Why is there so much violence portrayed in the media? What meanings are attached to representations of violence in the media? Can media violence encourage violent behavior and desensitize audiences to real violence? Does the 'everydayness' of media violence lead to the 'normalization' of violence in society?

Violence and the Media is a lively and indispensable introduction to current thinking about media violence and its potential influence on audiences. Adopting a fresh perspective on the 'media effects' debate, Carter and Weaver engage with a host of pressing issues around violence in different media contexts - including news, film, television, pornography, advertising and cyberspace. The book offers a compelling argument that the daily repetition of media violence helps to normalize and legitimize the acts being portrayed. Most crucially, the influence of media violence needs to be understood in relation to the structural inequalities of everyday life. Using a wide range of examples of media violence primarily drawn from the American and British media to illustrate these points, Violence and the Media is a distinctive and revealing exploration of one of the most important and controversial subjects in cultural and media studies today.