OUAN501 - Planning & Structuring an Essay

My first choice for an essay question was, 'Violent Video Games, Cause or Scapegoat?' This at the time was a placeholder essentially until I decided on a specific question that I was tackling in my essay. Eventually the question was more specific, and I tried to make it sound academic whilst also containing the aims and intentions of the essay. The proposed title question was, 'To what extent is video game violence associated with aggression, and to what degree is this idea propagated in the media?'

I have between 40-50 academic sources on the topic from various studies and papers sourced online, as well as from books written on the topics of video games, aggression and more general books written on the relatioship between media violence and aggression. I found usually and for the most part depending on when they were published these kinds of books looking at aggression from a psychological stand point had atleast a section on the effects of video game violence on the individuals that play them. Below are several more examples of studies on the topic;

• Ferguson, C.J. (2010) ‘Blazing angels or resident evil? Can violent video games be a force for good?’, . doi: 10.1037/a0018941.
• Ferguson, C.J. (2013) ‘Violent video games and the supreme court lessons for the scientific community in the wake of brown v. Entertainment merchants association’, . doi: 10.1037/a0030597.
• Freedman, J.L. (2002) Media violence and its effect on aggression: Assessing the scientific evidence. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Gross, J. and Levenson, R.W. (2009) ‘Emotional suppression: Physiology, self-report, and expressive behavior’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(6), pp. 970–986.
• Grossman, D., DeGaetano, G. and Grossman, L.C.D. (1999) Stop teaching our kids to kill: A call to action against TV, movie & video game violence. New York: Crown Publishing Group (NY).
• Ivory, J.D. and Kalyanaraman, S. (2007) ‘The effects of technological advancement and violent content in video games on players? Feelings of presence, involvement, physiological arousal, and aggression’, Journal of Communication, 57(3), pp. 532–555. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2007.00356.x.
• Lee, D. (2014) Aggression from video games ‘linked to incompetence’. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26921743 (Accessed: 16 April 2016).

In terms of material to analyse I plan to look at a wide range of video games, and look at the medium as a whole. I will however focus on games that are often discussed in studies and the conversation on video game violence. These include titles such as 'Doom', which was a big talking point after the Columbine High School massacre, Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto which are regularly brought up in the ongoing discussion about video games because of their content. Concerns about this and their association with violent behaviour are often at the forefront of the effects of video games.

My thesis for this essay is based around the idea that when an individual commits an act of extreme violence, video games are often blamed when there may be much more prevelant and pressing factors that caused the event. I do not believe video games have a significant effect on aggression and furthermore I plan to discuss the effect the media has on its audience when it states that a mass murderer played video games. I plan to discuss a range of point;

• The history of the media's involvement with violence in video games and how the it has caused panic among parents, researchers and politicians.
• What current and past studies have concluded from their research.
• How the media propagates the link between aggression an violent video games.
• Ecological validity of the research and claims that have been made.
• Research and focus on desensitisation to violence through exposure to violent video games.
• Compare different studies and experiments that have been conducted, combined with the different conclusions and opinions of the researchers that did them.

I again gathered some peer feedback from Emma on my ideas;

'Nicely structured essay plan. You might benefit from doing a close reading of a specific study of a video game related incident and report upon how the media neglected certain aspects of the incident to propagate panic and encourage the negative opinions of violent video games.'