They say Exercise 1

a. Y source has stated that there have been no reported issues with the Ohio groundwater as far as chemicals go.
b. In the book, Z, the historian gives emotional factors as examples of what has caused history to be the way it is.
d. School test scores have shown that females test higher on standardized tests.
f. The movie critic, V, reported that the movie had strong issues with the development of the story line and development of the characters.

Article Response

I truly believe that I have found the perfect article to contribute to a dialogue. As someone who is planning on eventually pursuing a degree in education I’m very interested to see how someone believes that media violence is affecting our nations youth and what better source/person to argue that than someone who is working for the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. In this article the author, Eugene V Beresin, argues with the statistics available to him such as: “the typical American will witness 200,000 acts of violence, including 16,000 murders before age 18.” (Beresin, The Impact of Media Violence). There is so much violence and this author does really seem to genuinely believe that it is, at least, contributing to further real life violence. He advocates for a reduction and further surveillance by parents to reduce the amount of media that kids are exposed to. I think it would be very interesting to see someone, specifically the man who wrote this article, argue the effects of violence in media vs. someone who doesn’t necessarily believe that violence is as big an issue as it could possibly be. I think very conflicting views would contribute for an excellent dialogue and the complications and disagreements would make one another’s arguments more intriguing than two people who are whole heartedly agreeing with one another.

Violence in the home causing violence in the media

Along with my article came an implication into a concept I think plays the strongest part of violence in the media. I personally believe that violent and or aggressive behavior would be more common in that of adolescents that were raised in a violent/neglectful household. One of the articles I chose also placed a big emphasis on the same ideals and provided many ways with which this could occur considering a child being placed in an abusive household and encountering the different types of violence leading to a possible acting out of the same type of behaviors as well as mental problems at birth that might spur a child more along the violent pathways. While I considered only one way in which a child might be able to gain exposure to violence in the home this article provides many options to consider. I would love for my dialogue to display the proctor the author of the article I chose as well as two standpoints of the family and the child (a violent and or neglectful household as well as a "standard" well off household) and their children. While on panel discussing parenting differentials and why the parents behave in the manner they do (concerning careers, family issues, etc.) and then discussing the children's thoughts on their parent's behavior and the actions that follow.

Katrina's Article Summary

When I first heard this assignment I was pretty sure what I wanted to talk about. I have strong view points on how violence should be tackled and I think it is a combination of things. A big issue in my opinion is mental health is not treated the way that it should. My article talks about mental health and what role it plays into these acts of violence. I personally believe that more emphasis should be on this topic rather than gun control, so I am going to use this author as the argument side for mental health. My article also points out that the solutioin is not cut and dry it has multisteps to it. I strongly believe in that idea and so this article as well as the others I chose will supporting gun control and mental health, and some will believe in both playing a role in the solution. I will be using part of Obama addressing the Newtown incident because he brings up both gun control and mental health. I am choosing to use this article because I feel like it tries to show other sides beside mental health to help explain the issue at hands which I think is important to show other factors. I am also using this article because it has some statistics to help illustrate what they are trying to get across. I think this is good because it gives actual numbers to these ideas. It brings up studies done all around the world, to help the credibility of the article. What I think was most important was it questions its own ideas and brings in arguments, and then explains why they are still right.

Summary of article on violence in the media

I think the path that I'm going to take when having my mock interview is to talk about the affects of television violence in the media on people. Since television is the primary source of media that people take in , i think it would have the biggest affect on people. This article was basically about how TV shows show the person commit a violent act not getting punish 73 percent of the time. This statistic is scary because who knows what that is teaching our children and subliminally putting in our minds. This article is specific to the affects violent TV shows have on children and it is profound because it makes the point that if a child sees his/her favorite character solving a problem with violence, they might end up doing it to. It also talks about how children of young ages aren't able to tell the difference between right and wrong and if the lessons aren't taught at a young age they might continue them on until adult hood. I plan on starting the conversation in the interview with a broad aspect of television violence then narrowing it down to how that ultimately affect our kids.

Article Summary

I chose this particular article because its main point kind of follows the way that I view media violence.  This article talks about how parents generations assume that new video games and movies are breeding their kids into stone cold killers when in reality the only big issue is that their kids are being bred into stone cold button pushers who go outside. The author talks about how violence in the media might have some causes that lead to real aggression and real violence, but the probability of a child becoming aggressive because of something he saw on a TV is so low that you might as well be more worried about his lack of activity. The article also mentions how people overestimate how bad a certain movie or video game may be just because of the situation that a person is in. When in reality that is the point of movies and video games, for people to be in extraordinary situations that people in real life don’t want to experience. I think that this article fits this paper perfectly because all of the authors in the different articles have different views and points. One author calls for reform in the media and suggests that media violence is ruining Americas youth, another author uses statistics to prove facts about media violence from both use while my author suggests that media violence has little to no effect on real aggression. I think that creating dialogue will be easy to do with every author having different points.

Readings

My initial thoughts going into reading about violence in the media was that the subject was completely blown out of proportion and that media violence had no effect on actual aggression. As I read more on the subject I felt like maybe it could lead to some aggression but I still thought that the whole subject was still blown out of proportion. My reaction to article one was that I was surprised about how it kind of defended my thought that violent video games had little to no effect on aggression. Going into reading it I was expecting an article dropping all sorts of statistics about how media violence directly correlates to aggression. My reaction to article 2 was that I was surprised about how quickly Tarentino got defensive when asked about media violence. This article was most like my view on media violence because it talks about how media violence might contribute to actual violence, but there are many factors that contribute more to actual violence than just the media. My reaction to video number 3 was that I really thought the author tried to force reasons why media violence leads to real violence. This was the type of article that I think of every time that I think of the debate about media violence.

Article Summary

I chose the article "NRA Web site glorifies violent Hollywood movies after NRA chief criticizes violent Hollywood movies" by John Aravosis because I think it is a perfect example of different industries (whether it be the NRA, video game companies or Hollywood) will keep blaming each other even if it contradicts previous statements they’ve already made. I find it almost comical about how much of a hole the NRA, particularly headman Wayne LaPierre, has dug itself into since the Sandy Hook shootings. Now of course I don’t blame the NRA on the shootings because I believe that a multitiude of things have contributed to the horrific events but the NRA must surely understand they have to take some responsibility. Aravosis states that LaPierre calls violent movies “pornographic” and denounces movie makers for having the nerve to call the violence entertainment. This of course is hypocritical because both in the NRA museum and on their website are pictures and different descriptions of different guns used in violent films such as Pulp Fiction (1994) and Reservoir Dogs (1993). This just shows that certain industries will try and protect their name under any cost if they feel attacked, even if their claims have as many contradictions as this one made by the NRA does. No one is even trying to find the real issue or even work together to attempt to resolve some obvious problems in our country. Groups like the NRA are only concerned with their own image and while yes, it hurts them that guns were involved in the killing, but if both the NRA and the media it is trying to hurt would just work together then maybe we as a country could get some closure as to what the real problems are in this whole shooting case.

Article Summary

I chose this specific article because it has a solid scientific foundation to back up the author's point.  The article also uses what "they say" in order to bring up more points of discussion.  For example, the author brings up whether violent games cause aggressive children or whether aggressive kids play violent video games.  In addition, she concludes that the term "violent game" is too vague and scientists and researches need to better define it.  Another topic that arises in the article is whether or not violent video games desensitize the teens and children who play them.  Then towards the end of the article, the author provides a few suggestions that can help minimize the usage of violent games by kids.  One tip was to keep the video game console in the living room and not in the child's bedroom so that parents can monitor and ensure that the kids' games are not too graphic and violent. Then when I use the author in the dialogue I think that this author will be a fairly moderate voice that brings facts and statistics to back up her claims.  Part of the article that I really liked was towards the end when it mentions that not all of the kids will just go out and beat people up because of these games but they will effect the teens' attitude towards life.

Article Summary

My article was about how violence is affecting the minds of today’s children. The author of this fox news article mainly discusses how to detox your child from all of the violence in today’s media. The author of this article discuses how movies, video games and even websites are toxic to a childs mind. The author first brought up the fad of social media, specifically Facebook. The author, Dr. Keith Ablow, said that Facebook is diminishing what it means to be friends. Having thousands of ‘friends’ just fills an emotional need to be liked. Ablow then transitions to how children must be dialed back from violence in media. Ablow strongly believes that games that glorify killing to children are wrong and unhealthy. He admits that there is not scientific evidence to support his point, yet he still strongly believes in it. He then goes on to give examples on how to approach your children and how to take away violence without upsetting the child. He says, “you tell your kids those movies aren’t on the play list anymore, either in the cinema, in the house or on the computers, because there is a concern they could be “bad for them.” Ablow believes that violence in the media directly correlates to actions such as the shootings in Newtown. Ablow opens his article discussing the Newtown shooting. He admits that while there is not evidence to support his stance that real life violence is related to violence in the media, this violence should not be seen by children.

Unit 1 summary

I am mainly going to focus on the reason why most violent acts happen. My main argument is that it has almost everything to do with mental illness. Two articles are going to make the arguments as to why they think it has mostly to do with violent video games. Some questions that I will bring up would be: 1) Why do you think the media is being associated with the violent shootings that have been recently taking place? And 2) Studies show that almost all, or even every one of the shooters have been diagnosed with mental illnesses, depression, or family problems. Do you still think that violent videos games and violent movies play a role in violent occurrences? In reaction to the first question, my “featured guests” will argue that everyone has access to technology now and movies have become more influential than ever. Which I would respond to by asking, “even if movies are becoming extremely influential, do you that justifies someone killing multiple innocent people just because they saw it on the big screen?” In response to question two, my guests would argue that movies and society influence each other. Furthermore, they would make a point that they don’t think that this caused people to go out and kill innocent people, but that the movies definitely influenced people, even if all it did was put the idea into their heads. At some point, I will make the argument that video games and movies are being blamed for the cause of violent shootings when really the problem is much deeper- mental illness.