Annotated Bibliography And Outline
Allana Robinson
PSY 101
Introduction to Psychology
John Long
August 22, 2015

Does Violence in the media contribute to violent behavior in children?

Thesis: There is an overwhelming evidence that the media affects viewers by encouraging violent behavior through desensitization, cultivating. Fearful, and pessimistic attitudes, and diminishes their creative capacity.

Annotated Bibliography Beckett, Katherine, and Theodore Sasson. "Crime in the Media." Crime in the Media. Defending Justice: An Activist Resource Kit, 2005. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.

“Crime in the Media,” an article by professors Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson, discusses various statistics about the presence of crime in the media and how for-profit television networks use stories about crime for entertainment purposes. The authors of this article also explains the way in which television reporters frame the crime stories and how they tend to emphasize criminal justice leniency. In this article, the authors give the reader statistics about the prevalence of violence in the media and how crime consumes “30% of all news time, displacing coverage of other pressing issues.” This article is from an Activist Resource Kit, therefore it is about as biased as you can get. The statistical information in this article, like the statistical relationship between crime rate and violent news coverage, would help answer the Causal stasis of “Does X cause Y?”

Coyne, Sarah M. "Does Media Violence Cause Violent Crime?" European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 13.3-4 (2007): 205-11. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.

In the scholarly article “Does the Media Violence Cause Violent Crime?” by Sarah Coyne, a psychology professor at the University of Central Lancashire, numerous studies are used to look at the link between violent media and violent crime to try and see if there is a relationship between the two. She looks at longitudinal studies, crime statistics, as well as research studies to reach a conclusion about whether or not exposure to violent media causes violent crime. Coyne relies on facts and statistics to answer the question of “Does Media Violence Cause Violent Crime?” rather than opinion and feeling-driven thoughts. Her article examines both sides of the argument and backs up her points with scientific evidence, therefore eliminating possible biases. This text will be very helpful in my Argument of Inquiry paper and I plan to use her conclusion that, “The group most likely to be influence by TV violence is those individuals who are on the highest trajectory, those who are highly aggressive in toddlerhood and then stay that way.” Coyne provides many useful studies that would also be useful in my argument.

Guin, Karen. "Study: Media Instructs But Doesn't Cause Criminal Behavior." UCF Today. 10 Oct. 2013. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.

Karen Guin, blogger at the University of Central Florida, discusses the research published in the American Journal of Criminal Justice done by Professor Ray Surette in her article published in UCF Today titled “Study: Media Instructs But Doesn’t Cause Criminal Behavior.” This study explored the effect the exposure to crime in the media had on crime through life experiences. In his study, a survey was given to inmates of the Orange County Jail in Florida and the 574 inmates were asked questions about their criminal history and their exposure to crime and the media. Some questions were aimed to explore the idea of copying crimes portrayed in the media. Results showed that the more exposure inmates had to crime in the real world, the more likely they were to copy these crimes. Surette also found that 19% of the inmates perceived media as a “highly helpful source of information on how to commit crime.” This piece of information would be very useful in arguing that exposure to violence in the media does cause crime. This article focuses on one study so it is solely based on fact, which helps to