Marketing violence (and fear of it)

Marketing violence

No one knows better than the media industry that children and youth represent a huge market, due to both their own spending power and their influence on family spending decisions.

Media producers advertise in publications for adolescents, screen trailers for restricted movies on TV at times when kids are likely to be watching and recruit teens and children (sometimes as young as seven) to evaluate story concepts, commercials, trailers and rough cuts—even for R-rated movies. The film and video game industries also target children as young as four with toy tie-ins for adult-rated movies and games,[1] aiming to “create a brand relationship that lasts a lifetime.”[2] Therefore, even if a specific movie is unsuitable for children to watch, toys, t-shirts and other merchandising tie-ins are still considered suitable to purchase.

While profiting from and adverting violence, media are increasingly being used to advertise guns. The TV and movie industries have a long history of working with gun manufacturers, who provide free ‘prop-ified’ weapons, offer consulting on their use and sometimes pay for their brands to be featured. Appearing in a successful movie or show can boost a gun brand’s sales and keep them steady for decades.[3] On social media, influencers sport handguns and camouflage bikinis as a way of “taking the inherently ugly, seemingly undersigned world of weaponry and making it beautiful.”[4] While it may still be unclear whether violent video games cause violent behaviour, gun companies pay to have their products featured in these games.[5] The U.S. military has found that video games are an effective recruiting tool, whether in the form of “training games” like America’s Army or sponsored streaming sessions on YouTube or Twitch.[6]

In addition to advertising firearms, popular media also sells the heroic identity associated with gun ownership. Movies and TV shows are rife with examples of a “good guy with a gun”[7] – the sympathetic character with a strong moral compass, like Joel Miller from The Last of Us; the champion who defends the weak, like Orlando Oxford in The King’s Man; the rebellious hero whose recklessness saves the day, like Pete Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick. And, for many who own a gun, “carrying a weapon is a way to identify with that courageous ideal.”[8] Through Hollywood, the benefit to the firearms industry is two-fold: they portray guns as legitimate and effective ways to handle dangerous situations while also implying that the world is a dangerous place where violent crime is common and personal safety is at risk, underscoring the need of guns for protection.[9]

Marketing fear

Media violence is a popular social issue and it is one that can easily be co-opted, especially when it involves children and youth. As adults and parents promoting healthy media consumption and media literacy, we must avoid falling into the trap of emotional rhetoric designed to frighten rather than enlighten us.

Emotionally charged debates about the latest violent movie or offensive video game bring issues like media violence into the spotlight, but rarely provide concerned parents, children and citizens the tools to navigate them. Instead, media violence – whether in news or fiction – tend to stir exaggerated and distorted fears. A related phenomenon, “Mean World Syndrome,” coined by researcher George Gerbner, suggests that heavy TV viewers tend to perceive the world in ways that are consistent with the images on TV. Gerbner’s research found that those who watch greater amounts of television are more likely to:

• overestimate their risk of being victimized by crime;
• believe their neighbourhoods are unsafe;
• believe “fear of crime is a very serious personal problem”[10] and
• assume the crime rate is increasing, even when it’s not.[11]

For example, by focusing heavily on mass shootings, coverage of gun violence fails to address larger social issues or public health approaches,[12] while increased crime-based media consumption leads to an increased fear of crime and “punitive and defensive criminal justice policies”[13] such as the death penalty, three-strikes laws (life sentence for offenders with one or two prior serious convictions), stand your ground laws (allowing use of deadly force for self-defense) and open carry of firearms in public.[14]

As well as being exploited for political ends, media-induced fear is often used to sell surveillance, whether it’s embracing government surveillance in schools[15] or buying home monitoring devices to spy on your own property.[16] MediaSmarts’ research has shown for more than a decade that media coverage of online sexual exploitation – which typically misrepresents who ‘predators’ are, how they approach their victims and who is at risk of being targeted[17] - leads parents to monitor their children electronically.[18] However, this surveillance may lead to a breakdown of trust between parents and children, ironically putting children more at risk.[19]

[1] Watkins, M. (2023, August 6). 10 Children’s Toy Lines That Are Based on R-Rated Movies. MovieWeb. https://movieweb.com/childrens-toys-r-rated-movies/

[2] Sandy Hook Promise. (2023). Untargeting Kids: Protecting children from harmful firearm marketing. https://sandyhookpromise.app.box.com/s/vrnwapxftjewxusthvz89x6dntlybke3

[3] Baum, G., & Johnson S. (2016) “Locked and Loaded: The Gun Industry’s Lucrative Relationship with Hollywood.” The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved from https://features.hollywoodreporter.com/the-gun-industrys-lucrative-relationship-with-hollywood/

[4] Tiffany, K. (2019, June 19). Gun influencers on Instagram are a boon to gun companies. Vox. https://www.vox.com/features/2019/6/19/18644129/instagram-gun-influencers-second-amendment-tactical-community

[5] Parkin, S. (2019) Shooters: How Video Games Fund Arms Manufacturers. Eurogamer. Retrieved from https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-01-shooters-how-video-games-fund-arms-manufacturers

[6] Uhl, J. (2020) The US Military is Using Online Gaming to Recruit Teens. The Nation. Retrieved from https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/military-recruitment-twitch/

[7] Wilkinson, A. (2022, June 23). Hollywood movies have taught us we’re the good guy with a gun. Vox. https://www.vox.com/23180187/hollywood-good-guy-gun-movies

[8] Wilkinson, A. (2022, June 23). Hollywood movies have taught us we’re the good guy with a gun. Vox. https://www.vox.com/23180187/hollywood-good-guy-gun-movies

[9] Romer, D. (2021). Does Hollywood need guns? Center for Scholars & Storytellers. https://www.scholarsandstorytellers.com/blog/guns-in-hollywood-movies-and-tv-shows

[10] Gerbner, G. (1988). Violence and Terror in the Mass Media. In Reports and Paper on Mass Communication (Vol. 102). The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000082684

[11] Ray, C. M., & Kort-Butler, L. A. (2013). What you See Is What you Get? Investigating how Survey Context Shapes the Association between Media Consumption and Attitudes about Crime. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 45(5), 914–932. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-019-09502-7

[12] Martin, M. (2023, January 28). Changing the Way Media Reports on Gun Violence. [Radio broadcast]. NPR. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1152350461

[13] Dolliver, M. J., Kenney, J. L., Reid, L. W., & Prohaska, A. (2018). Examining the relationship between media consumption, fear of crime, and support for controversial criminal justice policies using a nationally representative sample. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 34(4), 399–420. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043986218787734

[14] Ibid.

[15] Marlow, C., Greytak, E., Duarte, K., & Sun, S. (2023). Digital Dystopia: The Danger in Buying What the EdTech Surveillance Industry is Selling. American Civil Liberties Union. https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/legal-documents/digital_dystopia_report_aclu.pdf

[16] Haskins C. (2019) How Ring Transmits Fear to American Suburbs. Motherboard. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywaa57/how-ring-transmits-fear-to-american-suburbs

[17] Kohm, S. A. (2019). Claims-making, child saving, and the news media. Crime, Media, Culture, 16(1), 115–137. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659019838003

[18] Steeves, V. (2012) Young Canadians in a Wired World, Phase III: Talking to Youth and Parents About Life Online. MediaSmarts. Retrieved from https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/default/files/publication-report/full/ycwwiii-youth-parents.pdf

[19] Adorjan, M., Ricciardelli, R., & Saleh, T. (2022). Parental Technology Governance: Teenagers’ understandings and responses to parental digital mediation. Qualitative Sociology Review, 18(2), 112–130. https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.18.2.06