The Censorship of Violent Materials in Australia
Contents
Third-person perception phenomenon. 4
Introduction
Censorship of content in Australia is done through classification of the content according to specific parameters considered with age. Video games are currently clustered into seven categories. These range from E – depicting exempt category – to restricted classification. Between these two clusters, there are other age-specific categories depending on the sexual content and violence in the games (Doe, 2009). Censorship in Australia, being a commonwealth, is divided between the states and the federal government. Video game censorship is thus a unified affair in the country. In the subsequent discussion, this paper will critique video game censorship from both empirical and theoretical perspectives.
Personal liberties
Legal provisions and traditions in Australia guarantee citizens a high degree of protection. Infringements on perceived personal liberties are therefore restricted. Although the culture of many democratic societies agitates for the enlargements of freedoms, there has been a debate on the need to restrict traditional personal liberties for the protection of the society. An example of the extraordinary reasons that prompt restriction is the rise in cases of violent and organized crime. While restriction of traditional personal liberties may be inevitable, legislators and interest groups recognize that this must be kept to a minimum. Researchers have noted that the real threat to personal liberties lie in the formulation of ad hoc solutions that are aimed at tackling modern problems. It has been noted that whenever concerns deemed to be prejudicial to some particular social objectives, special interest groups or even government tend to view due process as dispensable. In Australia, a trend of steady censorship has been noted for video games. Beattie (2006) argues that actions such as outright banning of games, and forcing local distributors to sell only censored versions have been characteristic of this upsurge in censorship. It is worrying that unless Australians are regular visitors to watchdog sites, for example Refused Classification or the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) website, they are unlikely to know that they are playing censored video games. For example, in 2006, Marc Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents under Pressure, a graffiti game, was banned by the OFLC since it was considered as a crime promoter by use of graffiti under graffiti and fare evasion regulation (Beattie, 2006). This little used regulation took precedence over the fact that there was violence depicted in the game. In light of the above example, one can ask: why are regulators so intent on slapping more censorship of video games? Under the graffiti and fare evasion regulation, “crime promotion” has been used to ban other material like Islamic books. Is censoring video games becoming a stage for the return of political censorship in Australia?
Game playing is not a minority activity. Bond University conducted a survey indicating that about 76% of households in Australia have one form of gaming hardware or another. The study further stated that the average age of gamers was 24 years with 38% of these being female (Brand et al., 2009). Gamers should be allowed the personal liberty to choose which classification of games they prefer according to their ages, but not having a certain class forced upon them en masse.
Research stalemate
Research into the effects of violent video games has taken center stage among many scholars. Most of this research is based on the negative psychological effects that these games are purported to have on users. Preliminary results have failed to yield a consensus between the researchers, either in regard to the presence or to the extent of the perceived negative psychological effects. Anderson (2004), for example has indicated that there is a direct link between aggressive feelings, thoughts and behaviors in players and violent video games play. These results were also supported by Anderson & Bushman (2001) who argued that the more a player is exposed to a violent video game, the more he/she is predisposed to violence. On the contrary, some researchers have found no link between playing violent video games and violent behavior (Ferguson, 2007; Williams & Skoric, 2005). Although research has yielded a stalemate, varied perspectives among policy makers and the public, coupled with the complexity of the issues discussed has led to an influence in policy as evidenced in censorship. The legislation against violent video games does not have any formidable backing by facts. There must be a direct causal link between an action and a consequence for a law to be considered as absolute. In the absence of such backing, as illustrated by stalemate between researchers, censorship can be regarded as lacking in facts and therefore unjustifiable under the law.
Third-person perception phenomenon
In light of the above facts, the presence of video-game-violence censorship can be explained by the “third-person perception phenomenon”. This simply implies that the regulators of any aspect, such as video game violence, consider and believe that the medium in question has more negative effects on others than themselves (Paul, Salwen, & Dupagne, 2000). These third-person perceptions have been proven to have the greatest influence in censorship and other restrictions, especially in the media, used to convey direct or perceived messages (Cohen & Weimann, 2008). Hoffner et al. (2001), noted that the most common target of media censorship and restriction is the perceived effects that they have on antisocial behavior that eventually lead to aggression. Ivory & Kalyanaraman argue that “given this evidence for a link between individuals’ perceptions of negative media effects on others and their support for censorship, the importance of perceived media effects is clear” (2009, p.2). Bearing in mind that perceived negative effects of violent video games elicits sharp reactions, and therefore implications in third parties, it is prudent to consider how gamers and games are considered. In this case, the major point of focus is specificity versus generality. This envisages whether all games are considered for all users or whether some games are considered for a specific groups of people formed either due to age, gender, demography, influence or preference. In the US, for example, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, considering that he was a non-gamer and therefore had no experience whatsoever with the act of gaming, condemned all violent video games in general (Keynes, 2002). In other cases, some have condemned specific games like Manhunt 2 which was released in 2007 in Australia (Snider, 2007). It is therefore a possibility that the prejudice exhibited by policymakers either to violent video games in general or specific games in particular, has influenced policy that has led to censorship. The judgments and opinions of those charged with the formulation of policy must be considered in adjudging the suitability and fairness of said policy.
Harm principle
The harm principle is closely related to the above argument. It states that conduct should only be criminalized if it causes harm to others. Although proponents of the harm principle have been quick to point to indirect harm as a basis of criminalizing some actions, the precedents that have been set in law point to a different trend as that in the same class as effects of playing violent video games. The harm principle is based on fear, worry and anxiety that the indirect victims of the harm feel towards a certain action. Researcher argues that in order to avoid the dilemmas arising from the principle, one must understand that human beings have the inherent right to be treated as humans in law. In summary,
“the existence of such rights provides a ground for both criminalizing conduct and limiting the scope of criminalization because these rights point both to conduct that people must be permitted to engage in (regardless of its harmful effects) and conduct that might well be criminalized (though it is not harmful)” (Hamish, 2009, p. 18)
Exemptions in the harm principle have yielded the recognition of rights of minority groups, like homosexuals and lesbians. Despite the activities of these groups being deemed as offensive to conservative societies, they have nevertheless been legalized in others. Therefore, if such an exemption occurs, then, a case can be made for players of violent video games whose argument is that their actions have been proven to cause no direct harm to others and censorship only exists because others consider their actions harmful to themselves.
Scope of legislation
Beattie (2006) argues that media studies research is too narrow to help understand the links between video game violence and aggression as researchers themselves are torn between viewing the games as being simple acts of human programming behavior or as tools that are controlled by the audience. Since the parameters for understanding violence in video games have been narrowed down, Beattie further argued that it becomes easy to “fall into a moral panic” based on the perceived effects of games. In such panics, games become easy and convenient scapegoats for the majority of present social problems because of the fear of what they might do. Conservatives therefore step in and take a strong negative stance on video games in general, using children as a benchmark. The end results of which are restrictions for video games that were not apparent in traditional forms of media like cinema, films and TV.
Concerns about extreme violence in video games are very complex. There are two distinct aspects that have to be analyzed as the gaming industry evolves. First is the scripted part that is the preserve of game designers and second is the interactive content that is generated by users in a virtual context. In the latter, emergent game play, ability to modify games and online interactions make a case for the fact that video game play is much more evolved than any traditional form of interaction. Regulations and censorship applicable to the scripted part of the games infringe on the liberty and freedom of the gamer to interact unencumbered by laws. One can argue that the virtual world is the private space of an individual and thus its regulation above what manufacturers prove prudent, as expected by law in order to protect children, can be considered as an intrusion into that space and therefore unjustifiable. Using films as a benchmark for video games or offline games for their online equivalence is not prudent as it denies the gamers the experience that they crave for whenever they play such games.
Conclusion
The existence of new media has created a dilemma for the society. Additional research needs to be done – and fast, in order for the emerging issues to be conclusively discussed. There is insufficient empirical data to imply a direct link between exposure to violent video games and violence expressed in behavior. Using theory as a basis, cognitive behavioral theories have been used to suggest a link between exposure of children to violent video games and predisposition to violence in their latter stages of development (Khan, 2007). Therefore, as the Australian legislation is based on the theoretical aspects of consequences due to exposure to violent video games, this paper proves that censorship to the magnitude in effect in the country is premature and mainly based on fear, worry, anxiety and prejudice of policymakers who are not consumers of these products but apply the harm principle to make legislation and influence policy.
References
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