Media Violence: Grounds for an Experiment?

This week’s blog theme is focused around the one and only experimental research. Experimental research is typically used for areas such as sociology and psychology, physics, chemistry, biology and more. Now I know for myself that when I hear of experimental research, my mind brings me back to my middle school days of setting up the independent and dependent variables in my science classes. Therefore, linking experimental research to the field of public relations seemed a bit strange to me at first. However, the more we learned about the importance of experimental research I was sure that it could be a key research tool in the world of public relations and the media! Here is a great website I found that really breaks down experimental research in a clear and concise matter if you’re curious.

Digging deeper into experimental research, I searched online for an example that I could relate to NBC Universal. Luckily, I found this awesome experiment that looked into media violence (which is relevant to all media corporations) that happened to be conducted by NBC along with other media companies like CBS. One experiment NBC did to explore this topic was done by presenting preadolescent and adolescent males in a security facility with a diet of aggressive or non-aggressive television programs over a six week period and measured their daily aggressive behavior. They found that the youngsters who watched the non-aggressive programs were more aggressive than the other group.

In addition, another experiment by NBC was conducted over a three year period from May 1970 to December 1973 in two cities, Fort Worth and Minneapolis. Interviews were conducted with samples of second- to sixth-grade boys and girls and a special sample of teenage boys. In the elementary school sample, the information on television viewing and measures of aggression was collected in six time periods over the three years.

Both these examples show that experimental research was needed because it was dealing with more of the sociology and psychology side of individuals. The topic of violence in the media is extremely important to media corporations and their public relations teams, who must work together to make sure their viewers are safe and no major crisis breaks out among the viewers.

Well that is all for now, I hope I have expanded your thoughts on the wide range of situations experimental research can be applied to! It’s hard to believe the semester is almost over and we are all getting down to our last few blog posts. See you next week : )