Audience Theory

Key evidence

The Frankfurt school theorises in the 1920's and 30's that the mass media acted to restrict and control audiences to the benefit of corporate capitalism and governments.

The Bobo Doll Experiment

Very controversial piece of research that apparently proved that children copy violent behaviour. The experiment was carried out in 1961 by Albert Bandura. The experiment was that the children watched a video where an adult violently attacked a clown bobo doll. They were then taken to a room of toys and told they cannot touch the toys. The children were then led to a room with bobo dolls in it. The result was that 88% reacted violently and then 8 months later the same children were taken to the room with the bobo dolls in and 40% reacted still. There are many flaws within the methodology of the experiment.

There are many examples of films and games that have supposedly caused people to copy the violent actions of the films or games. Some of these had been banned but are now on show as society doesn't see them as much of a threat anymore. Examples of these are;

Child Play 3
1993
This film was blamed for the brutal murder of James Bulger.

Man hunt
2004
This game was blamed for the murder of Stefan Pakeerah by his friend Warren LeBlanc.

The Clockwork Orange
1971
This film was blamed for a number of rapes and violent attacks.

Severance
2006
This film was blamed for the murder of Simon Everitt.