OUAN501 - Establishing a Research Question

For the research question I want to look at video games. I think this satisfies the criteria for the essay question by being a form of interactive media, and also has elements of animation, sound and huge amounts of design contained with them. Aside from this they are an incredibly popular form of entertainment and are a large part of every day life for a lot of people. Continually and specifically in the US video games are a source of controversy, whether through their depictions of violence and adult themes or due to their alledged effect on children and aggression as a whole. Coupled with this, I'm interested in the way the media propagates views to audiences about video games and how this can have a negative effect on video games as a whole.

After looking at the module sources, I realised there isn't a lot of crossover between my chosen topic and the resources that are available. Howeve, 'Cultural Theory & Popular Culture' by J. Storey has a cultural and social implication that could be useful to me when looking at society as a whole, the way society functions and operates in regards to popular views and the way moral panic can occur among members of that society. Furthermore, 'Capital, Volume I' a book by Karl Marx may be relevant as it discusses capitalism as political economy, also looking at economic laws of the capitalist mode of production. The specifics in the book may not necessarily be relevant but I think the popularity of video games and the addiction to them that can occur could potentially tie in with consumerism and writings like ths quite well. Finally, 'Disipline & Punish' by Michel Foucault looks at an analysis of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind the changes that occurred in Western penal systems during the modern age. I think methods of punishment as well as displine as a whole and the psychological implications of this research could compliment my research rather well. Also, when I'm looking at aggression or violence the methods of punishment and displine with offenders could be quite interesting to think about in connection with one another.

I already know quite a lot of different sources on the topic of violence and aggression with a link to video games. When looking for research papers and studies on the topic the same names come up and have a lot of experience on the subject, these include; 'Craig A. Anderson, Brad Bushman, Christopher Furgerson and Dr Andrew Przybylski. There are however quite a lot of other studies by researchers that encompass this topic, and aside from this I think there is a lot of opportunity to involve papers on psychology and child psychology.

• American Psychological Society Copyright (2001) Meta-Analytic review of video-game violence 354. Available at: http://public.psych.iastate.edu/caa/abstracts/2000-2004/01AB.pdf (Accessed: 16 April 2016).
• Anderson, C.A., Shibuya, A., Ihori, N., Swing, E.L., Bushman, B.J., Sakamoto, A., Rothstein, H.R. and Saleem, M. (2010)
• Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and Prosocial behavior in eastern and western countries: A Meta-Analytic review. Available at: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-136-2-151.pdf (Accessed: 18 April 2016).
• Are Video Games Really That Bad? (2015) BBC, 17 October.
• Ascione, F.R. and Arkow, P. (1999) Child abuse, domestic violence, and animal abuse linking the circles of compassion for prevention and intervention. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. Australia, C. of (2010) Literature review on the impact of playing violent video games on aggression. Available at: http://www.classification.gov.au/Public/Resources/Pages/Other%20Resources/Literature%20review%20on%20the%20impact%20of%20playing%20violent%20video%20games%20on%20aggression.pdf (Accessed: 16 April 2016).
• Ballard Mary 1996 mortal Kombat (1996) Available at: https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/f/Ballard_Mary_1996_Mortal_Kombat.pdf (Accessed: 16 April 2016).

In terms of investigating this research question and making a response I would like to make a documentary or video essay style piece. My thinking behind this is that since the topic has a lot of news coverage, I can use found footage of news broadcasts to compile and informative and entertaining piece. By doing this I can also combine my own research and commentary with in game footage and expand on the topic I've already covered. Furthermore, it means I can practice editing clips and make my editing more effective to create something both informative and entertaining.

I showed Emma my research question in order to get some peer feedback, she said;

'I think this is a really interesting idea. It'd be nice if you looked into hard facts and statistics and possibly prove them wrong to demonstrate how the media exaggerate and emphasise on the negative effects, and how they don't tell the whole story behind such games related to incidents. E.g how the person unlucky sufferers from mental illness etc.'