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Abstract
Politicians, interest groups, and scholars often mention violent video games as a possible cause of societal violence. Press releases have the possibility to inform the public about how aggression is measured in academic research on violent video games, but they also have the potential to sensationalize the topic when comparisons to societal violence are made. The influence of these two factors (measurement details; violence framing) was tested with an online experiment (N = 505) using a 2 (violence framing: present vs. absent) x 2 (measurement details: present vs. absent) between-subjects design. Respondent sex had the strongest influence on the expected effects of violent video games, while features of the press release had relatively less effect that were also contingent on respondent sex.
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T. Franklin Waddell
T. Franklin Waddell (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, 2016) is an assistant professor in the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida. His research interests include the effects of new media that either afford the opportunity for self-expression (such as avatars) or that allow individuals to monitor the collective opinion of others (such as online comments).