MEDIA & VIOLENCE – A Transnational Perspective

© 2025 Keren Wang — Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Educational use permitted with attribution; all other rights reserved. For permission requests, please contact the author directly.

This lesson module examines the contested and ambivalent relationship between media and violence from historical and transnational perspectives.

1. Violence as Ritual & Power: Historical and Global Perspectives

Let’s open this session with a reference from Greek mythology: consider the telltale of Prometheus, whose theft of fire from the Olympian gods for humanity’s benefit inadvertently brought both civilization and destruction. Like Prometheus’s fire, the development of media technology simultaneously brings enlightenment and cataclysm.

1.1 Rhetorical Artifacts and Human Sacrifice

The history of the development of writing technology overlaps with the history of war propaganda and human sacrifice.^[1] As early as the Narmer Palette, one of the earliest hieroglyphic artifacts ever found from circa 3200 BCE depicting scenes of conquest and violence:

Similarly, during the height of the Chinese Bronze Age, also known as the Shang dynasty (c. 1250–1046 BC) produced ritual bronze artifacts at monumental proportions — such as the 833 kg (1,836 lbs) Houmuwu Ding — one of the heaviest bronze vessel from the ancient world — and the 13-foot (3.96 m) tall Sanxingdui bronze tree (c. 1200 BC):

Yet oracle bone inscriptions—the progenitors of the modern Chinese writing system—from this period also reveal that these magnificent bronze vessels were often used as votive  props in violent, state-sponsored spectacles: ritual human sacrificesperformed as part of the king’s divination ceremonies.^[2]

(See  relevant discussion from my earlier post on the relationship between oracle bone script and human sacrifice in early Chinese history)

Moving to ancient Mesoamerica, we see similar patterns in King Ixtlilxochitl’s Flower Wars (1454). Rulers of Tenochtitlan regularized warfare through ritualized warfare and mythological justifications to maintain control (see  relevant discussion from this earlier post), revealing that the history of societal violence and media technology have always entangled at intersections of power.^[3]

1.2 Portrayals of Scapegoating 

Societies often look for scapegoats to explain violence depicted in the media. Historically, communities at the periphery of power often became the victims of such ritualized blame. Consider the ancient Hellenistic apotropaic ritual of pharmakós, which a scapegoat—often a slave or a disabled person — was exiled or sometimes killed to purify the community and avert crisis.^[4]

Similarly, historian Wolfgang Behringer’s research draws connections between intensified episodes of “witch hunt” violence with periods of food insecurity throughout early modern Europe, highlighting how societies often externalize blame during crises via scapegoating narratives.^[5]

Through this high-altitude historical survey, we can begin to draw parallels between past ritual practices and the patterns of our own time. Modern rhetoric and media representations often ritualize mass layoffs, austerity measures, labor policies, and national security campaigns—performances that both naturalize exploitation and aestheticize sacrifice. In doing so, they often exploit workers and communities displaced from the centers of power and the civic imaginary.

---

2. New Media & New Intimacy with Violence

Let’s transition from historical fragments into contemporary structures of media violence; as new forms of media emerge, they bring with them a new intimacy with death and destruction.

Reflecting on Susan Sontag’s critical remarks regarding Vietnam War news coverage, she noted: “The war America waged in Vietnam, the first to be witnessed day after day by television cameras, introduced the home front to a new intimacy with death and destruction.” She further stated, “The understanding of war among people who have not experienced war is now chiefly a product of the impact of these images.”^[6] This apparent encroachment of violent media into the intimacy of everyday life also had the rhetorical impact of disenchanting the ritualized veneer of warfare. Paradoxically, the unrelenting presence of these gruesome war footages not only fueled anti-war public sentiments and constrained the draft but also catalyzed burgeoning civil rights movements across the United States, ultimately reshaping both public memory and the human rights landscape in the 1960s and ’70s.^[7]

On the other hand, such a dark trajectory of modern mass media is ever-present. It is important to remind ourselves that the same rhetorical channels which enlighten and connect us can also be harnessed to catalyze and legitimize violence.

2.1 The Media’s Role in the Rwandan Genocide

The Rwandan genocide of 1994 starkly illustrates this paradox, serving as a haunting testament to media’s dual capacity to inform and manipulate.^[8]

In this dreadful episode, RTLM radio broadcasts incited genocide by weaving populist rhetoric that reinterpreted longstanding historical grievances as immediate and existential threats, thus mobilizing ordinary citizens to perpetrate unspeakable atrocities. These broadcasts exemplified mass media’s capacity for the weaponization of public memory and can directly catalyze mass violence while fundamentally altering the political landscape.^[9]

Moreover, the power of radio as a tool of mass mobilization is vividly demonstrated by the RTLM case. Detailed transcripts reveal that what might once have been regarded as a democratizing medium became a deliberate instrument of incitement, repurposed to galvanize a divided populace into acts of mass human sacrifice. The broadcasts adeptly reconfigured the collective recollection of colonial history into a narrative of “Hutu domination,” a framing that justified extreme measures as corrective actions or revolutionary rectification.^[10]

Equally significant is the role of media storytelling as a political arsenal. Figures like Georges Ruggiu did not merely relay information; they delivered lessons in history, using a rhetoric of revelation that simultaneously exposed and obscured the truth. By framing their narratives as authoritative interpretations of the past, they legitimized brutal actions while cloaking them in the guise of historical necessity.^[11]

This duality of truth, both unveiled and veiled, served to desensitize audiences to the human cost of sectarian violence and to justify increasingly extreme sacrifices.

---

3. Violence and Digital Rhetoric

Let’s shift gears from our high-altitude historical survey of mediated violence to the complexities of our digital era.

The transformative power of communication technologies and digital rhetoric is far from static, as evidenced by today’s media landscape dominated by social media platforms, streaming services, generative artificial intelligence, and algorithm-driven news feeds. This ongoing technological acceleration compels us to interrogate prevalent myths about the nexus between violence and digital media, scrutinizing whether these assertions hold true in an era defined by immediacy and fragmentation. We will critically interrogate common myths and legitimate concerns underpinning contemporary debates, analyze recent trends that shape our global communication environment, and explore the transnational fault lines that continue to challenge the status quo.

3.1 Dispelling Myths and Rectifying Names

A pervasive myth in the digital discourse is that violent content has become more prevalent today. Research by Signorielli et al. (2019) shows that the proportion has remained consistent, although our exposure has increased. ^[12] While the overall proportion of violent media content remains consistent, the increased volume and variety of our consumption, coupled with decentralized content circulation, have intensified our exposure.

Another widely held belief is that violent video games directly lead to criminal behavior. However, studies such as those conducted by Kühn et al. (2019) find minimal evidence to support this direct causation. [13] Despite the moral panic that often accompanies discussions of video game violence, the empirical evidence suggest that the relationship between gameplay and real-world criminality is far more complex and mediated by a host of other contextual factors.[14]

While this perspective invites a more nuanced understanding of the gap between policy rhetoric surrounding media violence and the actual causal relationship, it does not diminish the fact that media violence has significant negative impact  on long-term mental health and child development—a concern underscored in the 2015 paper by Bushman and Huesmann.^[15]

We are also witnessing a rapidly increasing number of young people reporting that they have become victims of violence on social media. This phenomenon has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.^[16]

The American Academy of Family Physicians’ Violence Position Paper (2020) highlights that up to 35 percent of teens have experienced some form of aggression through social media channels. The same report indicates that one in four cell phone users aged 12 to 17 have been bullied or harassed via text messages and phone calls, while 15 percent report receiving text messages containing sexually suggestive images.^[17]

3.2 Growth in Online Child Abuse Imagery

Perhaps the most disturbing ongoing development stems from today’s online platforms catered to younger audiences, with emerging evidence suggesting an increase in violent content specifically targeting children on platforms like YouTube Kids. A recent study by Papadamou et al. (2019) documents content explicitly designed to manipulate recommendation algorithms for kids, often incorporating beloved children’s characters in deeply inappropriate scenarios.^[18] This terrifying trend became apparent in the 2010s and has accelerated since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.^[19]
Most creators behind these “children’s hellscape” media contents appear to be independent, anonymous content producers, exploiting gaps in platform oversight. Many of them were motivated by the potential for ad revenue. By appropriating popular franchise characters and addictive sensorial repetitions, they could capture high view counts and thus generate income from advertisement impressions. In some instances, it seems the algorithms that power platforms like YouTube inadvertently amplified this content by recommending it to viewers, particularly in contexts targeting children.^[20]

Definitive profiles of all such creators are hard to pin down due to the decentralized nature of online content creation. A number of pieces produced in the late 2010s are linked to studios registered in Southeast Asia, such as LOR Media and SuperKidsShop.com in Vietnam.

By the 2020s, such children-targeting “digital hellscape”  further expanded to live streaming contents featuring video game titles popular with children, such as Minecraft and Among Us.

 

Such trends illuminate the darker underbelly of a digital ecosystem that, while democratizing information, also exposes vulnerable populations to harmful content. As we move forward, it becomes increasingly important to move beyond simplistic narratives and address both the myths and the legitimate concerns that characterize the rapidly evolving landscape of transnational digital rhetoric.

---

4. Cyber-scam Labor Camps: A Transnational Crisis

Lastly, let’s turn our focus to the ongoing crisis involving cyber-scam labor camps in Myanmar, which exemplifies the sinister intersection of media, violence, and transnational exploitation.

Thousands are lured through deceptive online advertisements promising lucrative jobs, only to find themselves trapped in junta-backed forced labor camps, compelled to engage in cyber-scamming operations.^[21]  These well-funded operations coerce victims (mostly foreign nationals) into scamming global internet users, often through cryptocurrency fraud, sextortion, and other “pig butchering“ schemes. Passports are seized, and failure to comply can lead to brutal consequences, including alleged threats organ harvesting and forced prostitution.^[22]

The media, in the case of transnational online scam labor camps, becomes a vehicle of organized deception and clandestine control, facilitating widespread violence and human rights abuses on a global scale. This ongoing but underexposed case starkly reminds us of digital media’s potential to be weaponized by a wide range of state, non-state, or perhaps even algorithmically generated rhetorical agents, raising critical questions about global accountability, digital regulation, and the urgent need for comprehensive media literacy to protect vulnerable populations.

Let’s consider our initial questions again. When and where does media violence most significantly impact society? Who holds responsibility in today’s highly decentralized media landscape? Is causation clearly established, or are we interpreting correlations selectively? Finally, looking forward, how might evolving technologies shape the dynamics of media violence?

---

References

1. Wang, Keren. Legal and Rhetorical Foundations of Economic Globalization: An Atlas of Ritual Sacrifice in Late-Capitalism. Routledge, 2019.
2. Eidinow, Esther. “The Ancient Greek Pharmakos Rituals: A Study in Mistrust.” 69, no. 5-6 (2022): 489-516.
3. Wang, Keren. Legal and Rhetorical Foundations of Economic Globalization: An Atlas of Ritual Sacrifice in Late-Capitalism. New York: Routledge, 2019.
   Chapter 2, “Interdisciplinary Overview,” 25–39.
4. Wang, Keren. Legal and Rhetorical Foundations of Economic Globalization: An Atlas of Ritual Sacrifice in Late-Capitalism. New York: Routledge, 2019: 37-38.
5. Sontag, Susan. “Memory as a Freeze-Frame: Extracts from ‘Looking at War’.” Diogenes 51, no. 1 (2004): 113-118.
6. Lucks, Daniel S. Selma to Saigon: The Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. University Press of Kentucky, 2014.
7. McCoy, Jason. “Making violence ordinary: radio, music and the Rwandan genocide.” African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music 8, no. 3 (2009): 85-96.
8. Kellow, Christine L., and H. Leslie Steeves. “The role of radio in the Rwandan genocide.” Journal of communication 48, no. 3 (1998): 107-128.
9. Fujii, Lee Ann. “Transforming the moral landscape: the diffusion of a genocidal norm in Rwanda.” Journal of Genocide Research 6, no. 1 (2004): 99-114.
10. Dallaire, Roméo. Media and mass atrocity: The Rwanda genocide and beyond. McGill-Queen’s Press-MQUP, 2019.
11. Signorielli, Nancy, J. Morgan, and D. Shanahan. “Media Trends of Violence Over Time: A Meta Analysis 1995–2015.” Journalism Quarterly, 2019.
12. Kühn, Simone, et al. “Does Playing Violent Video Games Cause Aggression? A Longitudinal Intervention Study.” Molecular Psychiatry 24, no. 8 (2019): 1220–1234.
13. Ferguson, Christopher J. “Blazing Angels or Resident Evil? Can Violent Video Games Be a Force for Good?” Review of General Psychology 14, no. 2 (2010): 68.
14. Bushman, Brad J., and L. Rowell Huesmann. “Twenty-Five Years of Research on Violence in Digital Games and Aggressive Outcomes.”
    Current Opinion in Psychology 35 (2020): 1–6.
15. Babvey, Pouria, Fernanda Capela, Claudia Cappa, Carlo Lipizzi, Nicole Petrowski, and Jose Ramirez-Marquez. “Using social media data for assessing children’s exposure to violence during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Child abuse & neglect 116 (2021): 104747
16. American Academy of Family Physicians. “Violence Position Paper.” American Academy of Family Physicians, 2020. https://www.aafp.org/about/policies/all/violence-position-paper.html.
17. Papadamou, Kostantinos, Antonis Papasavva, Savvas Zannettou, Jeremy Blackburn, Nicolas Kourtellis, Ilias Leontiadis, Gianluca Stringhini, and Michael Sirivianos. “Disturbed youtube for kids: Characterizing and detecting disturbing content on youtube.” arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.07046 (2019).
18. Aggarwal, Sajal, and Dinesh Kumar Vishwakarma. “Protecting our children from the dark corners of YouTube: A cutting-edge analysis.” In 2023 4th IEEE global conference for advancement in technology (GCAT), pp. 1-5. IEEE, 2023. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10353306.
19. “7 Months Inside an Online Scam Labor Camp” The New York Times, December 17, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/asia/myanmar-cyber-scam.html. 
20. “Myanmar: Investigation Unveils Chinese-Run Telecom Fraud Industry in Golden Triangle Region.” Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.
    August 30, 2023.
    https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/myanmar-investigation-on-chinese-run-telecom-fraud-industry-in-the-golden-triangle/