Mind Abuse: Media Violence and Its Threat to Democracy

By Rose A. Dyson

Book Overview

Although rogue elements on the internet have spawned concerns about foreign interference in elections, invasion of privacy, and the impact of hate speech, most people are still in denial about the harmful effects of media violence as entertainment. This new edition of Mind Abuse covers developments in the last twenty years, showing how the problem has grown with each new technological innovation and how relentless marketing victimizes countless young people around the world while the entertainment industry rakes in billions. Rose A. Dyson offers a wake-up call to parents, teachers, health professionals, and policy makers who deal with the aftermath of first-person shooter video gaming and social media abuses, such as cyberbullying, that encourage errant behavior from an early age. She shows that recent trends toward increased violence in popular culture are symptomatic of deeper social, economic, and ecological problems that require an urgent shift away from the status quo toward a more sustainable model for peaceful co-existence.

For over 30 years, Dyson has contributed to the debate over media violence. Here, she urges us to resist the corporate giants of the entertainment industries and reclaim the right to shape our own value systems and dreams. Blind consumption of media violence as entertainment, she argues, is not inconsistent with vital policies for a greener, healthier future.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 155164732X
• ISBN13: 9781551647326
• Release Date: February 2020
• Publisher: Black Rose Books
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Wow!

This book is far more grounded and effective than more well known works that criticize modern mass media. The author takes a multidisciplinary approach to the subject and does a very impressive job, too! Of great usefulness within the book are the numerous references (government documents, web sites) where you can find more information on the many topics collected together here. In 200 pages, this book has a lot of information and explanatory prose. Due to its multidisciplinary nature, many lay readers may find parts of it tricky to understand, and perhaps the book's main flaw is that it takes its readers' academic background for granted sometimes and fails to completely explain all the terms it uses. Still, this packs in a lot of info into 200 pages. As for media violence, I'm convinced! If the book alone doesn't do it for you, feel free to check up on its reference sources. Besides that, numerous major U.S. health-related associations (psychology, medicine, pediatrics, and others) have now released official statements stating that after long decades of research into the subject of the effects of media violence, an effective consensus has now been reached about the reality of these effects. In this book, you can read an impressive sampling of the evidence, and the multidisciplinary theory on the subject. Drawbacks are that extra proofreading was needed, and this book acts more as a starting point to explore the body of existing research, rather than a final word. Activist intentions of the author also sometimes intrude a bit into its effectiveness as a survey.