Ever notice that television news tends to exaggerate threats? Ever notice how a certain segment of the population tends to react to perceived threats before really thinking through the information that is available? It may well be that these people are just plain dumb, but at least some of them are probably salvageable if they would just learn how to think critically and analytically about the information they've been provided with. Intellectual self-defense skills might help them to resist knee-jerk emotional reactions. The following article provides a good example of how a large portion of the population uncritically bought into the hypothesis that there was a causal link between video game violence and other forms of violence.
Many folks are discussing Christopher Ferguson’s latest paper on “The School Shooting / Violent Video Game Link: Causal Relationship or Moral Panic?” And with good reason. It’s an important look at how “moral panics” develop in modern society, in this case around video games. [Moral panics is a subject I have written on at length here many times before. Alice Marwick's brilliant article on "technopanics" is also worth reading in this regard].
CLICK HERE FOR MORE --> http://techliberation.com/2009/01/23/video-games-and-moral-panic/