Television violence and its effects on viewers has been a controversial issue for many years. Some viewers believe that there is an increasingly large amount of violence on television and this widespread public concern has "led to calls for stricter controls on the depiction of violence in programmes" (Gunter and McAleer 1990:92). Exactly how much violence is there on television though?
Many cultivation theorists have studied this, acquiring data in the form of content analysis. They agree on a definition of a violent act, for example Gerbner in his study used the definition, "an overt expression of physical force against self or other, compelling action against ones will on pain of being hurt or killed, or actually hurting or killing" (Gunter and McAleer 1990:94). This is an objective definition that can then be used to count the number of violent acts in whatever is being observed. Halloran and Croll (1972) used this technique to establish the amount of violence on British......
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