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The Hidden Racism of Linking Video Games to Gun Violence
A new study shows how racial stereotypes factor into the impulse to blame video games for mass shootings
Plenty of articles have debunked the relationship between video games and violence, but a recent study, published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture, illuminates the surprising racial bias behind the impulse to say gaming provides a training ground for mass shooters.
The paper, written by researchers at Villanova University, Virginia Tech, and Pennsylvania State University, looked at two studies — one focused on news articles about mass shootings over the last four decades, and one that asked college students to read fictionalized accounts of a shooting and then discuss what they thought caused it. Researchers found that racial stereotypes factored into peoples’ assumptions about the alleged shooter.
Their findings highlighted how if the perpetrator of a school shooting was identified as Black, people rarely sought out external explanations. However, if the shooter was White, respondents were more likely to blame video games for the violence, the researchers found. “Video games were 8.35 times more likely to be discussed when the shooter was White than when the shooter was Black,” the researchers wrote.
