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Comic Book
Beyond
The Screen
Comic Book
The Story
To showcase Cultivation theory, Hypodermic Needle, and Mean World Syndrome I came up with a story for my comic book. I drew a young girl watching television, but she’s playing with her teddy bear. The TV begins to malfunction and act strangely. The girl notices devilish eyes begin to appear on the TV. The TV then explodes and a hand grabs the girl and drags her into the screen. From there, the girl witnesses a dark reality of violence coming to life before her eyes. Then she is injected with the hypodermic needle labeled “Mean World Syndrome”. The dark voices repeat words of violence to her. She then witnesses herself doing the violence being repeated to her. The only way to escape is to come to terms with actual reality and remember happy memories to overcome the dark reality. She realizes it was all a dream when her mother comes home and wakes her. The girl embraces her mother. Her mother tells her that, “Not everything you see on TV is real. This is real." The two embrace each other.
The Cultivation Theory suggests that cumulative media consumption affects perceptions over time about the real world. Originated by George Gerbner in the 1960s, this theory is most widely applied to viewing television and means that the experiences of the actual world of everyday television viewers are indicative of fictional television's messages. The more someone watches TV, the more the media affects him/her. These forms of individuals are most susceptible to messages and agendas from the media.
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Mean World Syndrome
Kids are watching so much TV today and they are developing Mean World Syndrome. Mean World Syndrome is a hypothesized cognitive bias in which individuals view the world to be more violent than it really is, allegedly due to long-term moderate to heavy exposure to violence-related content in mass media. Greater aggressiveness is triggered by extensive viewing of television violence by adolescents.
Hypodermic Needle Theory
The Hypodermic Needle Theory suggests that viewers are directly and powerfully influenced by the media. This theory believes that the media has a direct and powerful effect on audiences, like being injected with a hypodermic needle
PREDATORS
Comic Book
There are all different kinds of predators. Who would have thought there would be one hiding behind your computer screen? When Adam falls victim to the enchanting messages from Lilith, little does he know that he will become her prey.
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In a chance meeting between Adam and Daphne, who is battling her own demons, will Adam learn that everything he believes about a person behind the computer screen may not be the truth?
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1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse; self-report studies show that 20% of adult females and 5-10% of adult males recall a childhood sexual assault or sexual abuse incident. Please click on the "POWERPOINT PRESENTATION" button to learn more about the concepts and developmental process of the book.
Please click on the "DOWNLOAD PREDATORS" button to read the sample version of Predators Eden's Crossing. This book is still being developed, the complete version is coming soon!