Measuring television violence: A review and suggestions for a new analytical perspective

Abstract

Previous research concerned with the assessment of the prevalence and salience of violence as a feature of television programming has fallen broadly into two types: (a) a programme-based approach in which programme content is analysed directly by trained coders in terms of a pre-selected and often narrowly defined system of classification; and (b) an audience-based approach of television content assessment which obtains viewers’ evaluations of programme titles but not of actual programme materials themselves. Conceptual and methodological limitations of each of these perspectives are discussed and two alternative, procedurally similar but theoretically distinguishable paradigms are outlined which are designed to overcome the problems of external validity which characterize most previous studies in this field. Each has the distinct advantage over previous methods of TV content analysis of permitting quantifiable audience-based assessments of programme materials. It is argued here that these techniques can provide definitions of television violence which are both practically useful and meaningful to the audience served by television.