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Purpose – This chapter maps the conceptual territory that research on school shootings shares with cultivation analysis.

Methodology/approach – It outlines the history of cultivation analysis, which used the statistical methods of content analysis and survey research to argue that television violence was rampant and sexist, and that this had the effect of making audiences fearful. The point of this history is to show that the model was conceptually grounded in critical approaches to media, and established questions about the ideology of media violence that set the grounds for school shooting studies.

Findings – In particular, the chapter focuses on similarities between cultivation analysis and ritual theory, and the cultivation thesis that violence represents gender hierarchies, as the two most obvious points of intersections with studies on school shootings. It suggests that these intersections help explain why a “school shooting” frame was deployed to other sorts of media violence, and debates about the effects of media violence, using Jared Loughner's attack on Gabrielle Giffords as a case study.

Practical implications – Emerging concerns about the effects of aggressive news punditry and political commentary can be addressed by reflecting on what studies of school shootings say about the more general politics of media violence, and cultivation theory is an invaluable resource in this endeavor.

Originality/value of paper – Academically, an engagement with cultivation theory underlines how school shooting studies contribute to critical media research in general, by demonstrating the validity of “second generation” models of media influence in the digital age.

This study aims to uncover in-depth examples of how emergent media affects parents’ views and socialization efforts. The study examines these views and efforts in the context of violent commercials.

The authors collected data for this paper using two studies. In Study 1, they collected data from the internet. Comments related to “violent ads” or “violent commercials” were collated and analyzed. For Study 2, they conducted in-depth interviews with mothers on their views on parental mediation and impact of media on their children.

The internet data helped develop a parental definition of violent ads and identify that parents lie on a continuum regarding their concerns about violent commercials. Further in-depth questioning of parents on the above finding led to the identification of four clusters of parents. “Media managers” attempt to control and restrict their child’s media environment while educating their child about the effects of violent commercials. “Enablers” spend abundant time co-viewing primetime TV while engaging their child in conversations on violence, but not on violent ads. To maintain harmony in the household, “Harmonizers” merely restrict viewing of violent commercials without educating their child about its effects. Finally, “Agent evaluators” are likely to co-view violent commercials, without discussing them with their child.

First, several of the parental segments (media managers, enablers and harmonizers) tend to note some concerns with violence in advertising. Importantly, this concern for violence appears to be limited to gore and use of physical weapon. Second, while parents do not have homogenous views on violent ads, those who are concerned also have differing roots of concern. This influences their mediation efforts. Third, socialization is bi-directional at times.

Many parents do not approve are the use of physical violence, use of weapons and depiction of blood/gore even in ads for movies or videogames. Advertisers might be wise to avoid such content in ads directed to children. Second, if media and marketing managers could plan to sponsor TV shows (vs placing violent ads) that offer ad-free program time, parents might respond positively. Third, as socialization is bi-directional, advertisers could consider using ad scenarios where parents and children engage with the pros and cons of a certain product or content, thus enabling parent-child conversations to make an informed decision.

Many parents notice violence in ads; policymakers could consider developing ratings for ads that consider the amount and type of violence while rating an ad. Second, a focus on increasing parental awareness on the harms of constantly exposing children to violent commercials might change the views of some parents who currently believe that a few or no violent commercials are being aired during children’s programs. Finally, parents envisage a greater role for media in their lives, and policymakers will have to suggest ways to effectively integrate media content in one’s lives rather than just suggest bans or restrictions.

The contributions of this paper include viewers’ (vs researchers’) definition of violent commercials, showcasing that parents are likely to manage media using new media options such as Netflix, and some parents are likely to co-create rules with their children.

Purpose: Media violence theorists made five methodological errors, which have muddled theory construction. As such, the validity of the claim that media violence must share blame for a rise in aggression in society is suspect.

Approach: Here, the authors explain those five errors: (1) Subclinical psychopathologies interact with media messages in detectable ways. Media violence researchers never paid attention to the composition of their participant samples. Consequently, they were never aware of the inherent vulnerabilities, or immunities, to media violence of their participants. (2) Media violence researchers used convenience samples when they should have used random samples to study media violence. The nature of the research questions they were asking required the use of random samples. But, with the use of convenience samples, those samples never matched the populations they were designed to examine. (3) Media violence researchers used expansive variable lists that probably triggered family-wise interaction effects, thus reporting interactions between independent and dependent variables that were meaningless. (4) Most media violence data are correlational. So, researchers used converged data from correlational studies to infer causation. But their convergence procedures were improperly executed, which led to incorrect interpretations. (5) Media violence researchers, from the outset of their work in the 1980s, pathologized media violence first, then set about trying to find out how it presumably harmed society. Those researchers should have considered the idea that media violence is nothing more than mere entertainment for most people.

Value: In addition to questioning the claims made by media violence researchers, these five errors serve as a cautionary tale to social media researchers. Scholars investigating the effects of social media use might consider the possibility that social media are nothing more than new modes of communication.

This review collates the empirical evidence on the behavioural effects of media violence. It assesses the content of different forms of media to which patients in secure services could be exposed. Numerous explanations for behaving aggressively are examined, using a variety of theoretical backgrounds. The effect of viewing different forms of violence on individuals' behaviour is also examined. The review includes positive influences of exposure to media violence, though the main findings are that exposure to aggressive and violent material increases aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviour. The review presents research on violence depicted in films, video games, comic books and song lyrics, and assesses its impact on aggressive and inappropriate behaviour; it also addresses exposure to weapons. We conclude by outlining how this research could influence policy on the resources made available to forensic populations, advocating assessment of the suitability of presenting a particular piece of media violence to the individual rather than a whole population, and the possibility that individual responses to media violence can be a useful assessment tool.

Introduction: Media representation of intimate partner violence (IPV) can influence public opinion and understanding of the phenomena and guide health policies. The current review has the aim to explore and discuss international, scientific literature focused on the portrayal of IPV in written forms of news media.

Method: Searching through EBSCO and PubMed, 2,435 studies were found and 41 were included in the current review.

Results: Bias in the portrayal of IPV was found within the studies included. While IPV-related news was mainly focused on male-perpetrated violence within heterosexual couples, little attention was paid to same-sex intimate partner violence (SSIPV). Newsworthy stories dominate IPV reporting within news media and a sensationalistic style was often employed. Furthermore, contextual information was often limited and the adoption of a thematic frame was rare, while news media were found to commonly employ an episodic frame. Official sources and family, friends and neighbours were the most quoted sources in news articles, while IPV experts were rarely drawn on for information. Regarding media representation of perpetrators, mainly regarding male abusers, news articles reported several reasons behind the violence with the consequence to justify and exonerate them from their responsibilities. Female perpetrators were found to be depicted, in some cases, as ‘mad’ or ‘bad’ people. Finally, victim-blaming content emerged within many of the articles included.

Conclusion: Bias in the media representation of IPV emerged in the current review, which needs to be addressed to positively influence public opinion and to promote an adequate understanding of the phenomena.

Purpose – This chapter examines the role of the media, guns, and violence in the social construction of masculinity in today's mediatized American culture.

Methodology – The chapter draws on critical theory and cultural studies to address crises of masculinity and school shootings. It applies and further develops Guy Debord's (1970) theory on spectacle in the contexts of contemporary violent media spectacles.

Findings – In the chapter it is argued that school shooters, and other indiscriminate gun killers, share male rage and attempts to resolve crises of masculinity through violent behavior; exhibit a fetishism of guns or weapons; and resolve their crises through violence orchestrated as a media spectacle. This demands growing awareness of mediatization of American gun culture, and calls for a need for more developed understanding of media pedagogy as a means to create cultural skills of media literacy, as well as arguing for more rational gun control and mental health care.

Originality/value of paper – The chapter contributes to the contemporary debate on mediatization of violence by discussing it within critical theory and cultural studies. The theoretical framework is applied to analysis of a range of different empirical cases ranging from school shootings to the Colorado movie theater massacre at the first night of the latest Batman movie in the summer of 2012.

This book contributes to the current academic discussion on school shootings by analysing this contemporary phenomenon in a broader context of media saturation in contemporary social and cultural life. We argue that in order to understand school shootings as a cultural and sociological phenomenon, we need to analyse this type of public violence from a variety of academic perspectives. By drawing on a range of empirical analyses of different school shooting incidents in the United States, Germany, Finland, and Canada, the authors in this volume demonstrate the diverse ways in which the media and school shootings are connected in contemporary society. Numerous frameworks are applied in these original analyses, including media violence, journalism, visual culture, and social networking. Our shared goal is to understand the complex interplay between media, society and school shootings, and certainly how this interaction is carried out in a range of cultural and societal contexts and settings.

In the contemporary media landscape, gender violence has achieved great visibility. However, the media still struggle to represent the complexity of violence perpetrated by men against women in its various forms – femicide, domestic violence (DV), intimate partner violence and violence against women. The narratives that represent such violence as an expression of individual deviance or as a crime of passion are still the most widespread both in fictional and factual products. This chapter will look at a case study by applying a multiperspective methodology of femicide and DV in an Italian town. In particular, the exemplary case study presented here was constructed by analysing newspaper articles, social networks and one television broadcast. The first part of the chapter is dedicated to the analysis of literature on femicide, DV and gender violence in relation to studies and research on media coverage, with particular reference to Italian studies. The second part presents the methodology applied in the research. The third part presents the outcomes regarding the analysis of the narrative, highlighting the frames that characterise it. Finally, the fourth part shows the conclusion that can be derived.

This review aims to examine how aggression is portrayed in the media and how it can influence behavior and attitudes regarding aggression.

The authors reviewed the relevant literature and examined both physical and relational forms of aggression in multiple media forms (television, film, video games, music, books).

Across media types, evidence is found that both physical and relational aggression are portrayed frequently and in ways that may contribute to subsequent aggression. Furthermore, though there are studies finding no effect of exposure to media aggression, evidence is found that watching physical and relational aggression in the media can contribute to aggressive behavior. Prominent media aggression theories are reviewed and some of these theories are applied to relational aggression media effects.

Researchers should no longer ignore relational aggression in terms of the media, in terms of content and associations with aggressive behavior. Researchers should also focus on understudied media forms, such as music and books.

Policy makers should take careful note of the research on media and aggression when deciding on public policy and clinicians should inquire about media habits when clients show problematic aggressive behavior (physical or relational).

This paper is a valuable source of information regarding current research on media and aggression. Unlike other reviews, it focuses on multiple types of aggression (physical and relational) and multiple media types (TV, movies, video games, music, and books).