This introduction to current thinking about media violence and its potential influence on audiences adopts a fresh perspective on the media effects debate. The authors engage with a host of pressing issues around violence in different media contexts - including news, film, television, pornography, advertising and cyberspace. The book argues 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, This is a distinctive and revealing exploration of one of the most important and controversial subjects in cultural and media studies today.