The Violence Profile: Five Decades of Cultural Indicators Research

Abstract

This study examines violence in prime-time broadcast network television programs aired between 1967 and 2015. The data show that violence has been a consistent and central part of programming, although levels vary by genre. Violence decreased in the 1990s, due mostly to the greater prominence of sitcoms and crime-related procedurals (such as Law & Order and CSI), which feature fewer explicit acts of violence. However, violence is making a serious comeback on prime time, with four of the five measures we examined reaching historically high levels in the 2010s. The percentage of characters involved in violence remains lower than in earlier years. Despite some ebbs and flows over the years, and dramatic institutional and technological changes, even at its lowest points violence on television is never far from the scene and remains difficult for the heavy viewer to avoid.

Notes

¹ Funding came from the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Medical Association, the Administration on Aging, the Screen Actors’ Guild, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies (e.g., see Gerbner & Gross, 1976; Gerbner et al., 1978; Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1980).

² No data were collected in 2007 or 2014. Prime-time programs were those broadcast between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Monday through Saturday and between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Sunday. An additional seven spring samples were coded, in the 1970s and 1990s, but for consistency only fall data are presented here.

³ UPN and WB were part of the project between 1995 and 2006; they merged into the CW in 2006.

⁴ At Delaware, there were 19 sets of student coders, predominantly White and middle class; between two thirds and three fourths of the coders for each sample were women. Coders at Annenberg were predominantly White and middle class with about half men and half women. At Annenberg, roughly 12 coders were hired per year; at Delaware, class size varied from 18 to 25.

⁵ Based on Scott’s pi in the case of nominal data, and adjusted as needed to the scale of measurement, alpha was developed partly in conjunction with this project (see Gerbner, 1969a). Unlike measures of coder agreement, it represents observed disagreement corrected for disagreement expected by chance.

⁶ Reliability was computed in all years; it was not always included in the various violence profiles, although only variables meeting acceptable levels of reliability were analyzed and reported. Earlier reliability data are no longer available in raw form. For the period 1967–1979, the average reliability was reported to be .83 for number of violent actions, .77 for the significance of violence, .70 for committing violence, and .70 for victimization (Signorielli et al., 1982).

⁷ Although the reliability for characters who were victims of violence is .67 or below in some samples, this variable was used in combination the variable denoting characters who committed violence.

⁸ For comparison and exploratory purposes, we also tested all the other possible curves (including compound, logistic, logarithmic, inverse, and others), and none provided a better fit (based on the residuals) than the cubic.

⁹ Although sitcoms may have high rates of verbal aggression (Smith et al., 1998; Wilson et al., 1998; Wilson et al., 1997), such behavior does not fit—and is explicitly excluded from—the definition of violence used in the current study.

¹⁰ The number of original scripted series from online sources reached 117 in 2017, an increase of nearly 700% since 2012 (Otterson, 2018). Not even counting reality shows, nearly 500 original scripted series appeared across all major program sources in 2017.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nancy Signorielli

Nancy Signorielli (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1975) is a Professor Emerita in the Department of Communication at the University of Delaware. Her research interests include content studies, cultivation analysis, media effects, media and children.

Michael Morgan

Michael Morgan (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1980) is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research interests include cultivation analysis and media effects, technology, and policy.

James Shanahan

James Shanahan (Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Amherst, 1991) is Dean of The Media School at Indiana University Bloomington. His research interests include cultural indicators, cultivation theory, media effects, and environmental communication.