Media violence and the American public: Scientific facts versus media misinformation.

Bushman, Brad J., Anderson, Craig A.·2001·American Psychologist
DOI 10.1037//0003-066x.56.6-7.477

Abstract

Fifty years of news coverage on the link between media violence and aggression have left the U.S. public confused. Typical news articles pit researchers and child advocates against entertainment industry representatives, frequently giving equal weight to the arguments of both sides. A comparison of news reports and scientific knowledge about media effects reveals a disturbing discontinuity: Over the past 50 years, the average news report has changed from claims of a weak link to a moderate link and then back to a weak link between media violence and aggression. However, since 1975, the scientific confidence and statistical magnitude of this link have been clearly positive and have consistently increased over time. Reasons for this discontinuity between news reports and the actual state of scientific knowledge include the vested interests of the news, a misapplied fairness doctrine in news reporting, and the failure of the research community to effectively argue the scientific case.

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  3. Violent Video Games and Hostile Expectations: A Test of the General Aggression Model
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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Media violence and the American public: Scientific facts versus media misinformation. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037//0003-066x.56.6-7.477
The paper
Bushman, B. J., & Anderson, C. A. (2001). Media violence and the American public: Scientific facts versus media misinformation. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037//0003-066x.56.6-7.477

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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.