Term Paper on "Does Viewing Television Violence Increase a Child's Aggression?"

Term Paper 4 pages (1369 words) Sources: 3

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Television and Aggression in Children

Does viewing violence on television increase a child's aggression? This paper reviews and reports on two points-of-view on the subject. This paper also takes a position on the issues at hand once a thorough thrashing out of the two writers' points-of-view are portrayed.

The controversy discussed in the two articles surrounds the issue of violence in television and particularly violence that may or may not influence children and young people to be more aggressive towards others in their lives.

Brian Siano's position -- his reasoning and analysis: One side, represented by Brian Siano, reflects the view that there is not enough evidence out there to prove that children are indeed influenced by violent television shows. Siano uses the example of former U.S. Senator Paul Simon from Illinois, who tried to get legislation passed to curtail TV networks' showing of violent cartoons and other programs. Siano derides Simon for giving the TV networks an antitrust exemption during the Reagan era, and he also criticizes the U.S. Senate for not holding the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) feet to the fire: the FCC had handed out a new ruling saying media corporations can own up to 12 radio stations and 12 TV stations (up from 7 and 7 previously).

In that strategy, Siano puts the onus on the establishment for its failures to come to terms with the problem. He effectively changes the tone of the argument on page 128 in that effort.

Siano cleverly and cryptically uses sarcasm in his arguments -- and not a lot of specific evidence -- to make his points. For example, in deriding those who worry about the effect violence has on kids, he uses the "elitist" card too. His position is that certain "snobbish attitudes" are gaining control of the argument; those snobs he alludes to want high-tone authors like James Joyce to have free speech but not TV because it's not as culturally valuable.

Also, he makes a spectacularly unfair generalization by stereotyping those who would like to have TV tone down the violence as wanting everyone to read Shakespeare rather than watching Bevis and Butt-head. Frequent use of sprawling generalizations harms his credibility, even though he makes some good points. "The bulk of the evidence" he writes (129), that supposedly links violence in children to TV is one research project by Leonard Eron. In truth, there were many more research reports available at that time but Siano chose the one that was the most vulnerable. He uses the word "pernicious" more than once, more tongue-in-cheek than not. Yes he admits, there are examples of kids becoming wildly violent and irrational based on TV, but his narrative too often comes off as a high school student's opinion column, all smoke and mirrors, a lot of thunder but no rain.

Brandon Centerwall's position - his reasoning and analysis: As for Centerwall, he is not as cryptic or sarcastic in making his points; after all, why would he be? Siano's job was to attack the credibility of Centerwall's case and Centerwall's task was to build credibility into his argument. Indeed Centerwall does provide far more research examples than Siano. To read Siano you'd think there were no worthy empirical research studies available. But Centerwall offers the results of at least five research projects -- though not all are necessarily thoroughly believable -- and brings in factors such as economic growth, civil unrest, Apartheid in South Africa among other specific examples to try and make his case. He is trying to show his argument is based on sociology and research that embraces issues across the oceans to other continents.

That said, Centerwall also offers generalizations that are simply not backed up and in fact may be untrue. For example, he asserts that "serious violence" erupts (for adults) during stressful moments and adults will, in those moments, revert to their early "most visceral sense"…that will mostly come from their previous television experiences (118). Really? Where is the evidence for that assertion? Is Centerwall making this up out of whole cloth? In his attempt to prove that television brings… READ MORE

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