The media and violence - cyberbullying

Abstract

Violence in the media mostly refers to the use of explicit scenes of violence seen on film and television screens as well as in the cyberspace of interactive digital games. Everlasting questioning about the negative effects of the media of mass communication was especially evident in the time of expansion of television and the ?narcotic role? of the television image, when violence became one of the most commercial areas from which the media got the topics of their cultural content. The arrival of the new ways of communication by means of digital media has opened another page in the consideration of the notion of violence in the media - cyberbullying. Therefore, the subject of the paper is violence in the media and the possible effects of traditional and social media on the global audience. By presenting some of the theoretical considerations and empirical research on the effects of the media, the aim of this paper is to answer the question of how much the connection there is between the media and violence with special reference to digital abuse as a long-term exposure to violence on social networks. By using the descriptive-explanatory method and the method of theoretical analysis, by connecting theoretical knowledge and empirical data, the paper, within the scope of the research, presents the overview of theoretical premises related to the action of violence in the media. Likewise, the examples from the field of the effects of violence in traditional and digital media were reviewed in order to realize the phenomenon of violence and its connection with the media. The research results indicated the connection between the effects of traditional and digital violence and the particular danger of different methods of cyberbullying considering the characteristics of this phenomenon. Beginning with the assertion that the media greately influences the recipients with their aggressive content, by applying a literature review, the models of aggression in the traditional media were pointed out, as well as the methods by which cyberbullyingis done by means of text or video messages that insult, harass, threaten. The answer to the question of the connection between the media and violence required theoretical reflections and the presentation of empirical research in order to realize the effects of violent communication, and especially to shed light on digital abuse on social networks. Recent analyses of cyberbullyingrarely rely on the previous research and do not tend to connect mutually in order to provide a general picture, so it is difficult to get a whole picture of the state of violent content in digital media. Nevertheless, even though there are opinions about the media as being the sole culprits of violence in society, even though completely opposite opinions are pointed out, the latest researches unequivocally prove that the theory about the ineffectiveness of media violence is not sustainable.