Issue Paper-draft 2

Media Violence-The Potential Inciter of School Bullying in Taiwan

        Media violence should not be exposed to the students too much and need to be restricted properly to prevent the potential school bullying occur. In recent years, school bullying becomes a popular issue in Taiwan. Due to the mass media, we are able to see many school violent cases through the news reports and the papers. The government and the public also gradually take school bullying seriously and promote ‘Anti-Bullying’ activity. Although it seems that the media helps people be aware of the importance of preventing school bullying, the media actually is one of major causes to school bullying. 

School bullying has existed all the time. The occurrence of school bullying results from many elements, and it is very likely that the single school violent event consists of some reasons leading to the bullying. According to lots of research and investigative papers, school bullying may be concerned with cultural factor, social issue, family reason, and personal element, etc. As for the media, its influence can be thought as a currently possible element of causing school bullying comparing with the factors mentioned before because it cannot make the great effect on school bullying until it has been developed maturely and common in the society. And the media which is attributed to increase school bullying is so-called ‘media violence’.

The media violence is that the media presents the violence to the audience or it raises the violence happening to the public. Even if the media’s purpose of demonstrating violent scene does not orient to growing school bullying, some studies shows that the violence communicated by the media still has the impact on children and teenagers. Take the hot movie made in Taiwan, Monga for example, it involves school bullying and gangster culture in the early time in Taiwan and has lots of the violent scenes for the plot’s need. Although the director’s intention of making this movie is to represent his youth memory, the plot about adolescent violence also impresses the audience, and even makes the trend of imitating in schools. Some news report that a few students think that fighting back with other students who bully his friends is the expression of brotherhood after seeing Monga. Movies are one of the means that the media uses to show the violence, there are also a variety of communicative ways, including TV, magazines, music, video games, and the Internet.

Apart from that, the media can become the incentive which stirs the students bully someone in school. The incentive is born from the over violent pictures for attracting the audience's more attention in some TV news, newspapers like Apple Daily and magazines like NextMedia. Further, in the pop music, teenagers  also learn the verbal violence from the lyrics, especially in the rap such as the American singer, 50 cent, whose songs often appears the violent and dirty words. And it is no need to say that the violent video games or online games may be possible to make the students who play the games produce the violence in school for being unable to tell the visual world from the real world. In addition, the Internet community is another stimulus. We can have the freedom of expressing our opinions and views on the Internet community, but when the freedom is misused, it may cause the conflicts as quarreling and even insulting on the Internet community like blogs or facebook. If a student collides with another student in the same school strictly on the blog or facebook and the situation is out of control, the student may abet his or her friends to give another student on the inferior side a ‘physical’ lesson; that is, they bully the student. 

       Thus, there is no denying that the media violence has the impact on school bullying. I know that it is explicit, but I will explore deeply why the media violence can make such a great effect on school bullying and how it makes it. The media has lots of the communicative ways, and how do those ways incite school bullying? It is the question that I want to figure out and do deep research in. And through searching for the answer to this question, I will subsequently prove my argument that the students should not contact too much media violence  for fear of being an aggressive person in school.