Lately, social media has seen yet another ripple within the medium of video games creating negative influences of violence towards younger audiences. This concept is fascinating as the reaction of ‘moral panic’ within video game violence has occurred before. This blog will uncover what a moral panic is and the current discussion around this concept and why this topic can fall under a ridiculous nature within society and the worry around that panic. Moral panics as defined by the theorist Stanley Cohen in his book Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 1972, is when a “condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests” (Cohen, 1972, p. 105). The media, according to Cohen, plays a massive role in enforcing moral panic, even if it is playing a game. According to Cohen, the media overacting to an aspect of behaviour which may be a challenge to existing social norms, since the media response and representation of that behaviour helps to define it, communicate it and portrays it as a model for outsiders to observe and adapt. So, the moral panic by society represented in the media fuels further socially unacceptable behaviours (Hunt, 1997). A moral panic sends society into mass hysteria over an issue or event that occurs. The public believes that whatever concerns reported upon is happening everywhere (Garland, 2008).
(Fortnite Gif image by: gfycat)
Moral panic is recently encompassing ‘Kidulthood’ on how video games are driving the individuals who play them to end up violent and commit violent acts and or crimes. This panic of ‘Kidulthood’ depicts young people as deviants for playing video games. The media displays young gamers as irresponsible, which lead hedonistic lifestyles and seem to have no clue about the consequences of their actions (Kehily & Nayak, 2013 p. 11). This ‘Kidulthood’ panic has been something that we have seen in the media previously and is fabricated from issues in first-person shooter genre games and has come up in numerous different classifications as well. The apparent connection between how this knowledge of such violence occurring is from these games enabling the player to slaughter and kill other players. Nevertheless, no evidence hints that video games in the long haul make individuals more violent or more inclined to do vicious things, individuals favour this argument. As recently President Donald Trump held a gathering at the white house on video game viciousness, where he concurred computer games affected young gamers to end up brutal (Brandom, 2018). “Trump apparently opened this gathering by exhibiting a supercut of ridiculous video game passings, commenting “this is violent, isn’t it?”, his contention was advanced with no logical confirmation”. (Robertson, 2018). The concept of moral panics as referenced previously presents the idea that individuals will set their reasoning aside and decide on a more emotional response or reaction (Cohen, 1972, p. 55). This statement by Cohen forwards the idea around how a lot of misguided judgments and myths around video games turned out to be so widespread. As they are presented to be violent, addictive, just played by children or adolescent teenagers, builds individuals to become anti-social, undesirable, unhealthy and puts distance between reality (Greenfield, 2014 p. 71). We as a society acknowledge these statements to be false and hypocritical, which misrepresent or distort us as individuals.
In any case, now what we are battling in the media is a huge fuss about ‘Fortnite‘. Fortnite has the world at its feet and has snatched the hearts of many. The game is widely available on all gaming platforms and devices and is a ton of fun to play, and it is quite enjoyable. Moreover, there is a great deal of content surrounding ‘Fortnite’ now. It is extremely popular within all kinds of demographics, even for celebrities, such as Travis Scott and Drake streaming gameplay of ‘Fortnite’ on Twitch with Richard Tyler Blevins known as “Ninja” a famous American streamer playing a ‘Battle Royale’ match (Statt, 2018). Despite this diverse gaming audience, the game has bestowed the argument for video games and violence with some fuel as a lot of young children and teenagers play this game (Fenton, 2018). Since news outlets and journalists portraying the game as a ‘survival game’ style challenge where the main objective is to slaughter and kill, presenting it to be unnecessarily violent and merciless due to its last man standing goal (Plante, 2018). The individuals who have played Fortnite comprehend it’s comical and toon-like animation style, which allows the game to be viewed as not so serious compared to other games similar to Fortnite. Gamers comprehend the level of technique around a ‘Battle Royale’, the landscape and zone. The cooperating within flanks, material and source management and general competitive satisfaction alongside team-play techniques are a part of traditional sports (Hall, 2018). In any case, these aspects appear to be lost amongst the criticism and disagreements against Fortnite.
Regardless, would it be advisable for us to be stressed over all the panic? Obviously not! We know as of now that no authoritative research suggests video games result in individuals being more violent or being irresponsible nor living hedonistic lifestyles (Kehily & Nayak, 2013 p. 11). Also, to settle all the misguided judgments, we acknowledge that more than just adolescent boys play video games and we realise that video games are not creating health issues. Many things can make us unhealthy, for example, reading books and studying for long periods of time creates negative impacts for individuals (Kim, 2016). Evidently, some research is currently suggesting that the stimulation from video games provides psychotherapeutic effects for children and adolescents (Goh et al. 2008). However, we should be careful that perhaps video games are being utilised as a part of irrelevant circumstances to display other events and occurrences which are unrelated. Therefore, there are still issues surrounding video games, yet it has tied in with the comprehension of what they are and enabling things to get into a state as we witness now with Fortnite.
References
Brandom, R 2018, The White House meeting on video game violence was unproductive and bizarre, viewed 19 April 2018 <https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/8/17098230/trumps-video-game-violence-meeting-esa>
Cohen, S 1972, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers, 1st edn, London, Routledge.
Fenton, M, L 2018, What The Heck Is Fortnite, And Why Are My Kids Obsessed With It?, viewed 17 April 2018 <http://www.scarymommy.com/kids-obsessed-with-fortnite/>
Garland, D 2008, ‘Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal’, On the concept of moral panic, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 9-30.
Goh, D, H, Ang, R, P & Tan, H, C 2008, Strategies for designing effective psychotherapeutic gaming interventions for children and adolescents, Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 2217-2235.
Greenfield, P, M 2014, Mind and Media: The Effects of Television, Video Games, and Computers, 1st edn, New York, USA, Psychology Press.
Hall, C 2018, Why Fortnite Battle Royale’s surprise success isn’t a matter of luck, viewed 21 April 2018 <https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/17/17130676/fortnite-battle-royale-success>
Hunt, A 1997, ‘The British Journal of Sociology’, ‘Moral Panic’ and Moral Language in the Media, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 629-648.
Kehily, M, J, & Nayak, A 2013, Gender, Youth and Culture: Young Masculinities and Femininities, 2nd edn, London, Palgrave macmillan.
Kim, K 2016, Too Much Studying Could Actually Have Negative Health Effects, viewed 22 April 2018 <https://www.freshu.io/katie-kim/too-much-studying-can-actually-have-negative-health-effects>
Ninja 2018, Squads with Ninja, Drake, Travis Scott and JuJu!! – Fortnite Battle Royale Gameplay, online video, 15 March 2018, Ninja, viewed 20 April 2018 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4hk1jPRSrM>
Plante, C 2018, Fortnite Battle Royale’s new Blitz mode is fast, funny and perfect for mobile, viewed 19 April 2018 <https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/19/17139084/fortnite-battle-royale-blitz-mode-review-ps4-xbox-one-pc>
Robertson, A 2018, Here are all the games in Donald Trump’s ‘violence in video games’ supercut, viewed 17 April 2018 <https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/8/17098526/trump-white-house-violent-video-game-supercut-games?ref=gazelle.popsugar.com>
Statt, N 2018, Ninja played more Fortnite with Drake, who gave him $5,000 for winning a game, viewed 20 April 2018 <https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/10/17222702/fortnite-ninja-drake-twitch-stream-again>
The White House 2018, Violence in Video Games, online video, 8 March 2018, The White House, viewed 20 April 2018 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C_IBSuXIoo&feature=youtu.be&t=18>