RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

previously acquired through television attitudes and value systems which justify aggression and when aggressive behaviour has a functional value and secures a material reward, social recognition, self-respect, or satisfies the desire for retaliation. The witnessing of punishment for violence can stimulate viewers to conquer violence, but punishment usually serves as a temporary inhibitor. Punishment may suppress violence but it cannot at the same time destroy what the viewer has learned. The knowledge can be applied in some subsequent situations but aggression because of the action of the drama, is not always punished, ог is punished only once, at the end. Up to then, it serves the implementation of some goals. In violence on television the moral »violence does not рау« is usually not vahdated but rather »the reward of a violent transgression is quite good, except in some exceptional, unpleasant cases«. The viewing of brutaUty day after day causes insensitivity to cruelty. Repeated exposure to broadcasts portraying violence can graduaUy exhaust emotional responsibihty. Favourable attitudes are also developed towards things which earUer provoked disgust Apart from this, the repeated presentation of murders can devalue human life. What is of particular interest is the occurrence of fear and aversion towards these scenes, Fear mhibits a person from showing aggressive activities. When fear and aversion to aggressive actions аге exhausted, however, a person can encounter these acts much more easily. A debate has been held around the cumulative effects of the daily presentation of fighting on television. Some stress that such scenes produce reactions of shock which bring about aversion to war. Others claim that people get used to war and other brutality and that they become indifferent to the sufferings which these provoke. Several authors stress that television, with its aggressive models, instructing in methods and : creating a particular attitude towards aggression through sanctions given for particular aggressive acts, lowers the threshold of aggressive responses and sharpens their form.

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