User:Mego25.4

An introduction to a research paper on TV violence.

== Introduction ==

=== Background Information ===

There has been growing concern over the amount of violent television programs that children consume. This concern has prompted parents and teachers to adopt myriad strategies to protect the children from this excessive and arguably destructive behavior. In the scientific sphere, psychologists have made attempts to describe the short and long term impacts of violence on television on the children. Pierce and Field (2016), for instance, did a study to elucidate the impacts of television programs and film on children’s emotions. Contrary to the common belief, there was a weak correlation between scary television content and the expression of emotions. The emotions considered in this study were sleep disturbances, fear, anxiety, and sorrow. There is, however, a body of research that posits that violence in films is detrimental to the mental health of children. One such research is a study by Turkmen which concludes that animated children movies featuring violent content disturbs the mental health of normal children. In the midst of this dichotomy of opinions, there is a need to characterize the violence in children films and compare the same findings with a similar film developed for adults. Thus, side-by-side comparison of the two classes of content aired on television will shed light on what constitutes violence in film. Furthermore, it would inform on the extent of violence in films meant for adults vis a viz those produced for children. This information will, therefore, demystify the misconception that children films are overly punctuated with violence.

== Literature Review ==

Most children programs aired on television are animated. Despite taking this approach in producing programs meant for a children audience, directors have not fully isolated violence from film. Turkmen, submits that animated children content contains both verbal and non-verbal acts of violence. By sampling 100 animated films, he determines that kicking and punching are the most common physical acts of violence in these films. He also finds out that there are numerous acts of killing in animated children films. Further, these films contains verbal elements of violence exhibited by threatening and taunting. Some researchers have gone beyond simply focusing on violence in general to explain the gender roles in children shows. This strategy is probably informed by the potential deterioration of social norms in children because of watching violent television content. Zulfiqar sampled 150 episodes in Disney, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network channels and recorded 1820 violence themes. He further categorized the violence into verbal aggression, destructive violence, and physical violence. He notes that aggression in the shows is commonly associated with male characters. In his paper, he is confident that children shows contain more violence that films produced for the general public. Besides children films, adult movies and television programs carry substantial violence. It would be expected that action films and thrillers are the only genres that depict violence in adult film. However, Hollis- Gutierrez proves that drama films contain considerable amount of violence. Although his focus on intimate partner violence, he identifies the masculine figures as domineering aggressors of their wives or girlfriends. All the drama films he samples depict kicking, hair pulling, punching or slapping in one way or the other. His findings indicate that adult films may contain more scenes of physical violence than those meant for children.