Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 19, 2026

The Resident-intruder Paradigm: A Standardized Test for Aggression, Violence and Social Stress
Published on: July 4, 2013
Youth and violence on local television news in California
L Dorfman1, K Woodruff, V Chavez
1Berkeley Media Studies Group, CA 94704, USA.
Objectives:
This study explores how local television news structures the public and policy debate on youth violence.
Methods:
A content analysis was performed on 214 hours of local television news from California. Each of the 1791 stories concerning youth, violence, or both was coded and analyzed for whether it included a public health perspective.
Results:
There were five key findings. First, violence dominated local television news coverage. Second, the specifics of particular crimes dominated coverage of violence. Third, over half of the stories on youth involved violence, while more than two thirds of the violence stories concerned youth. Fourth, episodic coverage of violence was more than five times more frequent than thematic coverage, which included links to broader social factors. Finally, only one story had an explicit public health frame.
Conclusions:
Local television news provides extremely limited coverage of contributing etiological factors in stories on violence. If our nation's most popular source of news continues to report on violence primarily through crime stories isolated from their social context, the chance for widespread support for public health solutions to violence will be diminished.
Related Concept Videos
Robbers Cave
Aggression
Bullying
Cable: Problem Solving
Community Based Intervention
Foundations of Community Mental Health Programs
Central to the success of community-based interventions is the...
Conduct Disorder

