Real Violence

Few weeks ago, I was sitting on my coach reading newspaper and watching TVs. Two serious murdering has happened in the south east Brisbane that caught my attention. One was a young guy killed at Eight Mile Plains shopping centre in front of a Sushi shop and other one has got shot in their house after a break in. It seems there has been increasing violence incidences spreading across the south east Brisbane, it made me feel unsafe as I am also living in this area. These sorts of things don't usually happen in Queensland, especially Brisbane and twice in a week that is so rare in my past 3 years of living in Brisbane. Later in the month another serious murder incident happened in Gold Coast at Robina Town Centre in front of many shoppers on the 28th of April, two groups of bikies were shooting each other's after argument, and got a male shopper shot in the arm. These incidents have bought me to think about what has happened to us, our surroundings and what is the media ethics. Has the media influenced the society's value and belief system? (Sternberg. 2012)

I remember when I was in childhood, the television in China only play cartoons like the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Snow Whites. But now, when I am looking at the televisions with my young brother in China, I can only see cartoons such as Naruto (a Jinja fighting cartoon) and One Piece (talking about pirates fighting against the government). Then, I watched the Seven News, the most I see is about murders here, murders there, war in Iraq, nuclear weapon in North Korea, and conflicts between China and Japan for example. This seems the same all over the world, because when I watch the Chinese TV news, which they also talks about other people's unfortunate. I did my own calculation the other day watching the News that in 30 mins news, almost 7 mins are about the troubles around us, and 15 mins about troubles around the world. Perhaps, this style of reporting are became necessities for media to attract people or is it the politicians that want people to live in fear and especially to know that people in the other country are all living in danger, for example Asian countries and mid-east countries? Would you think the increasing young people violence was partly caused by this media violence? Many studies and researches have proven this to be true. For instance, Huesmann argues that children develop 'cognitive scripts' that guide their own behavior by imitating the actions of media heroes. As they watch violent shows, children learn to internalize scripts that use violence as an appropriate method of problem solving. From this argument, I see connections to the current few incidents and sort of agreed to the relation between the media violence and the real violence. The media as institution does influence our social values and beliefs. Children from young starting to imitate heroes, whether good or bad and most of the heroic activities are violence. The