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Violence in the Media Does Not Contribute to the Violence in the Society

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This essay aims to discuss whether violence in media contributes to the violence in the society. The essay will first define who the society is and what constitutes as violence in both the media and in society. It will then discuss audience reception studies and the uses and gratifications theory as to how the audiences receive the media and what they do with it. With evidence from supporting articles and a survey done, this essay will argue that violence in the media does not contribute to the violence in society. Violence is constituted as the physical act towards other people and aggression is described as the malevolent act intended to cause pain unto someone else (Straus & Gelles, 1976). These two terms are used interchangeably. In many circumstances and societies violence can be viewed as keeping the peace or as war heroism (Branston, 1999: 409). In the article researched, the researchers classified the violent acts as follows: assault or physical fights resulting in injury, robbery or threats to injure someone or weapons used to commit a crime and any aggressive acts against another person (Johnson, Cohen, Smailes, Kasen and Brook, 2002). Society is described as the people living in a community, country or the world. These people “[are] bound[ed] together by personal, traditional and communal ties” (Williams, 2001: 25) and there is a sense of camaraderie. These are the audiences who read, watch and listen to what is produced by the media. They are classified as

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