The extend of Media's effects on human behaviour?

[Eclipze]

Came across this video on youtube. Near the end of the video, we have a Gender Studies Club member talk about how "indecent" manga/porn encourages sex crimes in Japan, which reminded me of the whole "violent video games makes people violent/engage in acts of violence" argument that people brought up in the past (and still argue about).

My opinion:
Media (games, pictures/drawings, RL movies, animation) can affect people's behavior, but only on people in certain conditions, and only to certain extends.

I believe that people who are mentally ill, and people in highly emotional states are more susceptible to media influence than the average person. A common example here would be a person who just found out that his/her spouse is cheating on him/her, comes across a violent and graphic murder scene in a movie, which influences the person to murder said cheating spouse. Problem here, however, is that absolutes don't really exists when explaining human behavior (which also means that even regular people can be influence by media). What if the person who murdered the spouse would not have done so had it been a slightly less violent scene (hence restricting the claim of influence to the level of violence shown)? What if the mere death scene of a man via traffic accident, which leads to a monologue revealing that he the protagonist's husband who was cheating on her, invoked the urge to lead the viewer's spouse to death/murder due to similarities in the situation?

Even if a person were to be influence by a certain act depicted in media, that does not mean that he/she would replicate the act all the time. People unconsciously pick and choose what they wish to act out. For example, in American Psycho:

Spoiler for American Psycho:

Bateman killed Paul Allen due to jealousy with regards to his own inability to place a reservation at Dorsia, which Paul had accomplished.

If a viewer watches that scene and the only thing they got out of it was that killing someone by hacking at them with axe produces a bloody mess, while other viewers take away something different from the same scene of violence and that eventually some would be influenced to acting out the violence on people they dislike, does that fault lie not with the media, but with the person (and his/her state of mind, emotions, etc) instead?

Then comes the bigger question. Would this be any different if we were to replace media with a real life act (witnessing someone punching a man, animals hunting and eating one another), just about any objects usable as tools for violence (guns, knifes, chainsaw, bows, a stone, etc), or even natural disasters? Should we ban/censor all of the above to prevent negative influence leading to murder/rape/cannibalism etc?

The concept on censoring media (of any kind, minus forced acts like Child Pornography and actual rape) to even adults, in order to prevent acts of violence just seems silly at the moment.

[Tsuyoshi]

How people are affected by what they see in movies, TV, etc varies quite largely from person to person. A lot of it depends on their environment, what kind of life they have, the people around them and most importantly, their own state of mind. Taking your example of American Psycho, for instance (funny because I was actually thinking of that movie as I read the first part of your post ), Bateman did not have many friends to speak of. He only had work partners and acquaintances. You couldn't truly consider them as his friends. He viewed them as people he had to see from day to day rather than people he liked to see. He was alone, and wanted to be alone. Someone like that is more likely to grab an axe and kill someone out of jealousy than someone who sees other people as friends instead of working partners. That depends on both the person in question and how the people around him behave with respect to the person.

That is just one of many examples. The media can give you ideas, it can inspire you to do certain things and drive you to imitate what you see. However, how much influence it has depends on how lucid each member of the audience is. It's also a matter of whether some people feel the need to do such things. But the main point is that the environment the people are in is what decides how influential the media is. That being said, I would say that a person's lifestyle is a more important factor than the media. A lot of people play shooter games for instance, but not even 5% of all those people around the world go around carrying guns. Games can sometimes even have a positive influence. For example, someone who plays a lot of fighting games can be encouraged to learn martial arts instead of going around randomly beating up people.

[Lost Cause]

This reminds of the time when some child protection group decided that there was to much violence in kids cartoons,like when Wil E. Coyote would drop an anvil on Roadrunner and such. They said it promoted violence in kids, AS IF! I grew up with these cartoons and never once dropped an anvil on anybody, swear!
No if anything the media today actually promotes violence and hypes it! Look at how it blew the war in Iraq all out of proportion or how it sensationalizes street violence like robbery,rape,shootings and such. Is it any wonder where the mentally ill or the violently insane might get ideas? It's even been said that terrorists watch t.v. news to asertain high value targets!
So yeah I'm definetly in favor of censoring the media.

[yoropa]

I thought it was universal knowledge that the media affects human behavior at an unprecedented level. Therefore when the media says something historically wrong to sell a preconceived narrative, and constantly repeats said narrative, its viewers, millions, will believe that without considering the other side of the story.

For example, recently one program stated that Richard Reid was American, as opposed to the underwear bomber who was Nigerian. This is incorrect, Richard Reid was British. But, said program wrote him as American to sell a narrative that terrorists should not be tried in America, unless they are Americans. This was in order to negate the possibility of trying not only the Nigerian man, but also those kept in Guantanamo Bay, in a US court. You should be able to see clearly the impact that the media has had on the American psyche alone.

In terms of censorship, the news media already is horrendously censored and refuses to show war scenes from a civilian perspective due to the horrific amount of blood and gore present in some scenes. As such, the American people are not getting a complete image on what war means, and therefore don't view it as such a terrible thing. If anything, the media needs to be less censored, and needs to show the complete picture, start to finish.

So yes, the media, especially news media, has an enormous impact on us humans.

[Vexx]

how "indecent" manga/porn encourages sex crimes in Japan

The very BASIS of their "talk" has essentially zero correlation to fact/science/reality. What is their excuse for sex crimes prior to the existence of those entertainment genre? Have they provided any statistical data to show these crimes have increased? I doubt it since measured rates have decreased even with increased reporting of attacks.

Bah.... assertions based on emotional irrationality or "they don't like it" or "its disgusting" are basically worthless.

[yoropa]

Actually Japan's rape rates have decreased over the years due to less censorship.

http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/ar...mes-japan.html

Data on the actual number of reported sex crimes in Japan are from the files of Roposensho, the Japanese National Police Agency (J.N.P.A.). This agency is somewhat comparable to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States. The J.N.P.A. has been maintaining crime statistics for Japan since 1948. Basically yearly reports from all 47 Japanese prefectures including Okinawa are collated. These official crime records are based on reports from independent police investigations. During the period under review there has been no known change in the method of collecting and recording of data.

...

Within Japan itself, the dramatic increase in available pornography and sexually explicit materials is apparent to even a casual observer. This is concomitant with a general liberalization of restrictions on other sexual outlets as well. Also readily apparent from the information presented is that, over this period of change, sex crimes in every category, from rape to public indecency, sexual offenses from both ends of the criminal spectrum, significantly decreased in incidence.

Most significantly, despite the wide increase in availability of pornography to children, not only was there a decrease in sex crimes with juveniles as victims but the number of juvenile offenders also decreased significantly.

So this "indecent manga/porn" stuff actually is decreasing the crime rate in Japan. Then again this is a document from 1999, and I don't have stats for the decade after.

[Terrestrial Dream]

Originally Posted by Vexx

The very BASIS of their "talk" has essentially zero correlation to fact/science/reality. What is their excuse for sex crimes prior to the existence of those entertainment genre? Have they provided any statistical data to show these crimes have increased? I doubt it since measured rates have decreased even with increased reporting of attacks.

Bah.... assertions based on emotional irrationality or "they don't like it" or "its disgusting" are basically worthless.

Well it didn't the only result but encourages it, which probably is true. I have heard few rape cases in Korea in schools, those students raped a girl and were supposedly imitating stuff they saw on internet.

The answer to this question is simple, media do have effect on kids. But blaming solely on media is just retarded, instead of censorship parents should do better job teaching kids.

[Eclipze]

Originally Posted by Vexx

The very BASIS of their "talk" has essentially zero correlation to fact/science/reality. What is their excuse for sex crimes prior to the existence of those entertainment genre? Have they provided any statistical data to show these crimes have increased? I doubt it since measured rates have decreased even with increased reporting of attacks.

Bah.... assertions based on emotional irrationality or "they don't like it" or "its disgusting" are basically worthless.

That's the main issue, honestly. Had said claim be made along side wide-scale research that proves said claim, it wouldn't have been that big of an issue (but still open to debate). Right now people are just pushing for law changes in favor of their tastes. I don't like violence in media, therefore violent media should be banned! Because um...it encourages violence! yea!

---------------------------------------------
Also, I should have made this distinction earlier. The "media" I am referring to are works of fiction (games, pictures/drawings, RL movies, animation, as stated on the first post. Lets not forget music, too). News media is a fairly different beast, due to the restriction caused by political factors, and its general purpose (information/propaganda rather than entertainment).

Comparison via crime statistics doesn't really work out that well, because there isn't an assurance of accuracy for each and every crime reported. Reported rape cases in the USA, for example, has 25% conviction rate (this was what I've read from one of the comments on other websites, so I don't really have a source to back it up). Then you have the shame culture in Japan (and most Asian countries) which would *imply* that actually number of rapes that happen in Japan is much higher than the statistics given (example being the video I linked in the first post on the so called "rape club").

But how do we determine where *entertainment media* comes into play as far as influence goes? Ban/censor all violent movies/games/comics/music? This doesn't stop a person from chancing upon hunting/killing done by animals, which too can influence people of a certain state of mind to perform acts of violence as well - so where do we draw the line here?

Christopher Handley sentenced to 6 months for obscene manga sets a bad precedence for future cases. Lets not forget the man who was registered a sex offender for possessing The Simpsons porn.

[C.A.]

There was this research done on a tribe which has access to a satellite TV and Western media.

Traditionally they view fat women as beautiful. But after 10 years of exposure to Western media, the girls for the first time thought of dieting to make themselves slimmer and more 'beautiful'. Thousands of years of tradition have been turned over by just 10 years of TV.

Everyone with access to media is affected by media. The media controls the society and the ones behind the media are the artists and designers.

It doesn't matter whether you like or dislike what you're seeing on TV, radio, advertisements, magazines, books, comics etc., it affects you in one way or another. Even if you don't watch TV, the clothes you're wearing is a result of fashion and media. Even if you don't like the clothes you wear, you are still part of fashion and media.

Conservative thinking and taboos have diluted over the years because the media had been exposing the public over such issues for years. The media causes change in the society as a whole, as long as you're not isolated from society, you are affected by it.

[Kafriel]

Information is everyone's favorite dish, so people do take into account whatever is thrown at them; whether they integrate these changes to their own opinion or just see it as something that others would accept, is a personal choice (there's always "cynicals" and "eccentrics" who simply don't follow the changes, and thus are seen as such).

[Lost Cause]

Now that I "get it" I would like to say that I am in favor of less censorship on that kind of media!
Here in the US we are still bombarded with 1950's ideals and beliefs. Despite the sexual revolution of the 60s and the radical free thinking of the 70s, we still believe in not talking to our kids about sex,turning a blind eye toward violence,and not getting involved in local problems yet constantly complaining about them! It's the American way!:€ which is why we have a homeless problem here,no jobs,and a gov't that is only concerned with keeping up appearences and flexing their muscles abroad. It's how/why 9-11 happened.
We are kept in the dark because they know better and have our best interests at heart ,YEAH,RIGHT!! Living on a military base I sometimes see our young men and women coming back from Iraq and Afganistan,most of them in high spirits or just happy to be home. But the ones that tug at my heartstrings are the ones who come off the plane or ship broken,or missing limbs and yet they are just so full of pride that they did their job! So yeah let's take the blinders off and see things how they should be seen!

[MeoTwister5]

I'm sure all of you realize the irony of Japan's relatively low sex crime incidence (a country where tentacle loli lactation porn is mainstay) as opposed to American sex crime incidence (a country where they strive to protect you from just about everything).

Yeah.

Nothing beats good and proper parenting. No amount of heavy censoring will change that.

[C.A.]

The media, artists/designers and the government make up a triangle that controls society.

The media is a powerful tool that can be used to control the minds of the society and the people with ideas are the artists and designers. The government want to spread their own ideas and thus have to censor the media, the ideas of the artists and designers.

What I learn in art school is that if the government wants to control their people, they need to make friends with their artists first. And if there's a civil war, a revolt in the country, the first people to die are the artists and their art.

Artists and politicians are just people who think very differently, one side liberates ideas and the other suppresses. And then through the media, people are affected.

[WanderingKnight]

Also, I should have made this distinction earlier. The "media" I am referring to are works of fiction (games, pictures/drawings, RL movies, animation, as stated on the first post. Lets not forget music, too). News media is a fairly different beast, due to the restriction caused by political factors, and its general purpose (information/propaganda rather than entertainment).

What makes you think art is not a form of propaganda either?

You only need to look in history to realize that.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

What makes you think art is not a form of propaganda either?

You only need to look in history to realize that.

I do remember seeing a piece of art entitled somewhere along the lines of "riding in the waves of red", which there is a heavy use of the colour red, and depicting communist China with Mao as glorious.

Well long after the revolution, there is this.

[Lio]

The mass media controls the mass population.

The very BASIS of their "talk" has essentially zero correlation to fact/science/reality. What is their excuse for sex crimes prior to the existence of those entertainment genre? Have they provided any statistical data to show these crimes have increased? I doubt it since measured rates have decreased even with increased reporting of attacks.

Bah.... assertions based on emotional irrationality or "they don't like it" or "its disgusting" are basically worthless.

It's repression. The more repressed you are, the more you'll express your darker desires. And Japan is one hell of a repressed country. I'd reckon that Hentai/AV provided an outlet for their repressed desires so I'd certainly say it's healthy.

[Eclipze]

Originally Posted by C.A.

There was this research done on a tribe which has access to a satellite TV and Western media.

Traditionally they view fat women as beautiful. But after 10 years of exposure to Western media, the girls for the first time thought of dieting to make themselves slimmer and more 'beautiful'. Thousands of years of tradition have been turned over by just 10 years of TV.

Everyone with access to media is affected by media. The media controls the society and the ones behind the media are the artists and designers.

It doesn't matter whether you like or dislike what you're seeing on TV, radio, advertisements, magazines, books, comics etc., it affects you in one way or another. Even if you don't watch TV, the clothes you're wearing is a result of fashion and media. Even if you don't like the clothes you wear, you are still part of fashion and media.

Conservative thinking and taboos have diluted over the years because the media had been exposing the public over such issues for years. The media causes change in the society as a whole, as long as you're not isolated from society, you are affected by it.

I can see how media, even entertainment, can influence change in people, but for most part you can't entirely blame media for EVERYTHING, especially as direct causes of individual acts.

I should apologize for making the thread title too vague and general. The main focus of my OP was to bring up the recent criminalization of "thoughts", as seen in the various examples I've brought up (hentai/porn influencing rape and general violence against women, violent video games influencing murder/violence, etc). The blame is shifted towards entertainment media, and it is going towards the point where tastes are being pushed as laws. We have people trying to get porn banned because it offends them, and the "cause and effect" (porn encourages rape/sex crimes!) is pulled out of their asses to justify the need for the ban. It gets worse when (fictional)children are involved (as seen in the Australian case and the various obscenity laws that are in place). Same thing happened with video games, though that didn't get far, which is a relief...for now.

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

What makes you think art is not a form of propaganda either?

You only need to look in history to realize that.

Political art like the old ads that depicted Vietnamese people as some degraded animals during the Vietnam War, or those recently made in China animation to promote loyalty to the Party (made/commissioned by the Party, and it happened to plagiarize 5cm per sec while they were at it, as an example), sure. But a good majority of today's art are made for entertainment/money rather than propaganda. I'd say usage of entertainment media for propaganda is an exception rather than the norm.

In any case, that isn't really what I am referring to.

[ShadowSeed]

Originally Posted by Eclipze

I can see how media, even entertainment, can influence change in people, but for most part you can't entirely blame media for EVERYTHING, especially as direct causes of individual acts.

I should apologize for making the thread title too vague and general. The main focus of my OP was to bring up the recent criminalization of "thoughts", as seen in the various examples I've brought up (hentai/porn influencing rape and general violence against women, violent video games influencing murder/violence, etc). The blame is shifted towards entertainment media, and it is going towards the point where tastes are being pushed as laws. We have people trying to get porn banned because it offends them, and the "cause and effect" (porn encourages rape/sex crimes!) is pulled out of their asses to justify the need for the ban. It gets worse when (fictional)children are involved (as seen in the Australian case and the various obscenity laws that are in place). Same thing happened with video games, though that didn't get far, which is a relief.



Political art like the old ads that depicted Vietnamese people as some degraded animals during the Vietnam War, or those recently made in China (animation made/commissioned by the Party, which happened to plagarise 5cm per sec while they were at it, as an example), sure. But a good majority of today's art are made for entertainment/money rather than propaganda. I'd say usage of entertainment media for propaganda is an exception rather than the norm.

In any case, that isn't really what I am referring to.

Oh, then am i being not affected by media? I rarely read any adverts and i haven't watched TV in years. I read only the front page from the newspapers. Does this mean i'm not affected, or does this mean i already know everything there's going to be because people are so predictable?

[-KarumA-]

Media is capable of changing human behavior, living style and moral thoughts and consequence.
It is an ever changing development and with it generations change as well.

People can get lied to successfully, they can get convinced easily and remain hooked up to things while blocking out the way.
Different behavior influences: I've noticed in my country that whenever a big change has to be put into action, like a decrease in pay for a large group in the working society that they pass these changes when there is something on TV to distract the people it affects. Example, in health care they want to cut the pays of the nurses in the elderly care section. When will they discuss it? When the world championship soccer match is being played. People's attention will be towards the TV and football rather than on their wallets.

Food, yes a glorious example. Take McDonalds for example, nice burgers awesomely shopped and thick and juicy. You go there and what do you get? The weaker half of the twins half digested in the whomb by his brother. However commercials make people believe that sometimes food is healthy and it contains the products you think it is made off but this isn't true. A lot of products do not contain whatever it is they ought to be made of, such as ketchup not being made my tomatoes anymore but you still see tomatoes in the commercial and get the feeling that you are actually eating tomato ketchup. Media influences you into thinking an item is something entirely different, it is all about the way the message is delivered.

Media can make a person seem like a saint while in reality it is different. It is an important tool to spread threats for wars and so on. It shows you a nice view of what is going on politically in the world but you can't see around this tunnel cause everything else is all blocked. You know very little of what actually happens in the world and it creates a dumb society that follows orders like a pack of zombies.

Lastly, teen development. I am part of a generation that witnessed how music changed from being normal music to something erotic and sexual. How violence in cartoons was cut short together Britney's and Christina's tops.
I can see how it changed society, just listen to some of the lines of Lady Gaga, ride my disco stick... seriously back then that was even taboo. I think the music media has been through a lot of changes, things went from echii to complete porno erotic within years and the people adjusted to it. the average age in which people start having sex has gone down to around 10-12 in this country, girls that aren't fully grown up yet wear lipstick and short skirts with high heels to carry the image that being sexy is being confident and that the closer you go to the erotic border the better it is cause being like a porn star is luxury and attention getting. I don't know why people try to be adults when clearly they're still children.

Also besides the whole girls turn into hookers syndrome you also have the male equivalent being boys trying to be pimpy and tough. When I was young people started getting big mouthed but it was always a small portion, like 1-2 people a class but now it seems more and more guys seem to do it. They feel offended with a single glance and scream that they will beat you up, this and that and as soon as you even come close they yell at you to stay away and not touch them. The amount of violence in schools in the bigger cities has gone up, never before were there any stabbings or murders for things like a pen or other school tools of no value at all

The current generation has grown a lot ruder, more accepting toward sex, drugs and criminal behavior at a much younger age due to early exposure.
Media influences the younger folk more than the elderly and never influences everyone. Just a majority

[Tsuyoshi]

^ Much of what is said here is true. Because of the media, there are a lot of things people are conditioned into percieving as true or real. Our perception of beauty, for example, has been heavily twisted because of the way advertisements make models look so gorgeous when the truth is that the person whose picture was taken is actually nowhere near as beautiful. In fact, she nearly looks like a completely different person. Our perception of beauty has been twisted to the point where the true beauty we see on TV doesn't even exist. This is a long term effect that eventually grew as society became older.

However, I would be careful to claim that increased exposure to sex and violence in the media has certainly resulted in more criminal activity. Sure, such things have been on the rise in recent years but the big question is how do you define a crime? Do you know that what the newspaper dipicts as a sex crime is really such a thing? Like you said, the media has a powerful influence over the way people think and see things around them. That being said, a column on the news that gives out a piece of information, telling one side of the story, can actually entice you into judging the event as a crime. Truth is that news wires rarely give the full story.

Also, it isn't neccessarily true that increased mature content on the media is a direct cause of criminal activity. Like I said earlier, much of it depends on the person himself. If the member of the audience is lucid enough to realize that it's just a story, he/she will continue with their daily lives as though nothing happened. However, if the person's state of mind is more susceptible to outside influences, then he would be more likely to follow the example set by games, TV, etc. The environment he lives in also has a major role. Someone who is poor and desperate is much more likely to carry a gun and rob a bank than someone who is even living decently in a normal house, perchance with family. As you can imagine, the poor person doesn't even need games to get the idea of robbing a bank.

That being said, the media's influence is powerful in altering our perception of things, but it can't be linked completely with increasing crime rates with absolute certainty. It really depends on who or where you're looking.