How harmful is real-world violence on social media?

The impact of viewing explicit real-world violent content via social media will be the focus of a new study by University of Wolverhampton researchers funded by Facebook Research.  

There has been extensive research into the impacts of exposure to fictional violent media, for example in videogames and films. Research has also demonstrated that news footage of shootings or bombings can cause some people to enter a ‘cycle of distress’ where they increasingly worry about future events.

However, the uncontrolled and uncensored exchange of footage within individuals’ social media networks has been virtually unstudied. Some internet users interact with the material as a form of entertainment while others are unwittingly exposed to it, with potential adverse consequences suspected but, as yet, poorly understood.

Dr Joanne Lloyd and Dr Laura Nicklin will be working as co-principal investigators on the cyberpsychology project ‘Exploring harmful [mis]information via normalised online violent content’ which will start next year.

It follows on from their recent publication looking into the reactions to unsolicited violent and sexually explicit media content shared over social media. In this work, they found that females rated it both as significantly less funny or exciting and more disturbing than males. Among males, those with high previous exposure rated violent content as more exciting than those with lower or no prior experience. Regardless of gender, participants with higher exposure to sexual content rated it as funnier than those with mild or no exposure. However, contrary to what desensitisation theories would predict, prior exposure did not attenuate how disturbing explicit content, of either a sexual or a violent nature, was rated.