http://ctx.sagepub.com/Contexts http://ctx.sagepub.com/content/6/1/13The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1525/ctx.2007.6.1.13 2007 6: 13ContextsKaren SternheimerDo Video Games Kill? Published by: http://www.sagepublications.comOn behalf of: American Sociological Association can be found at:ContextsAdditional services and information for http://ctx.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts: http://ctx.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions: http://ctx.sagepub.com/content/6/1/13.refs.htmlCitations: What is This? - Feb 1, 2007Version of Record >> at Texas A&M University - Medical Sciences Library on January 14, 2014ctx.sagepub.comDownloaded from at Texas A&M University - Medical Sciences Library on January 14, 2014ctx.sagepub.comDownloaded from13Contexts, Vol. 6, Number 1, pps 13-17. ISSN 1536-5042, electronic ISSN 1537-6052. © 2007 by the American Sociological Association. All rights reserved.Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website,http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: ctx.2007.6.1 do video games kill?feature article karen sternheimerWhen white, middle-class teens kill, the media and politicians are quick to blame video games. Are they right?As soon as it was released in 1993, a video gamecalled Doom became a target for critics. Not thefirst, but certainly one of the most popular first-person shooter games, Doom galvanized fears that suchgames would teach kids to kill. In the years after its release,Doom helped video gaming grow into a multibillion dollarindustry, surpassing Hollywood box-office revenues andfurther fanning public anxieties.Then came the school shootings in Paducah, Kentucky;Springfield, Oregon; and Littleton, Colorado. In all threecases, press accounts emphasized that the shooters lovedDoom, making it appear that the critics’ predictions aboutvideo games were coming true.But in the ten years following Doom’s release, homicidearrest rates fell by 77 percent among juveniles. Schoolshootings remain extremely rare; even during the 1990s,when fears of school violence were high, students had lessthan a 7 in 10 million chance of being killed at school.During that time, video games became a major part ofmany young people’s lives, few of whom will ever becomeviolent, let alone kill. So why is the video game explanationso popular? contemporary folk devilsIn 2000 the FBI issued a report on school rampageshootings, finding that their rarity prohibits the construc-tion of a useful profile of a “typical” shooter. In theabsence of a simple explanation, the public symbolicallylinked these rare and complex events to the shooters’alleged interest in video games, finding in them a catchallexplanation for what seemed unexplainable—the white,middle-class school shooter. However, the concern aboutvideo games is out of proportion to their actual threat.Politicians and other moral crusaders frequently create“folk devils,” individuals or groups defined as evil andimmoral. Folk devils allow us to channel our blame andfear, offering a clear course of action to remedy what manybelieve to be a growing problem. Video games, those whoplay them, and those who create them have become con-temporary folk devils because they seem to pose a threatto children.Such games have come to represent a variety of socialanxieties: about youth violence, new computer technology,and the apparent decline in the ability of adults to controlwhat young people do and know. Panics about youth andpopular culture have emerged with the appearance ofmany new technologies. Over the past century, politicianshave complained that cars, radio, movies, rock music, andeven comic books caused youth immorality and crime, call-ing for control and sometimes censorship.Acting on concerns like these, politicians often engagein battles characterized as between good and evil. Theunlikely team of Senators Joseph Lieberman, SamBrownback, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Rick Santorumintroduced a bill in March 2005 that called for $90 millionto fund studies on media effects. Lieberman commented,“America is a media-rich society, but despite the flood ofinformation, we still lack perhaps the most important piecewinter 2007 contextsphoto by ReutersSenator Hatch disapproves at Texas A&M University - Medical Sciences Library on January 14, 2014ctx.sagepub.comDownloaded from14 contexts winter 2007of information—what effect are media having on our chil-dren?” Regardless of whether any legislation passes, thesenators position themselves as protecting children andbenefit from the moral panic they help to create.constructing culpabilityPoliticians are not the only ones who blame videogames. Since 1997, 199 newspaper articles have focusedon video games as a central explanation for the Paducah,Springfield, and Littleton shootings. This helped to create agroundswell of fear that schools were no longer safe andthat rampage shootings could happen wherever therewere video games. The shootings legitimated existing con-cerns about the new medium and about young people ingeneral. Headlines such as “Virtual Realities Spur SchoolMassacres” (Denver Post, July 27, 1999), “Days of Doom”(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 14, 1999), “Bloodlust VideoGames Put Kids in the Crosshairs” (Denver Post, May 30,1999), and “All Those Who Deny Any Linkage betweenViolence in Entertainment and Violence in Real Life, ThinkAgain” (New York Times, April 26, 1999) insist that videogames are the culprit.These headlines all appeared immediately after theLittleton shooting, which had thehighest death toll and inspiredmost (176) of the news storiesalleging a video game connection.Across the country, the pressattributed much of the blame tovideo games specifically, and toHollywood more generally. ThePittsburgh Post-Gazette article “Days of Doom” noted that“eighteen people have now died at the hands of avidDoom players.” The New York Times article noted abovebegan, “By producing increasingly violent media, theentertainment