Technology: Witness to Violence

I found this article ("Art as a target for vandals: The cost of freedom") in this morning's International Herald Tribune interesting and disturbing for a variety of reasons.  Not least of which is this paragraph towards the end:

Getting attention is always the bottom line. That the hooded Swedes with crowbars in Lund went straight to YouTube (the video has since been removed) was predictable and ominous, a case of Internet self-promotion that is minor compared with the beheadings in Iraq, but with the same idea: that direct technological access promotes acts of violence whose basic requirement is to be witnessed.

It is that last sentence, which I have highlighted in red, that is truly disturbing.  It is stated as a fact, but I wonder if that is the case.  On the surface, it seems common sensical to suppose that this statement could be valid, but I don't have any studies at my fingertips (truly I haven't looked yet) that would demonstrate a connection between technological access and (especially) visually "interesting" violence.  If it is true, it is certainly alarming given the growth of services such as YouTube.

This would be a great study for SNCR to pursue and/or publish in its Journal.  Please drop me a line if you are interested.

Comments

[john cass]

I would be interested if we do this later in 2008. I recall the TV violence study conducted on St. Helena, the island introduced TV for the first time and did not find any correlation between viewing and violence. But the introduction of Television did appear to build social relations between students as they then had the same talking points when they returned to the playground.