Nature of violence on television

The violence shown on television may take on many different forms and involve a variety of different instruments or techniques of aggression. In this chapter, the violence monitored on television is classified according to an extensive taxonomy of physical forms and types of weapons or instruments of aggression. The significance of any analysis of the forms of violence on television rests on their potential to elicit varying degrees of audience response—perceptual, emotional and behavioural. Research concerned with measuring the effects of television violence and audience perceptions of violence on television has occasionally examined the way in which viewers’ responses can vary with the physical nature of the violence portrayed on screen.