An empirical study of media effects: A comparison of real-life and fictional video violence in cyberspace

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of real-life and dramatized media violence on undergraduate students' attitudes. An a priori power analysis determined the sample size of this 1x1 posttest only control group experiment based on a Cohen's d of 0.8 and a large effect size in order to appropriately extrapolate beyond the participants to the wider population. The control document was a one page excerpt from the novel The Chocolate Wars while the 15 treatment scenes were selected from various G, PG, and PG-13 rated movies as well as real-life videos with comparable levels of violence and delivered via YouTube. The instrument required participants to rank different dimensions of attitude based on a 100-point scale. Both the control and treatment instruments were tested for reliability with alpha = 0.769 for the control and alpha = 0.958 for the treatment.;The theoretical framework for the study was media effects theory. Specifically, the goal of the study was to determine if certain underlying differences between the two (e.g. production value, choreographed fight scenes, etc.) facilitated students' attitudes toward the scenes and furthermore provided students with enough cues to determine whether or not the scenes they were viewing were real or fictitious.;Post hoc analyses indicated there was indeed a significant difference for some aspects of participants' attitudes between the real-life and fictitious violent media. Participants found the videos of dramatized video violence more entertaining than the real-life videos. Also, participants had the attitude that real-life violence was more excessive than the dramatized violence. Certain differences in attitude were able to be predicted by demographic factors. Participants were generally able to correctly identify the treatment videos as containing either real-life violence or dramatized violence based on the type of violence featured and the production quality of the videos. Finally, no significant sensitization or desensitization occurred throughout the period of participants viewing the various treatment videos.;This study helped broaden the scope of research on violent media in that most past studies focused on the behavioral effects while relatively few studies have examined hedonic aspects of violent media.