Information Literacy, Activity 3

When I first started searching out information on Violence on TV and its effect on children, I first started by searching 'violence and TV'.  I used the google search engine.  I was pretty mortified at this first search.  Six of the ten research results were pre-made essay papers you can either buy or download for free.  Most were tried and tested to get good grades.  What is this world coming to?I did find one good source from that first search from the organization, American Academy of Child And Adolescent Psychiatry.  They provided a good general overview of what the research says, however it was written in 2002, so I should probably find something a little more recent.  I found really good information from 'parentstv.org'

Most all of the information I found was from parent organizations, or psychiatric organizations.  I tried to find information from news organization and news reporters.  Sure enough I could not find much information at all.  I guess the news does not want their viewers to know the truth about how violent the shows they have are.  I did find one website that had tips for watching the news with their children.  The information sources I found did not have an agenda, with the exception of the websites trying to sell pre-made essays.  I did find information that I do consider pretty legitimate based on the organization the information is from.    

Who is funding the research?  Most of the information I found was from psychiatric and parent organizations.  Most of their research methods were looking over and compiling studies that have been made in the past from universities and organizations.  I suppose the parents organizations might have their own agenda of taking the media down, or improving the media.

The issue that emerged most important was that many, many tests have been done on this subject, and they collectively admit that TV violence does correlate with violence in children in many ways.   Such as becoming immune to violence, gradually accepting violence as a way to solve problems, and even imitating the violence they see on TV.  Because in the exercise were not supposed to search the scholarly journals I would be interested to see some more specific studies, and not a summary of them all.  I would like to know what age groups are most likely to imitate violence, and how much TV kids should watch.

My search in comparison to the cell phone search.  I do not think our search was completely similar.  We both used google to find answers to our questions.  The cell phone researcher found information that was funded by cell phone companies.  I thought I would find research funded by the TV stations say that TV was not violent.  In my searches I did not.  I am sure if I tried harder I could probably find some, but the TV producers information was not on the surface of the Web.  As in my research the cell phone researcher led to more questions.  The bloggers comment definitely added more questions such as the cell phone damage in your pockets to other parts of your body.  Also they added suggestions on where to look.  So if any of you have ideas for me, let me know!!

Sources I found most interesting:

http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/children_and_tv_violence

http://parentstv.org/PTC/publications/reports/stateindustryviolence/main.asp