Why is Violent Media so Pervasive?

How much violence is there in media, and why?

Representations of violence aren’t new. In fact, violence has been a key part of media since the birth of literature: Ancient Greek poetry and drama often portrayed murder, suicide and self-mutilation; many of Shakespeare’s plays revel in violence, torture, maiming, rape, revenge and psychological terror; and some of the most popular books of the 19th century were “penny dreadfuls” that delivered blood, gore and other shocks to the lowest common denominator.

In today’s mass media world, it’s commonly believed that violence sells. Violent media costs less to export and translate, and it’s more easily picked up by markets in different cultures than ours. As a language, violence is easy to understand and requires little context in order to present a plot: explosions, gunfire and martial arts are a language that anyone can understand. Consider some of the following numbers:

• From 1995 to 2024, the top grossing movie for each year was a decidedly violent movie with the exception of six films, with the top two genres, adventure and action, both having elements of violence.[1]
• Films that are rated PG-13 hold about two-thirds of the American market. Films that are either PG or PG-13 make more money than all other film ratings combined and currently contain more violence than R rated films.[2] [3]
• 71 percent or 51.5 million kids under 18 are video game players in the United States.[4]
• The average age range of a video game player is 18-34 years old, with the average video game player being 33 years old.[5]
• 76 percent of all video game players are over 18 years of age.[6]
• Only 12 percent of all games sold are given an M rating for “mature,” the highest rating possible.[7]
• In 2023, consumers in the United States spent approximately $57.2 billion on video games.[8]

As these numbers show, the two major forms of entertainment media that traffic in representations of violence are huge businesses. Interestingly, while much of the moral panic tends to revolve around video games, most players are adults, not children. Conversely, movies aimed at young audiences are a major source of income for filmmakers in Hollywood.

For film, the financial “sweet spot” appears to be with movies that are action-based rather than dialogue-heavy, while also being accessible to young people. This combination allows filmmakers to succeed in both the most profitable local markets and foreign markets because action movies don’t rely on complex plots and characters or domestic-culture-specific references. Instead, they use fights, killings, special effects and explosions to hold their audiences. Unlike comedies or dramas—which depend on good stories, sharp humour and credible characters, all of which are often culture-specific—action films require little in the way of good writing and acting. They’re simple and they’re universally understood.[9] To top it off, the largely non-verbal nature of the kind of films that journalist Sharon Waxman refers to as “short-on-dialogue, high-on-testosterone,”[10] makes their dubbing or translation relatively inexpensive.[11]

That, at least, is the conventional wisdom in the film industry. In fact, research has found that violence can have an effect on ticket sales, but only for films rated PG-13,[12] and the single largest foreign market – China[13] – has stricter censorship than the United States. This censorship “makes things difficult for foreign films…[with] restrictions on…nudity, sex and violence.”[14] As well, research has found that viewers are more likely to positively identify with characters who act morally – or more morally than anticipated – than violence.[15]

Many still believe that violence guarantees a foreign revenue, which puts enormous pressures on the American movie industry to abandon complexity in favour of action films.[16] 

Video games and violence

Though many non-violent video games are successful, the industry is still strongly associated with violence. With movie-like realis and enormous marketing budgets, video games have become the second most-profitable entertainment industry in the world.

Unlike movies, though, video games rarely challenge or question the use of violence. Games that try to prevent moral disengagement and make you conscious of the effects of your actions are few and far between and are typically poorly received by players.[17] It may be that the interactive nature of games, which positions players as active participants, makes it impossible to achieve the distance needed to critique media violence. Criticism of the game Six Days in Fallujah, for example, which replicates a battle in which U.S. troops are accused of having committed war crimes, encapsulated the issue: including actions related to war crimes could be seen as endorsing them, but leaving them out would “create a sanitized version of real-world events.”[18]

In 2023, the most popular video games in Canada included the ultra-violent Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III,[19] successors to the first-person shooter genre made famous by Doom.[20] This genre continues to make huge sales and, just like violent film and television, these games require minimal translation or adaptation to move across cultures. While many of these games are primarily played in multiplayer competition – which research suggests is experienced more like playing a sport than consuming violent media[21] – most do have single-player narratives, as well.

As new and increasingly advanced technologies continue to develop, so do the ways we engage with media. In gaming, virtual reality (VR) devices like the Meta Quest and PlayStation VR headsets are changing how players interact with games. This has raised concerns about how such immersive gameplay might affect youth. When even insiders like game developer Steve Bowler describe violence that “feels so much more real than anything else you've ever experienced that your body reacts to it immediately with fight or flight responses,”[22] audiences may be concerned about their potential real-world impacts. While research on the impact of violent VR games is still new, early findings indicate that players experience no difference in guilt,[23] aggression or hostility,[24] but that they can experience greater fear when compared to those playing the same game on a regular screen.[25]

The 24-hour news cycle

In 1980, Ted Turner founded CNN, the first 24-hour news television station, revolutionizing people’s relationship to current events. Nine years later, journalist Eric Pooley coined the phrase “if it bleeds, it leads,” referring to the pressure that news outlets feel to highlight violent and sensational stories for higher ratings.[26] While there’s evidence that this is only partly true of Canadian news outlets in general,[27] the demands of a 24-hour cycle, in which news is constantly “breaking” and producers have less time to judge whether or not certain images are appropriate, means there’s significant pressure to run anything that might be a “scoop.”

Livestreaming and social media

Though nearly all social networks and video sharing sites prohibit graphic violence, the sheer quantity of content posted to them means that some will always slip through. The need to review that content also takes a tremendous psychological toll on the content moderators for those sites, who may have to view hundreds of violent acts per day.[28] In particular, livestreaming has been used to broadcast violent acts in real time, including hate-motivated mass murders. Although platforms usually remove these videos quickly after they occur, it’s often difficult to prevent them from being shown live or from copies being made and shared before the original is deleted.[29]

[1] Domestic Movie Theatrical Market Summary 1995 to 2024 (2024). The Numbers. https://www.the-numbers.com/market/

[2] Seariac, H. (2024, January 31). Is the film rating system accurate? Deseret News. https://www.deseret.com/entertainment/2023/9/22/23883284/is-the-rating-system-accurate/

[3]Statista. (2023, July 27). Box office revenue in the U.S. & Canada 1995-2023, by movie rating. https://www.statista.com/statistics/433709/highest-grossing-movies-domestic-box-office-rating/

[4] The Entertainment Software Association. (2022). Essential Facts About the Video Game Industry. https://www.theesa.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/2022-Essential-Facts-About-the-Video-Game-Industry.pdf

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Santucci, S. (2024, February 7). U.S. consumer video game spending totaled $57.2 billion in 2023 - Entertainment Software Association. Entertainment Software Association. https://www.theesa.com/news/u-s-consumer-video-game-spending-totaled-57-2-billion-in-2023/

[9] Hellerman, J. (2024, January 31). Intense movie scenes. No Film School. https://nofilmschool.com/most-intense-movie-scenes

[10] Waxman, S. (1990). “Hollywood Attuned to World Markets.” Washington Post, A1.

[11] Pavlik, K. (2019, December 13). Actors and Movies with the Most Dialogue. Kaylin Pavlik. https://www.kaylinpavlik.com/long-winded-actors-and-movies-with-the-most-dialogue/

[12] Barranco, R. E., Rader, N. E., & Trinh, M. (2019). Ticket sales and violent content in popular movies. Deviant Behavior, 41(8), 1005–1017. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2019.1596535

[13] Ma, A. (2019). China is ramping up censorship of its movie industry ahead of the communist party’s 70^th-anniversary celebrations, and Hollywood is stepping in to fill the void. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-movie-censorship-gives-hollywood-advantage-2019-9

[14] Savistsky, S. (2019). Hollywood’s cave to China on censorship. Axios. https://www.axios.com/hollywood-movies-china-censorship-bba26aa9-b122-4b2c-80e1-054394414698.html

[15] Bonus, J. A., Matthews, N. L., & Wulf, T. (2019). The impact of moral expectancy violations on audiences’ parasocial relationships with movie heroes and villains. Communication Research, 48(4), 550–572. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650219886516

[16] Leung, T. C., & Qi, S. (2022). Globalization and the rise of action movies in Hollywood. Journal of Cultural Economics, 47(1), 31–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-021-09438-z

[17] Hartmann, T. (2017). The ‘Moral Disengagement in Violent Videogames’ Model. Game Studies, 17(2).

[18] Francis, B. (2021). Six Days in Fallujah tramples over the human cost of the Iraq War. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/opinion-i-six-days-in-fallujah-i-tramples-over-the-human-cost-of-the-iraq-war

[19] Entertainment Software Association of Canada. (2024). Top Selling Games in Canada for 2023. https://theesa.ca/#topten

[20] Kain, E. (2020). The 20 Best-selling video games of 2019. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2020/01/17/the-20-best-selling-video-games-of-2019/?sh=7dbe4c8873da

[21] Shoshani, A. & Krauskopf, M. (2021). The Fortnite social paradox: The effects of violent-cooperative multi-player video games on children's basic psychological needs and prosocial behavior. Computers in Human Behavior, 116, 106641. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106641

[22] Kuchera, B. (2016, February 26). How should parents treat violence in virtual reality? Polygon. https://www.polygon.com/2016/2/26/11120792/how-should-parents-treat-violence-in-virtual-reality

[23] Seibert, J. C. (2020). The presence of guilt: The role of presence in feelings of guilt in violent video games [PhD dissertation, Florida State University]. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2454643095?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses

[24] Drummond, A., Sauer, J. D., Ferguson, C. J., Cannon, P. R., & Hall, L. C. (2021). Violent and non-violent virtual reality video games: Influences on affect, aggressive cognition, and aggressive behavior. Two pre-registered experiments. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 95, 104119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2021.104119

[25] Lemmens, J. S., Simon, M., & Sumter, S. R. (2021). Fear and loathing in VR: the emotional and physiological effects of immersive games. Virtual Reality, 26(1), 223–234. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-021-00555-w

[26] Pooley, E. (1989). Grins, Gore, and Videotape: The Trouble with Local TV News. New York Magazine, 22, 36-44. https://books.google.ca/books?id=_OcCAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

[27] MacRae, K. (2016). Does it lead if it bleeds? An analysis of Toronto newspapers and their coverage of trauma-related events [Master of Journalism thesis, Concordia University]. https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/981383/

[28] Newton, C. (2019). “The Trauma Floor: The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America” The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona

[29] Grygiel, J. (2019). “Livestreamed massacre means it’s time to shut down Facebook Live.” The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/livestreamed-massacre-means-its-time-to-shut-down-facebook-live-113830