; c) perceived alcohol-attributable fraction; and d) perceived concern of alcohol-related injuries and crashes in adolescents after controlling for individual difference variables (i.e., demographics, sensation seeking, and prior experience with alcohol) and exposure.

Exposure and Attention as Endogenous or Mediating Variables

Recent research in media effects argues for dynamic relationships between exogenous variables (e.g. demographics) and effects of media. From this perspective, media usage instead of being defined as the starting point of effects is considered as a mediating process between exogenous variables (and individual differences) and effects of the media thus making media use endogenous in nature ( Bucy & Tao, 2007; Slater & Rasinski, 2005).

A recent study provided evidence in support of this notion when authors found that adolescents who were sexually active were more likely to seek sexualized media and exposure to such sexualized media environment in turn influenced their levels of sexual activity ( Bleakley, Hennessy, Fishbein, Jordan, 2008). Similarly, attention to news stories related to alcohol mediated the effects of sensation seeking and prior negative experience with alcohol on adolescents risk perceptions regarding alcohol ( Slater, Hayes, & Ford, 2007). Sensation seeking influenced adolescent's levels of attention towards anti and prosmoking media messages, and attention to these media messages impacted their smoking intentions ( Paek, 2008).

Research has focused heavily on variables which may mediate or moderate the influence of media use on alcohol-related outcomes, studying mediators including peer alcohol use, alcohol prototypes, expectancies, and willingness ( Dal Cin et al., 2009), and parental mediation ( Dalton et al., 2006; Austin & Chen, 2003). Only a handful of studies to date, as noted above, have looked at how media use itself can mediate the effect of exogenous variables on adolescent's alcohol-related risk perceptions, as we hypothesize here.

Exogenous/Control Variables

In this study we examine the impact of individual difference variables of age, gender, academic performance, ever having been drunk, sensation seeking, and prior negative experience with alcohol on adolescent's alcohol-related risk perceptions. These variables serve as controls for assessing the predictive relationship between exposure and attention to medical and crime dramas, and may also have their own impact on risk perceptions. In some cases, as discussed below, their effects may be partially mediated by exposure and attention to crime and emergency shows-a central claim of the present research.

For example, we would expect prior experience with negative alcohol consequences to be mediated in part by exposure and/or attention to crime and emergency shows. We have found among both adults and adolescents that such first- or second-hand personal experiences predict greater attention to relevant crime and accident news ( Slater & Rasinski, 2005; Slater, Hayes, & Ford, 2007), and that such attention can mediate effects on risk perceptions. Therefore, it is a plausible candidate for such a mediation prediction.

Similarly, sensation-seeking is another candidate for such mediation. Sensation seeking is believed to be biological in nature and describes people's tendency to engage in arousing, novel, and often risky experiences ( Bardo & Mueller, 1991; Zuckerman, 1979). Research suggests that high sensation seeking adolescents often turn to illicit substances such as alcohol and drugs to satisfy their need for arousal and stimulation ( Stephenson & Helme, 2006). We have found in prior work that exposure and/or attention to crime and injury news mediate effects of sensation-seeking on risk perceptions ( Slater, Hayes, & Ford, 2007). It seems plausible to expect that such effects may be found in the case of adolescent viewing of crime and emergency dramas as well.

We can find no basis in the literature or logic to expect differences in viewership of crime and emergency dramas based on academic performance or alcohol use (once experience with negative alcohol use injury consequences has been controlled), so these variables function primarily as additional controls. However, generally younger adolescents are more involved with television viewing than older adolescents ( Roberts & Foehr, 2008), so exposure and attention to crime and accident dramas is likely to decline with age and may partially explain age-related differences in risk perceptions. Gender differences in effects of such dramas are more uncertain, but it is possible such differences exist, given gender differences in television program choice ( Brown & Pardun, 2004), and therefore they are tested in this study:

H3: Amount of exposure to crime and emergency shows will partially mediate the effect of age, gender, sensation seeking, and prior negative experience with alcohol on adolescents' alcohol-related risk perceptions.

H4: Amount of attention to crime and emergency shows will partially mediate the effect of age, gender, sensation-seeking and prior negative experience with alcohol on adolescents' alcohol-related risk perceptions.

Methods

Survey Methods

This study is based on a telephone survey of nationally representative sample of adolescents between the ages of 13-17 years. The data for this study came from the survey conducted by National Opinion Research Corporation in 2004 using random digit telephone sample of households purchased from Survey Sampling International. Using systematic sampling the numbers selected were called 25 times at different times before replacement. The interviewers asked the households to speak to anyone between the ages of 13 and 17 living in the household. If there was more than one teen living in the household at the time, the teen that had the most recent birthday was chosen as the sample. The total sample consisted of 200 male and 206 female respondents between the ages of 13 and 18 ( M = 15.18, SD = 1.41; seven 18-year-olds were included, probably because a few youths rounded up their age), most of whom identified themselves as White (88%). The remaining respondents self-identified themselves as Black (5%) or of some other race (7%). Minimum cooperation rate was 60%; minimum response rate was 38% and adjusting for cases of unknown eligibility by incidence and accuracy rates (American Association for Public Opinion Research response rate 3) was 54%. The response rate of 54% should be considered more appropriate for this study than the minimum response rate because of frequent unavailability of an adolescent of the desired age in the household contacted.

Measurement

Alcohol-related risk perceptions

Previous research (e.g., Slovic, Fischhoff, Lichtenstein, 1985) has identified several key dimensions on which risks are judged, including likelihood or prevalence, degree of potential catastrophe, dread, severity, and controllability. In the context of alcohol-related injury risks ( Slater & Rasinski, 2005) these were compressed to four that appeared both relevant to alcohol as a risk factor, and adequately measurable: Perceived concern, perceived alcohol-attributable fraction (the proportion of injuries or crimes attributable to alcohol), perceived severity, and controllability of alcohol-related injuries and crimes. Since any single alcohol-related incident rarely impacts large numbers of people at once, catastrophe-potential seemed to have little relevance. Dread-how subjectively awful a given risk feels-also did not seem a likely candidate for impact via media influence in this particular context. We therefore explored a more generic affective assessment-concern about alcohol-related risks-that proved important in prior research on adolescents' response to alcohol-related news ( Slater, Hayes, & Ford, 2007).

Our series of items measuring alcohol-related risk perceptions were developed after a series of cognitive interviews ( N = 29) and pretests ( N = 200) with adults and adolescents. Concern related to injuries involving alcohol was measured by asking about the concern respondents felt when thinking about assaults, motor vehicle crashes, and other incidents in which alcohol was involved. The specific items measured concern relative to other concerns in a person's life to avoid ceiling effects found in an initial pretest of this survey (1 = just a minor concern, 10 = one of my biggest concern). The items measuring concern regarding alcohol-related injuries were averaged ( M = 6.64, SD = 2.15, α = .85).

Demographics and other miscellaneous control variables

Sex, age of the respondent, a measure of school performance, whether the respondent had ever been drunk, prior negative experiences with alcohol and sensation seeking were included as control variables. Age was measured in years by asking the respondent the year in which he or she was born ( M = 15.18, SD = 1.40). Participants self-reported their grades (with higher score representative of higher grade) and if they had ever been drunk ranging from 0 ( never) to 1 ( drunk at least once). To measure prior negative experience with alcohol respondents were asked to indicate yes or no to the following three items: "Have you, a member of your family, or a close friend ever been involved in, a) motor vehicle crash, b) assault, and c) other injury-producing incident in which alcohol was involved. These three items were summed to produce a cumulative measure of prior negative first- or second-hand experiences with alcohol ( M = .58, SD = .86). These experiences did tend to correlate, as indicated by the modest but acceptable alpha of .57. To measure sensation seeking respondents were asked to indicate their response to the following items: "I like to do exciting things even if they are risky" and "I'm willing to take chances without worrying much about the consequences". Scale anchors ranged from 1(strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). The two items were based on ones previously used by the authors ( Slater, Hayes, & Ford, 2007); a similar two-item scale had adequate reliability (.67) in previous research (Stephenson, Hoyle, Palmgreen, & Slater, 2003). The two items were averaged ( M = 2.32, SD = 0.61, α = .57).

Data Analysis

We used hierarchical multiple regression and Preacher and Hayes (2008) macros to analyze the data and test the hypotheses. To test hypothesis 1 and 2 each risk perception (perceived concern, perceived severity, perceived alcohol-attributable fraction, and controllability) was tested separately but the regression model was set up in the same manner: In block 1 individual difference variables of age, gender, grades, ever been drunk, sensation seeking, and prior negative experience with alcohol were added. In block 2 and 3 exposure and attention to crime and emergency shows were added, respectively.

Hypothesis 3 and 4 proposed that exposure and attention to crime and emergency shows would mediate the effects of individual difference variables on adolescents alcohol-related risk perceptions. We conducted mediation analyses following Preacher and Hayes (2008), testing the significance of the indirect paths using bootstrapped distributions, to understand if exposure and attention to media was mediating the effect (or, in the absence of a direct effect, providing a path for an indirect effects) of exogenous variables on adolescents alcohol-related risk perceptions. We also report the mediation paths and the attenuation of direct effects with inclusion of the mediator per Baron and Kenny (1986).

Results

Hypothesis 1 proposed a positive relationship between exposure to crime and emergency shows and adolescents risk judgments regarding alcohol-related incidents. This relationship was not significant (see ) consistent with earlier findings suggesting the relatively smaller importance of exposure as a factor in adolescent media use ( Slater, Hayes, & Ford, 2007). In the absence of any direct effects, we did not further test hypothesis 3 that proposed exposure as mediator between individual difference variables and alcohol-related risk perceptions among adolescents.

Table 1

Hypothesis 2 proposed that attention to crime and emergency shows would predict alcohol-related risk perceptions after controlling for individual differences and exposure to such programming. To test the hypothesis, in a hierarchical regression model exogenous (age, gender) and other individual difference variables (academic performance, prior negative experience with alcohol, and sensation seeking) were added as a block. In the second step exposure to emergency and crime shows was added and in the third step attention was added. Hypothesis 2 was supported and attention to crime and emergency shows was predictive of the following alcohol related risk perceptions: Concern ( β = .184, p < .001), severity perceptions ( β = .213, p < .001), and perceptions of controllability ( β = .152, p < .05) regarding alcohol-related incidents after controlling for individual differences variables and exposure (see ).

Hypothesis 4 proposed attention to crime and emergency shows as a mediator between individual difference variables and adolescent's alcohol-related risk perceptions. Since we supported H2 and found that attention successfully predicted concern, perceived severity, and controllability regarding alcohol-related crashes, assaults, and other injury incidents, we conducted mediation analysis following Preacher and Hayes (2008), testing the significance of the indirect paths using bootstrapped distributions, to understand if attention was mediating the effect (or, in the absence of a direct effect, providing a path for an indirect effects) of exogenous variables on adolescents alcohol-related risk perceptions. We also report the mediation paths and the attenuation of direct effects with inclusion of the mediator per Baron and Kenny (1986).

In our analysis attention to crime and emergency shows partially mediated the effects of two variables, age and prior negative experience with alcohol, on adolescents' alcohol-related risk perceptions, as predicted. Attention did not mediate or provide an indirect path for effects of sensation-seeking or gender. Details regarding the significant effects follow.

In the Baron and Kenny (1986) mediation test, the relationship between the independent variable and the proposed mediator, and then between the mediator and dependent variable are assessed for significance. Then, the path between the independent variable and the dependent variable are compared to see the extent to which inclusion of the mediator attenuates that relationship. Finally, the significance of the indirect path from the independent variable through the mediator to the dependent variable is tested ( Preacher & Hayes, 2008).

Age significantly predicted concern about risks of alcohol use in the bivariate model ( β = −.237, p < .01). In the mediation model, age significantly predicted attention to crime and emergency shows use ( β = −.078, p < .05) and attention to the shows significantly predicted concern about risks of alcohol use ( β = .47, p < .001). The direct effect of age on concern after including the mediator was also significant ( β = −.200, p < .05) but attenuated (.237 compared to .200 or 16% weaker in the mediated than in the unmediated model) thus indicating partial mediation ( Baron & Kenny, 1986). The bootstrapped tests ( Preacher & Hayes, 2008) indicated that the indirect path was statistically significant, p < .05, providing inferential support for the claim of partial mediation.

Age predicted perceived severity of injuries and crashes due to alcohol use ( β = −.188, p < .001) in the bivariate model. In the mediation model, age predicted attention ( β = −.078, p < .05) and attention to the shows predicted perceived severity of alcohol-related injuries, assaults, and other crimes ( β = .231, p < .01). Direct effects of age on perceived severity of alcohol-related injuries remained significant when the mediator was included in the model ( β = −.168, p < .01) but the effects were attenuated and thus were indicative of partial mediation ( Baron & Kenny, 1986); per the bootstrapped tests, the indirect path was statistically significant, p < .05.

Attention to crime and emergency shows also partially mediated the effects of age on perceived alcohol-attributable fraction of crashes, assaults, and other injury incidents. Age significantly predicted alcohol-attributable fraction in the bivariate model ( β = −2.275, p < .001). In the mediation model age predicted attention to crime and emergency shows use ( β = −.078, p < .05) and attention to the shows significantly predicted perceived alcohol-attributable fraction ( β = 2.026, p < .05). Direct effects of age on perceived alcohol-attributable fraction of crashes, assaults, and other incidents related to alcohol remained significant when the mediator was included in the model ( β = −2.11, p < .01) but the effects were attenuated and thus were indicative of partial mediation ( Baron & Kenny, 1986); per the bootstrapped tests, the indirect path was statistically significant, p < .05.

There was a significant indirect effect of age through attention ( β = −.078, p < .05) to controllability ( β = .334, p = < .01) but no partial mediation was found. The direct effect of age on perceived controllability of alcohol-related crashes and injuries was not significant (p> .05). The indirect paths, however, were significant at p <. 05; this supports the existence of an indirect influence of age on perceived controllability through an effect of age on attention, but not mediation per se, as there was no direct effect to mediate.

Next we present the analyses that illustrate how attention mediated (or, in the absence of a direct effect, provided a path for an indirect effect) the effects of prior negative experience with alcohol on adolescents alcohol-related risk perceptions.

Prior negative experience with alcohol significantly predicted concern about risks of alcohol use ( β = .320, p < .05) absent the mediator. In the mediation model prior bad experience with alcohol predicted attention to crime and emergency shows ( β = .130, p < .05) and attention to the shows predicted concern about risks of alcohol use ( β = .491, p < .001). Direct effects of prior negative experience on concern regarding alcohol-related injuries remained significant after taking out the effect due to attention to these shows ( β = .256, p < .05). The attenuated effect was indicative of partial mediation ( Baron & Kenny, 1986); per the bootstrapped tests, the indirect path was statistically significant, p < .05.

Prior negative experience with alcohol predicted attention to crime and emergency shows ( β = .130, p < .05) and attention in turn predicted perceived severity of alcohol-related injuries ( β = .272, p < .001); perceived alcohol-attributable fraction of crashes and other incidents involving alcohol ( β = 2.223, p < .05); and perceived controllability of alcohol-related injuries ( β = .378, p = < .001). The direct effects on prior negative experience on these outcomes were not significant but the indirect paths via attention were significant at p < .05. Therefore, what influence prior negative experience had on these outcomes appear to be a result of increased attention to shows associated with such negative experience.

Discussion

In this study, we were able to support hypotheses related to attention to crime and emergency shows as a predictor of alcohol-related risk perceptions and as a mediator of the effects of various individual-difference variables. Specifically, the analyses indicated that a) attention to crime/emergency shows successfully predicted risk perceptions (concern, perceived severity, and control) involving alcohol-related assaults, crashes, and other injuries, b) attention to crime and emergency shows mediated or provided an indirect path for the impact of age and prior negative experience with alcohol on perceptions of concern, severity, and control regarding alcohol-related incidents.

We also found effects of individual difference variables on adolescents' alcohol-related risk perceptions. Increase in age led to more concern about alcohol-related crashes, assaults, and other incidents but the relationship reversed in terms of perceptions of severity and alcohol-attributable fraction. Perceptions of concern, severity, and alcohol-attributable fraction of incidents involving alcohol were greater for women than for men. These findings are supported by previous work on gender differences in risk perceptions that suggests that women are more risk averse than men in general and associate greater risks with alcohol use ( Gustafson, 1998; Spigner, Hawkins, Loren, 1993). Higher levels of sensation seeking predicted lower perceptions of alcohol-related risk, specifically concern and severity perceptions. This finding is also in line with the previous research that high sensation seekers are more likely to indulge in illicit drug use due to their inherent tendency to engage in risky activities ( Donohew et al., 1991). Prior negative experience with alcohol also increased people's risk perceptions regarding perceived concern and perceived alcohol-attributable fraction of alcohol-related crashes, assaults, and other injury incidents. In the next section we focus our attention to the findings regarding media use variables and impact on adolescents alcohol-related risk perceptions.

The findings regarding crime and emergency shows complement earlier work ( Slater, Hayes, & Ford, 2007) showing that attention to crime and accident news in part mediated effects of prior negative experience on adolescent risk perceptions, and suggest crime and emergency shows have effects in some ways comparable to the news with respect to risk perceptions. Prior findings regarding mediation of sensation-seeking's effect on risk judgments via attention to crime and accident news among adolescents did not replicate in the present context of entertainment dramas. A possible explanation is that sensation seeking-which was negatively related to attention to crime and accident news-may have had a paradoxical relationship with attention to crime and emergency shows. Persons higher in sensation seeking may on one hand be more attentive to the dramatic, exciting content of such shows, but on the other may be less attentive to the consequences shown than to the graphic elements of the drama.

We did not find significant effects of exposure predicting increased alcohol-related risk perceptions. This may be, as noted earlier, because youth may have less control over exposure to television programming than adults, as in many cases televisions are in common family locations and choice of programming may be negotiated with parents. On the other hand, many adolescents also have their own televisions ( Roberts et al., 2005); unfortunately, we did not have data on this in our data set. It may also be that many adolescent viewers multi-task with the television on ( Foehr, 2006; Roberts & Foehr, 2008); if so, only television content to which they are attentive is likely to impact beliefs and attitudes.

In one case we did find a significant negative coefficient for exposure, on perceived severity of injuries, contrasting with a stronger positive coefficient for attention on the same variable. Three possible explanations come to mind. One, of course, is sheer statistical anomaly. A second possibility is a control variable that inflates negative effects of exposure. This seems plausible given that a check of the zero-order correlation between perceptions of severity and exposure showed the bivariate relation to be non-significant. Still another possibility is a third-variable explanation of some kind. For example, youth who are more exposed to such programs may live in households in which they, their siblings, or their parents watch more television. If so, they may be exposed to more television violence in general, and regard the risks of alcohol-related injury to be relatively modest in comparison to the other injuries portrayed in the course of their viewing. Measures of overall household viewing were not available as controls to address this possible explanation. Fortunately, such influences are unlikely to confound effects of attention to a specific genre of narrative (crime and emergency shows), the locus of the effects studied here.

Attention to the storyline is one of the proposed mechanisms in narrative transportation and narrative effect ( Green & Brock, 2000). Most entertainment narratives are purposively selected and attended to by individuals relatively interested in and motivated to view the narrative genre ( Knobloch, 2003; Zillmann, 1988). What remains to be explored from a theoretical vantage point, however, are the reasons for variability in attention (i.e., the individual differences that predict and are mediated by attention) and the distinctive implications of differing influences on attention. After all, attention is itself not necessarily monolithic; the nature of what is focused upon in the narrative may vary in substantively important ways.

Recently there has been renewed interest in factors of attention that lead up to and sustain attention during the viewing of a particular entertainment program (rather than television viewing in general), and, a clearer theoretical conceptualization of the concept of attention ( Anderson & Kirkorian, 2006). For example, it would be of interest to more closely study the impact of such entertainment programs on persons who have had personal or secondhand experiences with health or safety consequences of the behaviors shown, and who are consequently more likely to be emotionally involved with the storylines (see Anderson & Kirkorian, 2006). How do such persons respond to these portrayals-with increased anxiety, with feelings of satisfaction regarding successful dramatic resolution of these situations which resonate with their own lives, with greater motivation to avoid such risks for themselves or people close to them? Similarly, it would be of interest to understand the nature of the age differences in attention and implications for the effects of these shows.

Another potential source of variation in attention and subsequent effects would be the specific content of a given crime or emergency service narrative, as previous research has demonstrated that program content could impact the levels of attention of viewers ( Anderson, Huston, Schmitt, Linebarger, Wright, 2001). This study assesses such narratives in the broadest way possible, providing a very conservative test. It is probable that specific types of narrative, of portrayals of consequences for victims, perpetrators, and their families and friends, would significantly impact both the nature of attention and the degree of impact of such narratives on concern and risk perceptions. Moreover affective elements inherent in this genre of television programming ( Bryant & Miron, 2002) could also produce varying levels of attention and emotional involvement in the narrative ( Green & Brock, 2000) which could have implications on the degree of risks perceived by the viewers regarding alcohol-related incidents.

We also suggest that future research investigates crime shows and emergency shows separately to assess their effects on viewers alcohol-related risk perception, something that we did not do in the present study, and which might confound the results. Since we did not treat these two genres separately, we have no way of assessing if there are gender differences in risk perceptions based on different content in these shows. Likewise, it is possible there may be age or sensation-seeking differences in responses to crime versus medical dramas. Moreover, it is possible that the two types of program may portray alcohol use and alcohol consequences in distinctive ways.

The other main limitations associated with this research are the use of self-report measures to report alcohol use, risk perceptions regarding alcohol, and media use, a rather generic item to assess attention to relevant media content, and the use of a cross-sectional data set which makes assertions about causality at best tentative. However reporting of risk perceptions and media use do not inherently contain obvious social desirability bias and thus self-report of these data should not skew the results. The use of our rather generic attention item is likely to reduce rather than inflate effects associated with attention, relative to more involved, multi-dimensional measurement schemes. Moreover, the cross-sectional associations certainly are unambiguous with respect to the overall positive valence of associations. It seems plausible to suggest that the relationship between risk perceptions and attention to such programming may flow in both directions, with attentive viewing of crime and emergency shows increasing perceived risks, and increased risk perceptions about assault and injury leading to greater attention to crime and emergency programming, providing mutual reinforcement over time ( Slater, 2007). Longitudinal data would be required to explore more closely the dynamics of this causal flow, and experimental research would be needed to assess the possible mechanisms (e.g., accessibility of exemplars, as noted earlier) underlying such effects.

These results clearly indicate that entertainment programming may incidentally influence health-related beliefs and risk perceptions among adolescents. In so doing, this study bridges research showing the potential of narrative communication to intentionally influence health beliefs and behavior in a positive way (see Kreuter et al., 2007; Singhal & Rogers, 1999; Slater & Rouner, 2002), and research showing negative incidental influences of television and movie narratives (e.g., Dalton et al., 2003). In the case of crime/emergency shows and alcohol injury risk perceptions, this incidental influence of narrative entertainment messages, it appears, can be a pro-social one.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grant AA10377 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to the first author.

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teens' Attention to Crime and Emergency Programs on Television as a Predictor and Mediator of Increased Risk Perceptions Regarding Alcohol-Related Injuries

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This study examined the hypotheses that media exposure and attention would predict, and partially mediate, the effects of various individual-difference variables on alcohol-related risk perceptions among teen viewers of crime and emergency (e.g. medical drama) shows on television.

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"Television has started becoming a major source where modeling and shaping of behavior is taking place."

Source: Video
Publisher: Indira Gandhi National Open University
Value: Offers several scientific perspectives, focuses on children and early development of violence

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Ch-26 State Open Universities programs [IGNOU]

# data[].attributes.headline
How social media is changing the way people commit crimes

# data[].attributes.subject
How social media is changing the way people commit crimes

# data[].attributes.body
"In this new social media reality the public not only follows crime and justice, but participates and adds their own performances, the most noticeable being performance crimes."

Source Type: Article
Author: Ray Surette
Value: discusses social media and the impact on the criminal behavior in younger individuals, presents compelling case studies, focuses on a different type of criminal behavior - "performance crimes"

# data[].attributes.body
"In other words, traffickers are more prone to be “copycats” than to be “triggered” into violence by the media."

Source Type: Study
Author: Viridian Rios
Value: creates an in-depth study, discusses statistics related to crime and media, offers varying perspectives on how media influences criminal behavior (and vice versa), explains how multiple factors may impact criminal behavior

# data[].attributes.body
"On the whole, the researchers did not find any connection between watching forensic dramas and the ability to successfully avoid detection after committing a crime."

Source Type: Study
Author: Andreas Baranowski
Value: creates a legitimate study to test the psychological impact of television on specific criminal behavior

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Psychological study finds no link between exposure to popular forensic science dramas and the ability to conceal a crime

7 December 2017

Does watching the work of fictional forensic investigators on TV influence viewers? There is a belief that this is the case and that the consequences of people watching shows such as the American crime drama television series "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" are filtering through into real life, a phenomenon that has been called the CSI effect. In the worst case, it is feared, potential criminals will learn how to better conceal a crime from these shows. In addition, concerns have been expressed that members of U.S. juries may now have excessive expectations regarding the evidence and as a result are more likely to acquit the accused. A team of psychologists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz working under Professor Heiko Hecht have now sounded the all-clear-at least in one respect. In an experimental study, the German researchers have been able to find no evidence of a correlation between watching forensic science TV shows and the ability to get away with committing a crime. This is the first study to look at the question of whether criminals could profit from viewing dramas of this sort.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is a popular U.S. TV series which first hit the small screen in its home country in 2000. It focuses on the characters and the work of a team of forensic crime scene investigators. The effect named for this series was soon applied to any repercussions that it was held such widely-viewed crime shows had with regard to the general public-including criminals, the police, and potential students of forensic medicine. "Over many years, it was presumed that certain links in this regard exist, although there were no appropriate studies to prove this," said Dr. Andreas Baranowski. He and his colleagues at Mainz University have now undertaken four separate investigations of related claims with the aim of obtaining the most reliable possible findings.

As a first step, the psychologists took a look at statistics from the databases of the FBI and its German equivalent, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), and compared the crime detection rates during the years preceding the launch of the CSI series with the subsequent rates. Then they asked 24 convicted criminals in prisons for their opinions on series such as CSI and whether they thought such shows could help when it came to escaping prosecution. Thirdly, the researchers put together a complex experimental design to find out whether viewers of TV shows like CSI would, as trial subjects, actually be better equipped to erase the traces of an, in this case, mock crime. Baranowski and his colleagues completed their series of trials in the form of a fourth test, in which a crime was re-enacted with the help of a doll's house.

No CSI learning effect for criminals

On the whole, the researchers did not find any connection between watching forensic dramas and the ability to successfully avoid detection after committing a crime. However, the male subjects in the fourth part of the experiment performed better than female subjects, and younger subjects better than older subjects while more highly educated subjects did better than less well educated study subjects. Study subjects working in technical professions, primarily men, appear to have certain advantages when it comes to concealing crimes.

Baranowski pointed out it had already been postulated in the past that something like the CSI effect could exist. Starting with Sherlock Holmes and continuing as police procedurals, such as Quincy and Law & Order, appeared on TV, warning voices made themselves heard that the wrong kind of people could benefit from the insights provided. "Every time something new emerges there are people who focus in one aspect and without a full and proper consideration sense possible risks and thus call for bans." The findings in this context can be said to pour cold water on attitudes like this. "We can now dispel certain of the myths that have been coursing through the media and other publications for the past 20 years because we are able to state with relative certainty that people who watch CSI are no better at covering their tracks than other people."

Dr. Andreas Baranowski supervised the study, "The CSI-education effect: Do potential criminals benefit from forensic TV series?," at the Division of General Experimental Psychology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and works as a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at Giessen University.

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The CSI effect: Watching TV crime shows does not make better criminals

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
7 December 2017 Does watching the work of fictional forensic investigators on TV influence viewers? There is a belief that this is the case and that the consequences of people watching shows such as the American crime drama television series "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" are filtering through into real life, a phenomenon that has been called the CSI effect.