Reader Response # 1: Aggression: the Impact of Media Violence

Sissela Bok’s essay, “Aggression: the Impact of Media Violence,” is a strong argument in such that she uses powerful tone, compelling language, and statistical evidences. Bok’s powerful tone and compelling language grasp readers’ attention and allow them to be involved in the discussion. Throughout the essay, Bok supports her main ideas with statistical evidences and facts, demonstrating that she is cumulative and knowledgeable about the topic. Moreover, Bok creates fairness and credibility when she admits the opposing side’s arguments in her discussions that media violence is not the sole cause of societal violence, that there are other factors involved, and that the correlation between them is small. Her statistical evidences and discussion on the “aggressor affect” make her argument more prevailing toward readers, because it allows them to vividly comprehend how media violence can arouse aggression.

Beside using statistical evidences to support her argument, Bok makes logical appeals to readers by comparing the causal relationship between media violence and aggression with that between tobacco smoking and cancer and between drunken driving and automobile. By incorporating such analogy, Bok injects the logical message in the reader’s mind that although causal relationship between media violence and aggression is probabilistic or indirect but if most people are against smoking and drunken driving, then the risk factors within media violence should also be diminished. Nonetheless, it is a weak analogy because although all of them share a common point, an indirect causal relationship, the probabilistic correlation between drunken driving and automobile and between tobacco smoking and cancer might be higher. Yet, this analogy could be strong if Bok provides developing details about their similarities.

Overall, Bok’s argument is effective. Similarly, I agree with her position that media program should lesson violence in their channels because it creates desensitization and affects viewers in some negative ways. For instance, whenever I view violence on television or films, I have disturbing sleep throughout the night because the destructive, intriguing images constantly keep appearing in my mind. Therefore, I rarely watch violent media. Yet, I do not know how young children could tolerate the distraught and brutal imagery of violence within the media.