We analyze three aspects of media depictions of Hurricane Katrina, focusing on the relationship between race and coverage of the crisis. Examination of media language use explores the debate surrounding the terms “refugees” and “evacuees”— as well as descriptions of “looting” versus “finding food”—in light of the predominantly Black demographic of the survivors in New Orleans. Assessment of the...

OBJECTIVE To determine if brief primary care interventions can affect children's media viewing habits and exposure to violence. METHODS English- and Spanish-speaking parents of 2- to 12-year-old children presenting to a pediatric primary care clinic participated in a randomized controlled trial. There were 2 intervention groups; one group viewed 5 minutes from the Play Nicely program and anot...

This study examined the links between desensitization to violent media stimuli and habitual media violence exposure as a predictor and aggressive cognitions and behavior as outcome variables. Two weeks after completing measures of habitual media violence exposure, trait aggression, trait arousability, and normative beliefs about aggression, undergraduates (N = 303) saw a violent film clip and a...

BACKGROUND Terrorist attacks have been shown to precipitate posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology in children and adolescents, particularly among youths with high exposure to media coverage surrounding such events. Media exposure may be particularly likely to trigger PTSD symptoms in youths with high physiological reactivity to stress or with prior psychopathology or exposure to v...

Media portraying violence is part of daily exposures. The extent to which violent media exposure impacts brain and behavior has been debated. Yet there is not enough experimental data to inform this debate. We hypothesize that reaction to violent media is critically dependent on personality/trait differences between viewers, where those with the propensity for physical assault will respond to t...

London 2003 Video games have become one of the dominant entertainment media for children in a very short time. In the mid-1980s, children averaged about four hours a week playing video games, including time spent playing at home and in arcades (Harris & 'Williams, 1985). By the early 1990s, home video game use had increased and arcade play had decreased. The average amount was still fairly low,...

INTRODUCTION American's history of exposure to violent media has spanned more than a century, from the film The Great Train Robbery to the television show "Dragnet" to the video game Far Cry 2. Through films, television shows, music, and video games, people in all modern societies consume violent entertainment media on a regular basis. There is also a long history of concern that exposure to vi...

It is commonly assumed that sex and violence sell. However, we predicted that sex and violence would have the opposite effect. We based our predictions on the evolution and emotional arousal theoretical framework, which states that people are evolutionarily predisposed to attend to emotionally arousing cues such as sex and violence. Thus, sexual and violent cues demand more cognitive resources ...