For Video Games, Bad News Is Good News: News Reporting of Violent Video Game Studies

Abstract

News coverage of video game violence studies has been critiqued for focusing mainly on studies supporting negative effects and failing to report studies that did not find evidence for such effects. These concerns were tested in a sample of 68 published studies using child and adolescent samples. Contrary to our hypotheses, study effect size was not a predictor of either newspaper coverage or publication in journals with a high-impact factor. However, a relationship between poorer study quality and newspaper coverage approached significance. High-impact journals were not found to publish studies with higher quality. Poorer quality studies, which tended to highlight negative findings, also received more citations in scholarly sources. Our findings suggest that negative effects of violent video games exposure in children and adolescents, rather than large effect size or high methodological quality, increase the likelihood of a study being cited in other academic publications and subsequently receiving news media coverage.

Emotion Recognition and Inhibitory Control in Adolescent Players of Violent Video Games

“…Playing video games may have positive effects (Granic, Lobel, & Engels, 2014 ; Halbrook, O’Donnell & Msetfi, 2019 ), especially on cognitive performance, such as selective attention (Green & Bavelier, 2003 ). However, the main concerns of the public debate are focused on the effects of violent video games on young players’ well‐being (Lobel, Engels, Stone, Burk, & Granic, 2017 ) and possible aggressive behavior (Copenhaver, Mitrofan, & Ferguson, 2017 ). This is in line with the General Aggression Model (Allen, Anderson, & Bushman, 2018 ; Anderson & Bushman, 2002 ), which states that repeated violent video game exposure would result in aggressive behavior.…”

Are Video Games Still a Boys’ Club? How German Public Television Covers Video Games

“…Prommer, Linke & Furtwängler, 2019) and violent content (c.f. Copenhaver, Mitrofan, & Ferguson, 2017). Based on the outlined importance of the German public broadcasters (Aigner, Handrich, Mattes, &Pave, 2017), an exploratory content analysis was established to broaden the field for future in-depth analyses.…”

“…There are several possible explanations for this finding. First, as Copenhaver, Mitrofan & Ferguson (2017) point out, the likelihood of a study on video game exposure being cited in the news is higher if negative effects of violence were found. This may foster a general tendency to reference violent content in general.…”

Seven‐year‐olds' references to internal states when playing with toy figures and a video game

“…However, the nature of children's engagement with video games in addition to traditional play with toys is largely unexplored. This is particularly important given the negative representation of video games in the news coverage (Copenhaver, Mitrofan, & Ferguson, 2017 ) that may have impeded investigations about positive aspects of video gaming (Bormann & Greitemeyer, 2015 ). During traditional play, children often use internal state language (ISL) to refer to the thoughts, feelings, and desires of themselves and others, which provides an insight into their appreciation of people's internal worlds of themselves and of others (Carpendale & Lewis, 2015 ).…”