Portrayal of violence, weapons, antisocial behaviour and alcohol: study of televised music videos in New Zealand

Aim Given evidence that exposure to violence in the media is associated with subsequent violent behaviour in young people, we aimed to study the content of televised music videos with regards to violence, weapons, antisocial behaviours and alcohol use. Method Music videos recorded from the New Zealand television channel ‘Juice’ in 2010 (n=861), were examined for violence-related content. Coding methods were developed and refined; and inter-rater reliability assessed. Data on six violence-related themes were collected: violence, weapons, antisocial behaviour, death themes, suicidal behaviour and Goth culture themes. Results Over a third (39.3%, 338/861) of these music videos portrayed at least one violencerelated theme (95% CI: 36.0% – 42.6%). More specifically, violence was portrayed in 23.7% of videos, and similarly for: the presence of weapon/s (12.9%), antisocial behaviour (10.7%), death themes (8.9%), suicidal behaviour (4.1%), and ‘Goth’ culture themes (2.7%). Violence portrayal was significantly more common in videos in which alcohol was also portrayed (34.5% of those with alcohol), than when alcohol was not portrayed (21.1%) (risk ratio [RR] = 1.65; 95% CI: 1.25 – 2.18). This was also the pattern for weapons portrayal at 19.6% and 11.3% respectively (RR = 1.65; 95% CI: 1.19 – 2.28). There was potential glamorisation of violence in that a fifth (20.4%) of videos portraying violence-related content (n=338) had sexual content and violence present in the same scene.