Violent Program Content in Music Video

Abstract

VioLit summary: OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study by Caplan was to assess the level of violence in music videos and specifically to determine if music videos portray women as victims more often than men and if they portray men as more violent than women. METHODOLOGY: A quasi-experimental design was employed for this study. The research analyzed a sample of MTV (Music Television) videos through content analysis. The study used a two-stage cluster sampling technique. The videos were collected during a 15 day period. One hour of each 24 hour period was randomly chosen. A total of 15 hours of music videos were selected for analysis. There were a total of 139 videos and 418 characters. The characters included 332 males and 86 females. The coding of the videos was done by trained coders. The primary units of analysis were videos and characters. Variables such as sex of each character, number of violent acts, and protagonist/victim of violent acts were coded. The study used the Incident Classification and Analysis Form (ICAF) definition of violence: Force or the compelling threat of force that may result in harm to life or to valued objects. Violence involves harmful or antisocial consequences. Violence involves behavior which violates, damages or abuses another person, animal or valued (p. 146). The research defined the victim as the object of the violence and the protagonist as the perpetrator of the violence. FINDINGS/DISCUSSION: The author's hypotheses were that females are the victims of significantly more violence than are males and that males are significantly more violent than females. The study found that music videos are more violent than commercial television. The literature reported that prime time television programs average 5.21 violent acts an hour. The study found that music videos average 10.18 violent acts an hour. The data showed that women were not shown as victims more often than men. It was found that there was no significant difference between sex and protagonist/victim status. The study found that men were not more violent than women in the videos. It was shown that there was no significant difference between sex and number of violent acts. It was found that both men and women are portrayed as victims and protagonists. The research noted that in many videos a man attacked a woman and then the woman attacked the man in the next scene. The author concluded that rock videos are dominated by violence and contain almost twice as much violence as commercial television. AUTHOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS: The author recommended that future studies of music videos should consider sampling a larger population than MTV. He suggested that future studies examine sexuality in music videos as well as music videos and the new wave subculture. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado) Media Violence Effects Exposure to Violence Portrayal of Women Music Violence Music Video Television Viewing Television Violence Gender Differences Program-Film Content Violence Against Women 09-04