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The Impact of Electronic Media Violence: Scientific Theory and Research

L. rowell huesmann.

The University of Michigan

Since the early 1960s research evidence has been accumulating that suggests that exposure to violence in television, movies, video games, cell phones, and on the internet increases the risk of violent behavior on the viewer’s part just as growing up in an environment filled with real violence increases the risk of them behaving violently. In the current review this research evidence is critically assessed, and the psychological theory that explains why exposure to violence has detrimental effects for both the short run and long run is elaborated. Finally, the size of the “media violence effect” is compared with some other well known threats to society to estimate how important a threat it should be considered.

One of the notable changes in our social environment in the 20 th and 21st centuries has been the saturation of our culture and daily lives by the mass media. In this new environment radio, television, movies, videos, video games, cell phones, and computer networks have assumed central roles in our children’s daily lives. For better or worse the mass media are having an enormous impact on our children’s values, beliefs, and behaviors. Unfortunately, the consequences of one particular common element of the electronic mass media has a particularly detrimental effect on children’s well being. Research evidence has accumulated over the past half-century that exposure to violence on television, movies, and most recently in video games increases the risk of violent behavior on the viewer’s part just as growing up in an environment filled with real violence increases the risk of violent behavior. Correspondingly, the recent increase in the use of mobile phones, text messaging, e-mail, and chat rooms by our youth have opened new venues for social interaction in which aggression can occur and youth can be victimized – new venues that break the old boundaries of family, neighborhood, and community that might have protected our youth to some extent in the past. These globe spanning electronic communication media have not really introduced new psychological threats to our children, but they have made it much harder to protect youth from the threats and have exposed many more of them to threats that only a few might have experienced before. It is now not just kids in bad neighborhoods or with bad friends who are likely to be exposed to bad things when they go out on the street. A ‘virtual’ bad street is easily available to most youth now. However, our response should not be to panic and keep our children “indoors” because the “streets” out there are dangerous. The streets also provide wonderful experiences and help youth become the kinds of adults we desire. Rather our response should be to understand the dangers on the streets, to help our children understand and avoid the dangers, to avoid exaggerating the dangers which will destroy our credibility, and also to try to control exposure to the extent we can.

Background for the Review

Different people may have quite different things in mind when they think of media violence. Similarly, among the public there may be little consensus on what constitutes aggressive and violent behavior . Most researchers, however, have clear conceptions of what they mean by media violence and aggressive behavior.

Most researchers define media violence as visual portrayals of acts of physical aggression by one human or human-like character against another. This definition has evolved as theories about the effects of media violence have evolved and represents an attempt to describe the kind of violent media presentation that is most likely to teach the viewer to be more violent. Movies depicting violence of this type were frequent 75 years ago and are even more frequent today, e.g., M, The Maltese Falcon, Shane, Dirty Harry, Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, Kill Bill . Violent TV programs became common shortly after TV became common in American homes about 55 years ago and are common today, e.g., Gunsmoke, Miami Vice, CSI, and 24. More recently, video games, internet displays, and cell phone displays have become part of most children’s growing-up, and violent displays have become common on them, e.g., Grand Theft Auto, Resident Evil, Warrior .

To most researchers, aggressive behavior refers to an act that is intended to injure or irritate another person. Laymen may call assertive salesmen “aggressive,” but researchers do not because there is no intent to harm. Aggression can be physical or non-physical. It includes many kinds of behavior that do not seem to fit the commonly understood meaning of “violence.” Insults and spreading harmful rumors fit the definition. Of course, the aggressive behaviors of greatest concern clearly involve physical aggression ranging in severity from pushing or shoving, to fighting, to serious assaults and homicide. In this review he term violent behavior is used to describe these more serious forms of physical aggression that have a significant risk of seriously injuring the victim.

Violent or aggressive actions seldom result from a single cause; rather, multiple factors converging over time contribute to such behavior. Accordingly, the influence of the violent mass media is best viewed as one of the many potential factors that influence the risk for violence and aggression. No reputable researcher is suggesting that media violence is “the” cause of violent behavior. Furthermore, a developmental perspective is essential for an adequate understanding of how media violence affects youthful conduct and in order to formulate a coherent response to this problem. Most youth who are aggressive and engage in some forms of antisocial behavior do not go on to become violent teens and adults [ 1 ]. Still, research has shown that a significant proportion of aggressive children are likely to grow up to be aggressive adults, and that seriously violent adolescents and adults often were highly aggressive and even violent as children [ 2 ]. The best single predictor of violent behavior in older adolescents, young adults, and even middle aged adults is aggressive behavior when they were younger. Thus, anything that promotes aggressive behavior in young children statistically is a risk factor for violent behavior in adults as well.

Theoretical Explanations for Media Violence Effects

In order to understand the empirical research implicating violence in electronic media as a threat to society, an understanding of why and how violent media cause aggression is vital. In fact, psychological theories that explain why media violence is such a threat are now well established. Furthermore, these theories also explain why the observation of violence in the real world – among the family, among peers, and within the community – also stimulates aggressive behavior in the observer.

Somewhat different processes seem to cause short term effects of violent content and long term effects of violent content, and that both of these processes are distinct from the time displacement effects that engagement in media may have on children. Time displacement effects refer to the role of the mass media (including video games) in displacing other activities in which the child might engage which might change the risk for certain kinds of behavior, e.g. replacing reading, athletics, etc. This essay is focusing on the effects of violent media content, and displacement effects will not be reviewed though they may well have important consequences.

Short-term Effects

Most theorists would now agree that the short term effects of exposure to media violence are mostly due to 1) priming processes, 2) arousal processes, and 3) the immediate mimicking of specific behaviors [ 3 , 4 ].

Priming is the process through which spreading activation in the brain’s neural network from the locus representing an external observed stimulus excites another brain node representing a cognition, emotion, or behavior. The external stimulus can be inherently linked to a cognition, e.g., the sight of a gun is inherently linked to the concept of aggression [ 5 ], or the external stimulus can be something inherently neutral like a particular ethnic group (e.g., African-American) that has become linked in the past to certain beliefs or behaviors (e.g., welfare). The primed concepts make behaviors linked to them more likely. When media violence primes aggressive concepts, aggression is more likely.

To the extent that mass media presentations arouse the observer, aggressive behavior may also become more likely in the short run for two possible reasons -- excitation transfer [ 6 ] and general arousal [ 7 ]. First, a subsequent stimulus that arouses an emotion (e.g. a provocation arousing anger) may be perceived as more severe than it is because some of the emotional response stimulated by the media presentation is miss-attributed as due to the provocation transfer. For example, immediately following an exciting media presentation, such excitation transfer could cause more aggressive responses to provocation. Alternatively, the increased general arousal stimulated by the media presentation may simply reach such a peak that inhibition of inappropriate responses is diminished, and dominant learned responses are displayed in social problem solving, e.g. direct instrumental aggression.

The third short term process, imitation of specific behaviors, can be viewed as a special case of the more general long-term process of observational learning [ 8 ]. In recent years evidence has accumulated that human and primate young have an innate tendency to mimic whomever they observe [ 9 ]. Observation of specific social behaviors around them increases the likelihood of children behaving exactly that way. Specifically, as children observe violent behavior, they are prone to mimic it. The neurological process through which this happens is not completely understood, but it seems likely that “mirror neurons,” which fire when either a behavior is observed or when the same behavior is acted out, play an important role [ 10 , 4 ].

Long-term Effects

Long term content effects, on the other hand, seem to be due to 1) more lasting observational learning of cognitions and behaviors (i.e., imitation of behaviors), and 2) activation and desensitization of emotional processes.

Observational learning

According to widely accepted social cognitive models, a person’s social behavior is controlled to a great extent by the interplay of the current situation with the person’s emotional state, their schemas about the world, their normative beliefs about what is appropriate, and the scripts for social behavior that they have learned [ 11 ]. During early, middle, and late childhood children encode in memory social scripts to guide behavior though observation of family, peers, community, and mass media. Consequently observed behaviors are imitated long after they are observed [ 10 ]. During this period, children’s social cognitive schemas about the world around them also are elaborated. For example, extensive observation of violence has been shown to bias children’s world schemas toward attributing hostility to others’ actions. Such attributions in turn increase the likelihood of children behaving aggressively [ 12 ]. As children mature further, normative beliefs about what social behaviors are appropriate become crystallized and begin to act as filters to limit inappropriate social behaviors [ 13 ]. These normative beliefs are influenced in part by children’s observation of the behaviors of those around them including those observed in the mass media.

Desensitization

Long-term socialization effects of the mass media are also quite likely increased by the way the mass media and video games affect emotions. Repeated exposures to emotionally activating media or video games can lead to habituation of certain natural emotional reactions. This process is called “desensitization.” Negative emotions experienced automatically by viewers in response to a particular violent or gory scene decline in intensity after many exposures [ 4 ]. For example, increased heart rates, perspiration, and self-reports of discomfort often accompany exposure to blood and gore. However, with repeated exposures, this negative emotional response habituates, and the child becomes “desensitized.” The child can then think about and plan proactive aggressive acts without experiencing negative affect [ 4 ].

Enactive learning

One more theoretical point is important. Observational learning and desensitization do not occur independently of other learning processes. Children are constantly being conditioned and reinforced to behave in certain ways, and this learning may occur during media interactions. For example, because players of violent video games are not just observers but also “active” participants in violent actions, and are generally reinforced for using violence to gain desired goals, the effects on stimulating long-term increases in violent behavior should be even greater for video games than for TV, movies, or internet displays of violence. At the same time, because some video games are played together by social groups (e.g., multi-person games) and because individual games may often be played together by peers, more complex social conditioning processes may be involved that have not yet been empirically examined. These effects, including effects of selection and involvement, need to be explored.

The Key Empirical Studies

Given this theoretical back ground, let us now examine the empirical research that indicates that childhood exposure to media violence has both short term and long term effects in stimulating aggression and violence in the viewer. Most of this research is on TV, movies, and video games, but from the theory above one can see that the same effects should occur for violence portrayed on various internet sites (e.g., multi-person game sites, video posting sites, chat rooms) and on handheld cell phones or computers.

Violence in Television, Films, and Video Games

The fact that most research on the impact of media violence on aggressive behavior has focused on violence in fictional television and film and video games is not surprising given the prominence of violent content in these media and the prominence of these media in children’s lives.

Children in the United States spend an average of between three and four hours per day viewing television [ 14 ], and the best studies have shown that over 60% of programs contain some violence, and about 40% of those contain heavy violence [ 15 ]. Children are also spending an increasingly large amount of time playing video games, most of which contain violence. Video game units are now present in 83% of homes with children [ 16 ]. In 2004, children spent 49 minutes per day playing video, and on any given day, 52% of children ages 8–18 years play a video game games [ 16 ]. Video game use peaks during middle childhood with an average of 65 minutes per day for 8–10 year-olds, and declines to 33 minutes per day for 15–18 year-olds [ 16 ]. And most of these games are violent; 94% of games rated (by the video game industry) as appropriate for teens are described as containing violence, and ratings by independent researchers suggest that the real percentage may be even higher [ 17 ]. No published study has quantified the violence in games rated ‘M’ for mature—presumably, these are even more likely to be violent.

Meta-analyses that average the effects observed in many studies provide the best overall estimates of the effects of media violence. Two particularly notable meta-analyses are those of Paik and Comstock [ 18 ] and Anderson and Bushman [ 19 ]. The Paik and Comstock meta-analysis focused on violent TV and films while the Anderson and Bushman meta-analysis focused on violent video games.

Paik and Comstock [ 18 ] examined effect sizes from 217 studies published between 1957 and 1990. For the randomized experiments they reviewed, Paik and Comstock found an average effect size ( r =.38, N=432 independent tests of hypotheses) which is moderate to large compared to other public health effects. When the analysis was limited to experiments on physical violence against a person, the average r was still .32 (N=71 independent tests). This meta-analysis also examined cross-sectional and longitudinal field surveys published between 1957 and 1990. For these studies the authors found an average r of .19 (N=410 independent tests). When only studies were used for which the dependent measure was actual physical aggression against another person (N=200), the effect size remained unchanged. Finally, the average correlation of media violence exposure with engaging in criminal violence was .13.

Anderson and Bushman [ 19 ] conducted the key meta-analyses on the effects of violent video games. Their meta-analyses revealed effect sizes for violent video games ranging from .15 to .30. Specifically, playing violent video games was related to increases in aggressive behavior ( r = .27), aggressive affect ( r =.19), aggressive cognitions (i.e., aggressive thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes), ( r =.27), and physiological arousal ( r = .22) and was related to decreases in prosocial (helping) behavior ( r = −.27). Furthermore, when studies were coded for the quality of their methodology, the best studies yielded larger effect sizes than the “not-best” studies.

One criticism sometimes leveled at meta-analyses is based on the “file drawer effect.” This refers to the fact that studies with “non-significant” results are less likely to be published and to appear in meta-analyses. However, one can correct for this problem by estimating how many “null-effect” studies it would take to change the results of the meta-analysis. This has been done with the above meta-analyses, and the numbers are very large. For example, Paik and Comstock [ 18 ] show that over 500,000 cases of null effects would have to exist in file drawers to change their overall conclusion of a significant positive relation between exposure to media violence and aggression.

While meta-analyses are good of obtaining a summary view of what the research shows, a better understanding of the research can be obtained by examining a few key specific studies in more detail.

Experiments

Generally, experiments have demonstrated that exposing people, especially children and youth, to violent behavior on film and TV increases the likelihood that they will behave aggressively immediately afterwards. In the typical paradigm, randomly selected individuals are shown either a violent or non-violent short film or TV program or play a violent or non-violent video game and are then observed as they have the opportunity to aggress. For children, this generally means playing with other children in situations that might stimulate conflict; for adults, it generally means participating in a competitive activity in which winning seems to involve inflicting pain on another person.

Children in such experiments who see the violent film clip or play the violent game typically behave more aggressively immediately afterwards than those viewing or playing nonviolence (20, 21, 22). For example, Josephson (22) randomly assigned 396 seven- to nine-year-old boys to watch either a violent or a nonviolent film before they played a game of floor hockey in school. Observers who did not know what movie any boy had seen recorded the number of times each boy physically attacked another boy during the game. Physical attack was defined to include hitting, elbowing, or shoving another player to the floor, as well as tripping, kneeing, and other assaultive behaviors that would be penalized in hockey. For some children, the referees carried a walkie-talkie, a specific cue that had appeared in the violent film that was expected to remind the boys of the movie they had seen earlier. For boys rated by their teacher as frequently aggressive, the combination of seeing a violent film and seeing the movie-associated cue stimulated significantly more assaultive behavior than any other combination of film and cue. Parallel results have been found in randomized experiments for preschoolers who physically attack each other more often after watching violent videos [ 21 ] and for older delinquent adolescents who get into more fights on days they see more violent films [ 23 ].

In a randomized experiment with violent video games, Irwin & Gross [ 24 ] assessed physical aggression (e.g., hitting, shoving, pinching, kicking) between boys who had just played either a violent or a nonviolent video game. Those who had played the violent video game were more physically aggressive toward peers. Other randomized experiments have measured college students’ propensity to be physically aggressive after they had played (or not played) a violent video game. For example, Bartholow &Anderson [ 25 ] found that male and female college students who had played a violent game subsequently delivered more than two and a half times as many high-intensity punishments to a peer as those who played a nonviolent video game. Other experiments have shown that it is the violence in video games, not the excitement that playing them provokes, that produces the increase in aggression [ 26 ].

In summary, experiments unambiguously show that viewing violent videos, films, cartoons, or TV dramas or playing violent video games “cause” the risk to go up that the observing child will behave seriously aggressively toward others immediately afterwards. This is true of preschoolers, elementary school children, high school children, college students, and adults. Those who watch the violent clips tend to behave more aggressively than those who view non-violent clips, and they adopt beliefs that are more “accepting” of violence [ 27 ].

One more quasi-experiment frequently cited by game manufacturers should be mentioned here. Williams and Skoric [ 28 ] have published the results of a dissertation study of cooperative online game playing by adults in which they report no significant long-term effects of playing a violent game on the adult’s behavior. However, the low statistical power of the study, the numerous methodological flaws (self-selection of a biased sample, lack of an adequate control group, the lack of adequate behavioral measures) make the validity of the study highly questionable. Furthermore, the participants were adults for whom there would be little theoretical reason to expect long-term effects.

Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies

Empirical cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of youth behaving and watching or playing violent media in their natural environments do not test causation as well as experiments do, but they provide strong evidence that the causal processes demonstrated in experiments generalize to violence observed in the real world and have significant effects on real world violent behavior. As reported in the discussion of meta-analyses above, the great majority of competently done one-shot survey studies have shown that children who watch more media violence day in and day out behave more aggressively day in and day out [ 18 ]. The relationship is less strong than that observed in laboratory experiments, but it is nonetheless large enough to be socially significant; the correlations obtained are usually are between .15 and .30. Moreover, the relation is highly replicable even across researchers who disagree about the reasons for the relationship [e.g., 29 ] and across countries [ 30 , 31 ].

Complementing these one-time survey studies are the longitudinal real-world studies that have shown correlations over time from childhood viewing of media violence to later adolescent and adult aggressive behavior [ 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ]; for reviews see [ 4 , 27 , 33 ]. This studies have shown that early habitual exposure to media violence in middle-childhood predicts increased aggressiveness 1 year, 3 years, 10 years, 15 years, and 22 years later in adulthood, even controlling for early aggressiveness. On the other hand, behaving aggressively in childhood is a much weaker predictor of higher subsequent viewing of violence when initial violence viewing is controlled, making it implausible that the correlation between aggression and violent media use was primarily due to aggressive children turning to watching more violence [ 31 , 32 , 33 ]. As discussed below the pattern of results suggests that the strongest contribution to the correlation is the stimulation of aggression from exposure to media violence but that those behaving aggressively may also have a tendency to turn to watching more violence, leading to a downward spiral effect [ 13 ].

An example is illustrative. In a study of children interviewed each year for three years as they moved through middle childhood, Huesmann et al. [ 31 ] found increasing rates of aggression for both boys and girls who watched more television violence even with controls for initial aggressiveness and many other background factors. Children who identified with the portrayed aggressor and those who perceived the violence as realistic were especially likely to show these observational learning effects. A 15-year follow-up of these children [ 33 ] demonstrated that those who habitually watched more TV violence in their middle-childhood years grew up to be more aggressive young adults. For example, among children who were in the upper quartile on violence viewing in middle childhood, 11% of the males had been convicted of a crime (compared with 3% for other males), 42% had “pushed, grabbed, or shoved their spouse” in the past year (compared with 22% of other males), and 69% had “shoved a person” when made angry in the past year (compared with 50% of other males). For females, 39% of the high-violence-viewers had “thrown something at their spouse” in the past year (compared with 17% of the other females), and 17% had “punched, beaten, or choked” another adult when angry in the past year (compared with 4% of the other females). These effects were not attributable to any of a large set of child and parent characteristics including demographic factors, intelligence, parenting practices. Overall, for both males and females the effect of middle-childhood violence viewing on young adult aggression was significant even when controlling for their initial aggression. In contrast, the effect of middle-childhood aggression on adult violence viewing when controlling for initial violence viewing was not-significant, though it was positive.

Moderators of Media Violence Effects

Obviously, not all observers of violence are affected equally by what they observe at all times. Research has shown that the effects of media violence on children are moderated by situational characteristics of the presentation including how well it attracts and sustains attention, personal characteristics of the viewer including their aggressive predispositions, and characteristics of the physical and human context in which the children are exposed to violence.

In terms of plot characteristics, portraying violence as justified and showing rewards (or at least not showing punishments) for violence increase the effects that media violence has in stimulating aggression, particularly in the long run [ 27 , 36 , 37 ]. As for viewer characteristics that depend on perceptions of the plot, those viewers who perceive the violence as telling about life more like it really is and who identify more with the perpetrator of the violence are also stimulated more toward violent behavior in the long run [ 27 , 30 , 33 , 38 ]. Taken together these facts mean that violent acts by charismatic heroes, that appear justified and are rewarded, are the violent acts most likely to increase viewer’s aggression.

A number of researchers have suggested that, independently of the plot, viewers or game players who are already aggressive should be the only one’s affected. This is certainly not true. While the already aggressive child who watches or plays a lot of violent media may become the most aggressive young adult, the research shows that even initially unaggressive children are made more aggressive by viewing media violence [ 27 , 32 , 33 ]. Long term effects due appear to be stronger for younger children [ 3 , 14 ], but short term affects appear, if anything, stronger for older children [ 3 ] perhaps because one needs to have already learned aggressive scripts to have them primed by violent displays. While the effects appeared weaker for female 40 years ago [ 32 ], they appear equally strong today [ 33 ]. Finally, having a high IQ does not seem to protect a child against being influenced [ 27 ].

Mediators of Media Violence Effects

Most researchers believe that the long term effects of media violence depend on social cognitions that control social behavior being changed for the long run. More research needs to completed to identify all the mediators, but it seems clear that they include normative beliefs about what kinds of social behaviors are OK [ 4 , 13 , 27 ], world schemas that lead to hostile or non-hostile attributions about others intentions [ 4 , 12 , 27 ], and social scripts that automatically control social behavior once they are well learned [ 4 , 11 , 27 ].

This review marshals evidence that compelling points to the conclusion that media violence increases the risk significantly that a viewer or game player will behave more violently in the short run and in the long run. Randomized experiments demonstrate conclusively that exposure to media violence immediately increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior for children and adults in the short run. The most important underlying process for this effect is probably priming though mimicry and increased arousal also play important roles. The evidence from longitudinal field studies is also compelling that children’s exposure to violent electronic media including violent games leads to long-term increases in their risk for behaving aggressively and violently. These long-term effects are a consequence of the powerful observational learning and desensitization processes that neuroscientists and psychologists now understand occur automatically in the human child. Children automatically acquire scripts for the behaviors they observe around them in real life or in the media along with emotional reactions and social cognitions that support those behaviors. Social comparison processes also lead children to seek out others who behave similarly aggressively in the media or in real life leading to a downward spiral process that increases risk for violent behavior.

One valid remaining question is whether the size of this effect is large enough that one should consider it to be a public health threat. The answer seems to be “yes.” Two calculations support this conclusion. First, according to the best meta-analyses [ 18 , 19 ] the long term size of the effect of exposure to media violence in childhood on later aggressive or violent behavior is about equivalent to a correlation of .20 to .30. While some might argue that this explains only 4% to 9% of the individual variation in aggressive behavior, as several scholars have pointed out [ 39 , 40 ], percent variance explained is not a good statistic to use when predicting low probability events with high social costs. For example, a correlation of 0.3 with aggression translates into a change in the odds of aggression from 50/50 to 65/35 -- not a trivial change when one is dealing with life threatening behavior[ 40 ].

Secondly, the effect size of media violence is the same or larger than the effect size of many other recognized threats to public health. In Figure 1 from Bushman and Huesmann [ 41 ], the effect sizes for many common threats to public health are compared with the effect that media violence has on aggression. The only effect slightly larger than the effect of media violence on aggression is that of cigarette smoking on lung cancer.

The Relative Strength of Known Public Health Threats.

In summary, exposure to electronic media violence increases the risk of children and adults behaving aggressively in the short-run and of children behaving aggressively in the long-run. It increases the risk significantly, and it increases it as much as many other factors that are considered public health threats. As with many other public health threats, not every child who is exposed to this threat will acquire the affliction of violent behavior, and many will acquire the affliction who are not exposed to the threat. However, that does not diminish the need to address the threat.

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Digital Entertainment as Next Evolution in Service Sector pp 69–80 Cite as

Electronic and Digital Media; Accountability in the Age of AI and Digitalization: An Indian Perspective

• Gagandeep Kaur   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3657-2134 3 &
• Prashant Chauhan   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5450-1263 3  
• First Online: 21 February 2023

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Embracing democracy as a form of governance has opened the doors for peoples’ participation in government. The three well-established constitutional pillars, i.e., legislature, executive, and judiciary, play a pivotal role in a democratic setup. Another pillar, though not included in the constitutional setup, has made its presence felt in the governance of the country. Media is the fourth pillar of democracy which acts as a mechanism of check and balance in the democratic setup. The facets of media, from print, electronic and digital, have acted as the voice and mediator between the administrative machinery and the public at large. A robust media is a sine qua non for a fair, transparent, and accountable democracy. The journey of media in India has witnessed changing dimensions over several decades, from being a mode of conveying information to channelizing mass movements. The impact of media has reached a whole new level with the digital revolution, by reaching out to every household and individual. The infusion of artificial intelligence in the field of digitalization and electronic media has raised a different set of questions. The expanding impact has also raised several questions that need to be taken into consideration i.e., fake news, paid news, and several others to be named. Can media escape accountability on the ground of freedom of speech and expression? The author(s) of the chapter aims to analyze the electronic media regulation applicable in India, with an intent to examine the effectiveness of these regulations. The objective of this research paper is to examine the following research questions: firstly, is the self-regulating mechanism prevalent in India sufficient to make the media accountable?; secondly, is there a need for effective legislation having command of the sovereign to regulate electronic media?; and thirdly, whether regulating media by legislative means will hamper its freedom and credibility? The authors intend to draw a conclusion based on the discussion, taking into consideration the Indian perspective.

• Artificial intelligence
• Digital Media
• Accountability of media
• Media regulation

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Kaur, G., Chauhan, P. (2023). Electronic and Digital Media; Accountability in the Age of AI and Digitalization: An Indian Perspective. In: Das, S., Gochhait, S. (eds) Digital Entertainment as Next Evolution in Service Sector. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8121-0_5

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2.3 Methods of Researching Media Effects

Learning objectives.

• Identify the prominent media research methods.
• Explain the uses of media research methods in a research project.

Media theories provide the framework for approaching questions about media effects ranging from as simple as how 10-year-old boys react to cereal advertisements to as broad as how Internet use affects literacy. Once researchers visualize a project and determine a theoretical framework, they must choose actual research methods. Contemporary research methods are greatly varied and can range from analyzing old newspapers to performing controlled experiments.

Content Analysis

Content analysis is a research technique that involves analyzing the content of various forms of media. Through content analysis, researchers hope to understand both the people who created the content and the people who consumed it. A typical content analysis project does not require elaborate experiments. Instead, it simply requires access to the appropriate media to analyze, making this type of research an easier and inexpensive alternative to other forms of research involving complex surveys or human subjects.

Content analysis studies require researchers to define what types of media to study. For example, researchers studying violence in the media would need to decide which types of media to analyze, such as television, and the types of formats to examine, such as children’s cartoons. The researchers would then need to define the terms used in the study; media violence can be classified according to the characters involved in the violence (strangers, family members, or racial groups), the type of violence (self-inflicted, slapstick, or against others), or the context of the violence (revenge, random, or duty-related). These are just a few of the ways that media violence could be studied with content-analysis techniques (Berger, 1998).

Archival Research

Any study that analyzes older media must employ archival research, which is a type of research that focuses on reviewing historical documents such as old newspapers and past publications. Old local newspapers are often available on microfilm at local libraries or at the newspaper offices. University libraries generally provide access to archives of national publications such as The New York Times or Time ; publications can also increasingly be found in online databases or on websites.

Older radio programs are available for free or by paid download through a number of online sources. Many television programs and films have also been made available for free download, or for rent or sale through online distributors. Performing an online search for a particular title will reveal the options available.

Resources such as the Internet Archive ( www.archive.org ) work to archive a number of media sources. One important role of the Internet Archive is website archiving. Internet archives are invaluable for a study of online media because they store websites that have been deleted or changed. These archives have made it possible for Internet content analyses that would have otherwise been impossible.

Surveys are ubiquitous in modern life. Questionaires record data on anything from political preferences to personal hygiene habits. Media surveys generally take one of the following two forms.

A descriptive survey aims to find the current state of things, such as public opinion or consumer preferences. In media, descriptive surveys establish television and radio ratings by finding the number of people who watch or listen to particular programs. An analytical survey, however, does more than simply document a current situation. Instead, it attempts to find out why a particular situation exists. Researchers pose questions or hypotheses about media, and then conduct analytical surveys to answer these questions. Analytical surveys can determine the relationship between different forms of media consumption and the lifestyles and habits of media consumers.

Surveys can employ either open-ended or closed-ended questions. Open-ended questions require the participant to generate answers in their own words, while closed-ended questions force the participant to select an answer from a list. Although open-ended questions allow for a greater variety of answers, the results of closed-ended questions are easier to tabulate. Although surveys are useful in media studies, effective use requires keeping their limitations in mind.

Social Role Analysis

As part of child rearing, parents teach their children about social roles. When parents prepare children to attend school for example, they explain the basics of school rules and what is expected of a student to help the youngsters understand the role of students. Like the role of a character in a play, this role carries specific expectations that differentiate school from home. Adults often play a number of different roles as they navigate between their responsibilities as parents, employees, friends, and citizens. Any individual may play a number of roles depending on his or her specific life choices.

Social role analysis of the media involves examining various individuals in the media and analyzing the type of role that each plays. Role analysis research can consider the roles of men, women, children, members of a racial minority, or members of any other social group in specific types of media. For example, if the role children play in cartoons is consistently different from the role they play in sitcoms, then certain conclusions might be drawn about both of these formats. Analyzing roles used in media allows researchers to gain a better understanding of the messages that the mass media sends (Berger, 1998).

Depth Interviews

The depth interview is an anthropological research tool that is also useful in media studies. Depth interviews take surveys one step further by allowing researchers to directly ask a study participant specific questions to gain a fuller understanding of the participant’s perceptions and experiences. Depth interviews have been used in research projects that follow newspaper reporters to find out their reasons for reporting certain stories and in projects that attempt to understand the motivations for reading romance novels. Depth interviews can provide a deeper understanding of the media consumption habits of particular groups of people (Priest, 2010).

Rhetorical Analysis

Rhetorical analysis involves examining the styles used in media and attempting to understand the kinds of messages those styles convey. Media styles include form, presentation, composition, use of metaphors, and reasoning structure. Rhetorical analysis reveals the messages not apparent in a strict reading of content. Studies involving rhetorical analysis have focused on media such as advertising to better understand the roles of style and rhetorical devices in media messages (Gunter, 2000).

Focus Groups

Like depth interviews, focus groups allow researchers to better understand public responses to media. Unlike a depth interview, however, a focus group allows the participants to establish a group dynamic that more closely resembles that of normal media consumption. In media studies, researchers can employ focus groups to judge the reactions of a group to specific media styles and to content. This can be a valuable means of understanding the reasons for consuming specific types of media.

Focus groups are effective ways to obtain a group opinion on media.

Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 3.0.

Experiments

Media research studies also sometimes use controlled experiments that expose a test group to an experience involving media and measure the effects of that experience. Researchers then compare these measurements to those of a control group that had key elements of the experience removed. For example, researchers may show one group of children a program with three incidents of cartoon violence and another control group of similar children the same program without the violent incidents. Researchers then ask the children from both groups the same sets of questions, and the results are compared.

Participant Observation

In participant observation , researchers try to become part of the group they are studying. Although this technique is typically associated with anthropological studies in which a researcher lives with members of a particular culture to gain a deeper understanding of their values and lives, it is also used in media research.

Media consumption often takes place in groups. Families or friends gather to watch favorite programs, children may watch Saturday morning cartoons with a group of their peers, and adults may host viewing parties for televised sporting events or awards shows. These groups reveal insights into the role of media in the lives of the public. A researcher might join a group that watches football together and stay with the group for an entire season. By becoming a part of the group, the researcher becomes part of the experiment and can reveal important influences of media on culture (Priest).

Researchers have studied online role-playing games, such as World of Warcraft , in this manner. These games reveal an interesting aspect of group dynamics: Although participants are not in physical proximity, they function as a group within the game. Researchers are able to study these games by playing them. In the book Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader , a group of researchers discussed the results of their participant observation studies. The studies reveal the surprising depth of culture and unwritten rules that exist in the World of Warcraft universe and give important interpretations of why players pursue the game with such dedication (Corneliussen & Rettberg, 2008).

Key Takeaways

• Media research methods are the practical procedures for carrying out a research project. These methods include content analysis, surveys, focus groups, experiments, and participant observation.
• Research methods generally involve either test subjects or analysis of media. Methods involving test subjects include surveys, depth interviews, focus groups, and experiments. Analysis of media can include content, style, format, social roles, and archival analysis.

Media research methods offer a variety of procedures for performing a media study. Each of these methods varies in cost; thus, a project with a lower budget would be prohibited from using some of the more costly methods. Consider a project on teen violence and video game use. Then answer the following short-response questions. Each response should be a minimum of one paragraph.

• Which methods would a research organization with a low budget favor for this project? Why?
• How might the results of the project differ from those of one with a higher budget?

Berger, Arthur Asa. Media Research Techniques (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998), 23–24.

Corneliussen, Hilde and Jill Walker Rettberg, “Introduction: ‘Orc ProfessorLFG,’ or Researching in Azeroth,” in Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft Reader , ed. Hilde Corneliussen and Jill Walker Rettberg (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008), 6–7.

Gunter, Barrie. Media Research Methods: Measuring Audiences, Reactions and Impact (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000), 89.

Priest, Susanna Hornig Doing Media Research: An Introduction (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2010), 16–22.

Priest, Susanna Hornig Doing Media Research , 96–98.

Understanding Media and Culture Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Electronics Research Paper Topics

This list of electronics research paper topics provides the list of 30 potential topics for research papers and an overview article on the history of electronics.

1. Applications of Superconductivity

The 1986 Applied Superconductivity Conference proclaimed, ‘‘Applied superconductivity has come of age.’’ The claim reflected only 25 years of development, but was justifiable due to significant worldwide interest and investment. For example, the 1976 annual budget for superconducting systems exceeded $30 million in the U.S., with similar efforts in Europe and Japan. By 1986 the technology had matured impressively into applications for the energy industry, the military, transportation, high-energy physics, electronics, and medicine. The announcement of high-temperature superconductivity just two months later brought about a new round of dramatic developments.

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As the twenty-first century began, an array of superconducting applications in high-speed electronics, medical imaging, levitated transportation, and electric power systems are either having, or will soon have, an impact on the daily life of millions. Surprisingly, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the discovery of superconductivity was completely unanticipated and unimagined.

In 1911, three years after liquefying helium, H. Kammerlingh Onnes of the University of Leiden discovered superconductivity while investigating the temperature-dependent resistance of metals below 4.2Kelvin. Later reporting on experiments conducted in 1911, he described the disappearance of the resistance of mercury, stating, ‘‘Within some hundredths of a degree came a sudden fall, not foreseen [by existing theories of resistance]. Mercury has passed into a new state, which . . . may be called the superconductive state.’’

3. Electric Motors

The main types of electric motors that drove twentieth century technology were developed toward the end of the nineteenth century, with direct current (DC) motors being introduced before alternating current (AC) ones. Most important initially was the ‘‘series’’ DC motor, used in electric trolleys and trains from the 1880s onward. The series motor exerts maximum torque on starting and then accelerates to its full running speed, the ideal characteristic for traction work. Where speed control independent of the load is required in such applications as crane and lift drives, the ‘‘shunt’’ DC motor is more suitable.

4. Electronic Calculators

The electronic calculator is usually inexpensive and pocket-sized, using solar cells for its power and having a gray liquid crystal display (LCD) to show the numbers. Depending on the sophistication, the calculator might simply perform the basic mathematical functions (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) or might include scientific functions (square, log, trig). For a slightly higher cost, the calculator will probably include programmable scientific and business functions. At the end of the twentieth century, the electronic calculator was as commonplace as a screwdriver and helped people deal with all types of mathematics on an everyday basis. Its birth and growth were early steps on the road to today’s world of computing.

5. Electronic Communications

The broad use of digital electronic message communications in most societies by the end of the 20th century can be attributed to a myriad of reasons. Diffusion was incremental and evolutionary. Digital communication technology was seeded by large-scale funding for military projects that broke technological ground, however social needs and use drove systems in unexpected ways and made it popular because these needs were embraced. Key technological developments happened long before diffusion into society, and it was only after popularity of the personal computer that global and widespread use became commonplace. The Internet was an important medium in this regard, however the popular uses of it were well established long before its success. Collaborative developments with open, mutually agreed standards were key factors in broader diffusion of the low-level transmission of digital data, and provided resistance to technological lock-in by any commercial player. By the twenty-first century, the concept of interpersonal electronic messaging was accepted as normal and taken for granted by millions around the world, where infrastructural and political freedoms permitted. As a result, traditional lines of information control and mass broadcasting were challenged, although it remains to be seen what, if any, long-term impact this will have on society.

6. Electronic Control Technology

The advancement of electrical engineering in the twentieth century made a fundamental change in control technology. New electronic devices including vacuum tubes (valves) and transistors were used to replace electromechanical elements in conventional controllers and to develop new types of controllers. In these practices, engineers discovered basic principles of control theory that could be further applied to design electronic control systems.

7. Fax Machine

Fax technology was especially useful for international commercial communication, which was traditionally the realm of the Telex machine, which only relayed Western alpha-numeric content. A fax machine could transmit a page of information regardless of what information it contained, and this led to rapid and widespread adoption in developing Asian countries during the 1980s. With the proliferation of the Internet and electronic e-mail in the last decade of the twentieth century, fax technology became less used for correspondence. At the close of the 20th century, the fax machine was still widely used internationally for the transmission of documents of all forms, with the ‘‘hard copy’’ aspect giving many a sense of permanence that other electronic communication lacked.

8. Hall Effect Devices

The ‘‘Hall effect,’’ discovered in 1879 by American physicist Edwin H. Hall, is the electrical potential produced when a magnetic field is perpendicular to a conductor or semiconductor that is carrying current. This potential is a product of the buildup of charges in that conductor. The magnetic field makes a transverse force on the charge carriers, resulting in the charge being moved to one of the sides of the conductor. Between the sides of the conductor, measurable voltage is yielded from the interaction and balancing of the polarized charge and the magnetic influence.

Hall effect devices are commonly used as magnetic field sensors, or alternatively if a known magnetic field is applied, the sensor can be used to measure the current in a conductor, without actually plugging into it (‘‘contactless potentiometers’’). Hall sensors can also be used as magnetically controlled switches, and as a contactless method of detecting rotation and position, sensing ferrous objects.

9. Infrared Detectors

Infrared detectors rely on the change of a physical characteristic to sense illumination by infrared radiation (i.e., radiation having a wavelength longer than that of visible light). The origins of such detectors lie in the nineteenth century, although their development, variety and applications exploded during the twentieth century. William Herschel (c. 1800) employed a thermometer to detect this ‘‘radiant heat’’; Macedonio Melloni, (c. 1850) invented the ‘‘thermochrose’’ to display spatial differences of irradiation as color patterns on a temperature-sensitive surface; and in 1882 William Abney found that photographic film could be sensitized to respond to wavelengths beyond the red end of the spectrum. Most infrared detectors, however, convert infrared radiation into an electrical signal via a variety of physical effects. Here, too, 19th century innovations continued in use well into the 21st century.

10. Integrated Circuits Design and Use

Integrated circuits (ICs) are electronic devices designed to integrate a large number of microscopic electronic components, normally connected by wires in circuits, within the same substrate material. According to the American engineer Jack S. Kilby, they are the realization of the so-called ‘‘monolithic idea’’: building an entire circuit out of silicon or germanium. ICs are made out of these materials because of their properties as semiconductors— materials that have a degree of electrical conductivity between that of a conductor such as metal and that of an insulator (having almost no conductivity at low temperatures). A piece of silicon containing one circuit is called a die or chip. Thus, ICs are known also as microchips. Advances in semiconductor technology in the 1960s (the miniaturization revolution) meant that the number of transistors on a single chip doubled every two years, and led to lowered microprocessor costs and the introduction of consumer products such as handheld calculators.

11. Integrated Circuits Fabrication

The fabrication of integrated circuits (ICs) is a complicated process that consists primarily of the transfer of a circuit design onto a piece of silicon (the silicon wafer). Using a photolithographic technique, the areas of the silicon wafer to be imprinted with electric circuitry are covered with glass plates (photomasks), irradiated with ultraviolet light, and treated with chemicals in order to shape a circuit’s pattern. On the whole, IC manufacture consists of four main stages:

• Preparation of a design
• Preparation of photomasks and silicon wafers
• Testing and packaging

Preparing an IC design consists of drafting the circuit’s electronic functions within the silicon board. This process has radically changed over the years due to the increasing complexity of design and the number of electronic components contained within the same IC. For example, in 1971, the Intel 4004 microprocessor was designed by just three engineers, while in the 1990s the Intel Pentium was designed by a team of 100 engineers. Moreover, the early designs were produced with traditional drafting techniques, while from the late 1970s onward the introduction of computer-aided design (CAD) techniques completely changed the design stage. Computers are used to check the design and simulate the operations of perspective ICs in order to optimize their performance. Thus, the IC drafted design can be modified up to 400 times before going into production.

12. Josephson Junction Devices

One of the most important implications of quantum physics is the existence of so-called tunneling phenomena in which elementary particles are able to cross an energy barrier on subatomic scales that it would not be possible for them to traverse were they subject to the laws of classical mechanics. In 1973 the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Brian Josephson, Ivan Giaever and Leo Esaki for their work in this field. Josephson’s contribution consisted of a number of important theoretical predictions made while a doctoral student at Cambridge University. His work was confirmed experimentally within a year of its publication in 1961, and practical applications were commercialized within ten years.

13. Laser Applications

Lasers are employed in virtually every sector of the modern world including industry, commerce, transportation, medicine, education, science, and in many consumer devices such as CD players and laser printers. The intensity of lasers makes them ideal cutting tools since their highly focused beam cuts more accurately than machined instruments and leaves surrounding materials unaffected. Surgeons, for example, have employed carbon dioxide or argon lasers in soft tissue surgery since the early 1970s. These lasers produce infrared wavelengths of energy that are absorbed by water. Water in tissues is rapidly heated and vaporized, resulting in disintegration of the tissue. Visible wavelengths (argon ion laser) coagulate tissue. Far-ultraviolet wavelengths (higher photon energy, as produced by excimer lasers) break down molecular bonds in target tissue and ‘‘ablate’’ tissue without heating. Excimer lasers have been used in corneal surgery since 1984. Short pulses only affect the surface area of interest and not deeper tissues. The extremely small size of the beam, coupled with optical fibers, enables today’s surgeons to conduct surgery deep inside the human body often without a single cut on the exterior. Blue lasers, developed in 1994 by Shuji Nakamura of Nichia Chemical Industries of Japan, promise even more precision than the dominant red lasers currently used and will further revolutionize surgical cutting techniques.

14. Laser Theory and Operation

Lasers (an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) provide intense, focused beams of light whose unique properties enable them to be employed in a wide range of applications in the modern world. The key idea underlying lasers originated with Albert Einstein who published a paper in 1916 on Planck’s distribution law, within which he described what happens when additional energy is introduced into an atom. Atoms have a heavy and positively charged nucleus surrounded by groups of extremely light and negatively charged electrons. Electrons orbit the atom in a series of ‘‘fixed’’ levels based upon the degree of electromagnetic attraction between each single electron and the nucleus. Various orbital levels also represent different energy levels. Normally electrons remain as close to the nucleus as their energy level permits, with the consequence that an atom’s overall energy level is minimized. Einstein realized that when energy is introduced to an atom; for example, through an atomic collision or through electrical stimulation, one or more electrons become excited and move to a higher energy level. This condition exists temporarily before the electron returns to its former energy level. When this decay phenomenon occurs, a photon of light is emitted. Einstein understood that since the energy transitions within the atom are always identical, the energy and the wavelength of the stimulated photon of light are also predictable; that is, a specific type of transition within an atom will yield a photon of light of a specific wavelength. Hendrick Kramers and Werner Heisenberg obtained a series of more extensive calculations of the effects of these stimulated emissions over the next decade. The first empirical evidence supporting these theoretical calculations occurred between 1926 and 1930 in a series of experiments involving electrical discharges in neon.

15. Lasers in Optoelectronics

Optoelectronics, the field combining optics and electronics, is dependent on semiconductor (diode) lasers for its existence. Mass use of semiconductor lasers has emerged with the advent of CD and DVD technologies, but it is the telecommunications sector that has primarily driven the development of lasers for optoelectronic systems. Lasers are used to transmit voice, data, or video signals down fiber-optic cables.

While the success of lasers within telecommunication systems seems unquestioned thanks to their utility in long-distance large-capacity, point-to-point links, these lasers also find use in many other applications and are ubiquitous in the developed world. Their small physical size, low power operation, ease of modulation (via simple input current variation) and small beam size mean that these lasers are now part of our everyday world, from CDs and DVDs, to supermarket checkouts and cosmetic medicine.

16. Light Emitting Diodes

Light emitting diodes, or LEDs, are semiconductor devices that emit monochromatic light once an electric current passes through it. The color of light emitted from LEDs depends not on the color of the bulb, but on the emission’s wavelength. Typically made of inorganic materials like gallium or silicon, LEDs have found frequent use as ‘‘pilot,’’ or indicator, lights for electronic devices. Unlike incandescent light bulbs, which generate light from ‘‘heat glow,’’ LEDs create light more efficiently and are generally more durable than traditional light sources.

17. Lighting Techniques

In 1900 electric lighting in the home was a rarity. Carbon filament incandescent lamps had been around for 20 years, but few households had electricity. Arc lamps were used in streets and large buildings such as railway stations. Domestic lighting was by candle, oil and gas.

The stages of the lightning techniques evolution are the following:

• Non-Electric Lighting
• Electric Lighting: Filament Lamps
• Electric Lighting: Discharge Lamps
• Electric Lighting: Fluorescent Lamps
• Electric Lighting: LED Lamps

18. Mechanical and Electromechanical Calculators

The widespread use of calculating devices in the twentieth century is intimately linked to the rise of large corporations and to the increasing role of mathematical calculation in science and engineering. In the business setting, calculators were used to efficiently process financial information. In science and engineering, calculators speeded up routine calculations. The manufacture and sale of calculators was a widespread industry, with major firms in most industrialized nations. However, the manufacture of mechanical calculators declined very rapidly in the 1970s with the introduction of electronic calculators, and firms either diversified into other product lines or went out of business. By the end of the twentieth century, slide rules, adding machines, and other mechanical calculators were no longer being manufactured.

19. Mobile (Cell) Telephones

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, mobile or cell phones developed from a minority communication tool, characterized by its prevalence in the 1980s among young professionals, to a pervasive cultural object. In many developed countries, more than three quarters of the population owned a cell phone by the end of the 20th century.

Cell phone technology is a highly evolved form of the personal radio systems used by truck drivers (citizens band, or CB, radio) and police forces in which receiver/transmitter units communicate with one another or a base antenna. Such systems work adequately over short distances with a low volume of traffic but cannot be expanded to cope with mass communication due to the limited space (bandwidth) available in the electromagnetic spectrum. Transmitting and receiving on one frequency, they allow for talking or listening but not both simultaneously.

For mobile radio systems to make the step up to effective telephony, a large number of two-way conversations needed to be accommodated, requiring a duplex channel (two separate frequencies, taking up double the bandwidth). In order to establish national mobile phone networks without limiting capacity or the range of travel of handsets, a number of technological improvements had to occur.

20. Photocopiers

The photocopier, copier, or copying machine, as it is variously known, is a staple of modern life. Copies by the billions are produced not only in the office but also on machines available to the public in libraries, copy shops, stationery stores, supermarkets, and a wide variety of other commercial facilities. Modern xerographic copiers, produced by a number of manufacturers, are available as desktop models suitable for the home as well as the small office. Many modern copiers reproduce in color as well as black and white, and office models can rival printing presses in speed of operation.

21. Photosensitive Detectors

Sensing radiation from ultraviolet to optical wavelengths and beyond is an important part of many devices. Whether analyzing the emission of radiation, chemical solutions, detecting lidar signals, fiber-optic communication systems, or imaging of medical ionizing radiation, detectors are the final link in any optoelectronic experiment or process.

Detectors fall into two groups: thermal detectors (where radiation is absorbed and the resulting temperature change is used to generate an electrical output) and photon (quantum) detectors. The operation of photon detectors is based on the photoelectric effect, in which the radiation is absorbed within a metal or semiconductor by direct interaction with electrons, which are excited to a higher energy level. Under the effect of an electric field these carriers move and produce a measurable electric current. The photon detectors show a selective wavelength-dependent response per unit incident radiation power.

22. Public and Private Lighting

At the turn of the 20th century, lighting was in a state of flux. In technical terms, a number of emerging lighting technologies jostled for economic dominance. In social terms, changing standards of illumination began to transform cities, the workplace, and the home. In design terms, the study of illumination as a science, as an engineering profession, and as an applied art was becoming firmly established. In the last decades of the 20th century, the technological and social choices in lighting attained considerable stability both technically and socially. Newer forms of compact fluorescent lighting, despite their greater efficiency, have not significantly replaced incandescent bulbs in homes owing to higher initial cost. Low-pressure sodium lamps, on the other hand, have been adopted increasingly for street and architectural lighting owing to lower replacement and maintenance costs. As with fluorescent lighting in the 1950s, recent lighting technologies have found niche markets rather than displacing incandescents, which have now been the dominant lighting system for well over a century.

23. Quantum Electronic Devices

Quantum theory, developed during the 1920s to explain the behavior of atoms and the absorption and emission of light, is thought to apply to every kind of physical system, from individual elementary particles to macroscopic systems such as lasers. In lasers, stimulated transitions between discrete or quantized energy levels is a quantum electronic phenomena (discussed in the entry Lasers, Theory and Operation). Stimulated transitions are also the central phenomena in atomic clocks. Semiconductor devices such as the transistor also rely on the arrangement of quantum energy levels into a valence band and a conduction band separated by an energy gap, but advanced quantum semiconductor devices were not possible until advances in fabrication techniques such as molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) developed in the 1960s made it possible to grow extremely pure single crystal semiconductor structures one atomic layer at a time.

In most electronic devices and integrated circuits, quantum phenomena such as quantum tunneling and electron diffraction—where electrons behave not as particles but as waves—are of no significance, since the device is much larger than the wavelength of the electron (around 100 nanometers, where one nanometer is 109 meters or about 4 atoms wide). Since the early 1980s however, researchers have been aware that as the overall device size of field effect transistors decreased, small-scale quantum mechanical effects between components, plus the limitations of materials and fabrication techniques, would sooner or later inhibit further reduction in the size of conventional semiconductor transistors. Thus to produce devices on ever-smaller integrated circuits (down to 25 nanometers in length), conventional microelectronic devices would have to be replaced with new device concepts that take advantage of the quantum mechanical effects that dominate on the nanometer scale, rather than function in despite of them. Such solid state ‘‘nanoelectronics’’ offers the potential for increased speed and density of information processing, but mass fabrication on this small scale presented formidable challenges at the end of the 20th century.

24. Quartz Clocks and Watches

The wristwatch and the domestic clock were completely reinvented with all-new electronic components beginning about 1960. In the new electronic timepieces, a tiny sliver of vibrating quartz in an electrical circuit provides the time base and replaces the traditional mechanical oscillator, the swinging pendulum in the clock or the balance wheel in the watch. Instead of an unwinding spring or a falling weight, batteries power these quartz clocks and watches, and integrated circuits substitute for intricate mechanical gear trains.

25. Radio-Frequency Electronics

Radio was originally conceived as a means for interpersonal communications, either person-toperson, or person-to-people, using analog waveforms containing either Morse code or actual sound. The use of radio frequencies (RF) designed to carry digital data in the form of binary code rather than voice and to replace physical wired connections between devices began in the 1970s, but the technology was not commercialized until the 1990s through digital cellular phone networks known as personal communications services (PCS) and an emerging group of wireless data network technologies just reaching commercial viability. The first of these is a so-called wireless personal area network (WPAN) technology known as Bluetooth. There are also two wireless local area networks (WLANs), generally grouped under the name Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity): (1) Wi-Fi, also known by its Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) designation 802.11b, and (2) Wi-Fi5 (802.11a).

26. Rectifiers

Rectifiers are electronic devices that are used to control the flow of current. They do this by having conducting and nonconducting states that depend on the polarity of the applied voltage. A major function in electronics is the conversion from alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC) where the output is only one-half (either positive or negative) of the input. Rectifiers that are currently, or have been, in use include: point-contact diodes, plate rectifiers, thermionic diodes, and semiconductor diodes. There are various ways in which rectifiers may be classified in terms of the signals they encounter; this contribution will consider two extremes—high frequency and heavy current—that make significantly different demands on device design.

27. Strobe Flashes

Scarcely a dozen years after photography was announced to the world in 1839, William Henry Fox Talbot produced the first known flash photograph. Talbot, the new art’s co-inventor, fastened a printed paper onto a disk, set it spinning as fast as possible, and then discharged a spark to expose a glass plate negative. The words on the paper could be read on the photograph. Talbot believed that the potential for combining electric sparks and photography was unlimited. In 1852, he pronounced, ‘‘It is in our power to obtain the pictures of all moving objects, no matter in how rapid motion they may be, provided we have the means of sufficiently illuminating them with a sudden electric flash.’’

The electronic stroboscope fulfills Talbot’s prediction. It is a repeating, short-duration light source used primarily for visual observation and photography of high-speed phenomena. The intensity of the light emitted from strobes also makes them useful as signal lights on communication towers, airport runways, emergency vehicles, and more. Though ‘‘stroboscope’’ actually refers to a repeating flash and ‘‘electronic flash’’ denotes a single burst, both types are commonly called ‘‘strobes.’’

28. Transistors

Early experiments in transistor technology were based on the analogy between the semiconductor and the vacuum tube: the ability to both amplify and effectively switch an electrical signal on or off (rectification). By 1940, Russell Ohl at Bell Telephone Laboratories, among others, had found that impure silicon had both positive (ptype material with holes) and negative (n-type) regions. When a junction is created between n-type material and p-type material, electrons on the ntype side are attracted across the junction to fill holes in the other layer. In this way, the n-type semiconductor becomes positively charged and the p-type becomes negatively charged. Holes move in the opposite direction, thus reinforcing the voltage built up at the junction. The key point is that current flows from one side to the other when a positive voltage is applied to the layers (‘‘forward biased’’).

29. Travelling Wave Tubes

One of the most important devices for the amplification of radio-frequency (RF) signals— which range in frequency from 3 kilohertz to 300 gigahertz—is the traveling wave tube (TWT). When matched with its power supply unit, or electronic power conditioner (EPC), the combination is known as a traveling wave tube amplifier (TWTA). The amplification of RF signals is important in many aspects of science and technology, since the ability to increase the strength of a very low-power input signal is fundamental to all types of long-range communications, radar and electronic warfare.

30. Vacuum Tubes/Valves

The vacuum tube has its roots in the late nineteenth century when Thomas A. Edison conducted experiments with electric bulbs in 1883. Edison’s light bulbs consisted of a conducting filament mounted in a glass bulb. Passing electricity through the filament caused it to heat up and radiate light. A vacuum in the tube prevented the filament from burning up. Edison noted that electric current would flow from the bulb filament to a positively charged metal plate inside the tube. This phenomenon, the one-way flow of current, was called the Edison Effect. Edison himself could not explain the filament’s behavior. He felt this effect was interesting but unimportant and patented it as a matter of course. It was only fifteen years later that Joseph John Thomson, a physics professor at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., discovered the electron and understood the significance of what was occurring in the tube. He identified the filament rays as a stream of particles, now called electrons. In a range of papers from 1901 to 1916, O.W. Richardson explained the electron behavior. Today the Edison Effect is known as thermionic emission.

History of Electronics

Few of the basic tasks that electronic technologies perform, such as communication, computation, amplification, or automatic control, are unique to electronics. Most were anticipated by the designers of mechanical or electromechanical technologies in earlier years. What distinguishes electronic communication, computation, and control is often linked to the instantaneous action of the devices, the delicacy of their actions compared to mechanical systems, their high reliability, or their tiny size.

The electronics systems introduced between the late nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth century can be roughly divided into the applications related to communications (including telegraphy, telephony, broadcasting, and remote detection) and the more recently developed fields involving digital information and computation. In recent years these two fields have tended to converge, but it is still useful to consider them separately for a discussion of their history.

The origins of electronics as distinguished from other electrical technologies can be traced to 1880 and the work of Thomas Edison. While investigating the phenomenon of the blackening of the inside surface of electric light bulbs, Edison built an experimental bulb that included a third, unused wire in addition to the two wires supporting the filament. When the lamp was operating, Edison detected a flow of electricity from the filament to the third wire, through the evacuated space in the bulb. He was unable to explain the phenomenon, and although he thought it would be useful in telegraphy, he failed to commercialize it. It went unexplained for about 20 years, until the advent of wireless telegraphic transmission by radio waves. John Ambrose Fleming, an experimenter in radio, not only explained the Edison effect but used it to detect radio waves. Fleming’s ‘‘valve’’ as he called it, acted like a one-way valve for electric waves, and could be used in a circuit to convert radio waves to electric pulses so that that incoming Morse code signals could be heard through a sounder or earphone.

As in the case of the Fleming valve, many early electronic devices were used first in the field of communications, mainly to enhance existing forms of technology. Initially, for example, telephony (1870s) and radio (1890s) were accomplished using ordinary electrical and electromechanical circuits, but eventually both were transformed through the use of electronic devices. Many inventors in the late nineteenth century sought a functional telephone ‘‘relay’’; that is, something to refresh a degraded telephone signal to allow long distance telephony. Several people simultaneously recognized the possibility of developing a relay based on the Fleming valve. The American inventor Lee de Forest was one of the first to announce an electronic amplifier using a modified Fleming valve, which he called the Audion. While he initially saw it as a detector and amplifier of radio waves, its successful commercialization occurred first in the telephone industry. The sound quality and long-distance capability of telephony was enhanced and extended after the introduction of the first electronic amplifier circuits in 1907. In the U.S., where vast geographic distances separated the population, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) introduced improved vacuum tube amplifiers in 1913, which were later used to establish the first coast-to-coast telephone service in 1915 (an overland distance of nearly 5000 kilometers).

These vacuum tubes soon saw many other uses, such as a public-address systems constructed as early as 1920, and radio transmitters and receivers. The convergence of telephony and radio in the form of voice broadcasting was technically possible before the advent of electronics, but its application was greatly enhanced through the use of electronics both in the radio transmitter and in the receiver.

World War I saw the applications of electronics diversify somewhat to include military applications. Mostly, these were modifications of existing telegraph, telephone, and radio systems, but applications such as ground-to-air radio telephony were novel. The pressing need for large numbers of electronic components, especially vacuum tubes suitable for military use, stimulated changes in their design and manufacture and contributed to improving quality and falling prices. After the war, the expanded capacity of the vacuum tube industry contributed to a boom in low-cost consumer radio receivers. Yet because of the withdrawal of the military stimulus and the onset of the Great Depression, the pace of change slowed in the 1930s. One notable exception was in the field of television. Radio broadcasting became such a phenomenal commercial success that engineers and businessmen were envisioning how ‘‘pictures with sound’’ would replace ordinary broadcasting, even in the early 1930s. Germany, Great Britain, and the U.S. all had rudimentary television systems in place by 1939, although World War II would bring nearly a complete halt to these early TV broadcasts.

World War II saw another period of rapid change, this one much more dramatic than that of World War I. Not only were radio communications systems again greatly improved, but for the first time the field of electronics engineering came to encompass much more than communication. While it was the atomic bomb that is most commonly cited as the major technological outcome of World War II, radar should probably be called the weapon that won the war. To describe radar as a weapon is somewhat inaccurate, but there is no doubt that it had profound effects upon the way that naval, aerial, and ground combat was conducted. Using radio waves as a sort of searchlight, radar could act as an artificial eye capable of seeing through clouds or fog, over the horizon, or in the dark. Furthermore, it substituted for existing methods of calculating the distance and speed of targets. Radar’s success hinged on the development of new electronic components, particularly new kinds of vacuum tubes such as the klystron and magnetron, which were oriented toward the generation of microwaves. Subsidized by military agencies on both sides of the Atlantic (as well as Japan) during World War II, radar sets were eventually installed in aircraft and ships, used in ground stations, and even built into artillery shells. The remarkable engineering effort that was launched to make radar systems smaller, more energy efficient, and more reliable would mark the beginning of an international research program in electronics miniaturization that continues today. Radar technology also had many unexpected applications elsewhere, such as the use of microwave beams as a substitute for long-distance telephone cables. Microwave communication is also used extensively today for satellite-to-earth communication.

The second major outcome of electronics research during World War II was the effort to build an electronic computer. Mechanical adders and calculators were widely used in science, business, and government by the early twentieth century, and had reached an advanced state of design. Yet the problems peculiar to wartime, especially the rapid calculation of mountains of ballistics data, drove engineers to look for ways to speed up the machines. At the same time, some sought a calculator that could be reprogrammed as computational needs changed. While computers played a role in the war, it was not until the postwar period that they came into their own. In addition, computer research during World War II contributed little to the development of vacuum tubes, although in later years computer research would drive certain areas of semiconductor electron device research.

While the forces of the free market are not to be discounted, the role of the military in electronics development during World War II was of paramount importance. More-or-less continuous military support for research in electronic devices and systems persisted during the second half of the twentieth century too, and many more new technologies emerged from this effort. The sustained effort to develop more compact, rugged devices such as those demanded by military systems would converge with computer development during the 1950s, especially after the invention of the transistor in late 1947.

The transistor was not a product of the war, and in fact its development started in the 1930s and was delayed by the war effort. A transistor is simply a very small substitute for a vacuum tube, but beyond that it is an almost entirely new sort of device. At the time of its invention, its energy efficiency, reliability, and diminutive size suggested new possibilities for electronic systems. The most famous of these possibilities was related to computers and systems derived from or related to computers, such as robotics or industrial automation. The impetus for the transistor was a desire within the telephone industry to create an energy-efficient, reliable substitute for the vacuum tube. Once introduced, the military pressed hard to accelerate its development, as the need emerged for improved electronic navigational devices for aircraft and missiles.

There were many unanticipated results of the substitution of transistors for vacuum tubes. Because they were so energy efficient, transistors made it much more practical to design battery powered systems. The small transistor radio (known in some countries simply as ‘‘the transistor’’), introduced in the 1950s, is credited with helping to popularize rock and roll music. It is also worth noting that many developing countries could not easily provide broadcasting services until the diffusion of battery operated transistor receivers because of the lack of central station electric power. The use of the transistor also allowed designers to enhance existing automotive radios and tape players, contributing eventually to a greatly expanded culture of in-car listening. There were other important outcomes as well; transistor manufacture provided access to the global electronics market for Asian radio manufacturers, who improved manufacturing methods to undercut their U.S. competitors during the 1950s and 1960s. Further, the transistor’s high reliability nearly eliminated the profession of television and radio repair, which had supported tens of thousands of technicians in the U.S. alone before about 1980.

However, for all its remarkable features, the transistor also had its limitations; while it was an essential part of nearly every cutting-edge technology of the postwar period, it was easily outperformed by the older technology of vacuum tubes in some areas. The high-power microwave transmitting devices in communications satellites and spacecraft, for example, nearly all relied on special vacuum tubes through the end of the twentieth century, because of the physical limitations of semiconductor devices. For the most part, however, the transistor made the vacuum tube obsolete by about 1960.

The attention paid to the transistor in the 1950s and 1960s made the phrase ‘‘solid-state’’ familiar to the general public, and the new device spawned many new companies. However, its overall impact pales in comparison to its successor—the integrated circuit. Integrated circuits emerged in the late 1950s, were immediately adopted by the military for small computer and communications systems, and were then used in civilian computers and related applications from the 1960s. Integrated circuits consist of multiple transistors fabricated simultaneously from layers of semiconductor and other materials. The transistors, interconnecting ‘‘wires,’’ and many of the necessary circuit elements such as capacitors and resistors are fabricated on the ‘‘chip.’’ Such a circuit eliminates much of the laborious process of assembling an electronic system such as a computer by hand, and results in a much smaller product. The ability to miniaturize components through integrated circuit fabrication techniques would lead to circuits so vanishingly small that it became difficult to connect them to the systems of which they were a part. The plastic housings or ‘‘packages’’ containing today’s microprocessor chips measure just a few centimeters on a side, and yet the actual circuits inside are much smaller. Some of the most complex chips made today contain many millions of transistors, plus millions more solid-state resistors and other passive components.

While used extensively in military and aerospace applications, the integrated circuit became famous as a component in computer systems. The logic and memory circuits of digital computers, which have been the focus of much research, consist mainly of switching devices. Computers were first constructed in the 1930s with electromechanical relays as switching devices, then with vacuum tubes, transistors, and finally integrated circuits. Most early computers used off-the-shelf tubes and transistors, but with the advent of the integrated circuit, designers began to call for components designed especially for computers. It was clear to engineers at the time that all the circuits necessary to build a computer could be placed on one chip (or a small set of chips), and in fact, the desire to create a ‘‘computer on a chip’’ led to the microprocessor, introduced around 1970. The commercial impetus underlying later generations of computer chip design was not simply miniaturization (although there are important exceptions) or energy efficiency, but also the speed of operation, reliability, and lower cost. However, the inherent energy efficiency and small size of the resulting systems did enable the construction of smaller computers, and the incorporation of programmable controllers (special purpose computers) into a wide variety of other technologies. The recent merging of the computer (or computer-like systems) with so many other technologies makes it difficult to summarize the current status of digital electronic systems. As the twentieth century drew to a close, computer chips were widely in use in communications and entertainment devices, in industrial robots, in automobiles, in household appliances, in telephone calling cards, in traffic signals, and in a myriad other places. The rapid evolution of the computer during the last 50 years of the twentieth century was reflected by the near-meaninglessness of its name, which no longer adequately described its functions.

From an engineering perspective, not only did electronics begin to inhabit, in an almost symbiotic fashion, other technological systems after about 1950, but these electronics systems were increasingly dominated by the use of semiconductor technology. After virtually supplanting the vacuum tube in the 1950s, the semiconductor-based transistor became the technology of choice for most subsequent electronics development projects. Yet semiconducting alloys and compounds proved remarkably versatile in applications at first unrelated to transistors and chips. The laser, for example, was originally operated in a large vacuum chamber and depended on ionized gas for its operation. By the 1960s, laser research was focused on the remarkable ability of certain semiconducting materials to accomplish the same task as the ion chamber version. Today semiconductor devices are used not only as the basis of amplifiers and switches, but also for sensing light, heat, and pressure, for emitting light (as in lasers or video displays), for generating electricity (as in solar cells), and even for mechanical motion (as in micromechanical systems or MEMS).

However, semiconductor devices in ‘‘discrete’’ forms such as transistors, would probably not have had the remarkable impact of the integrated circuit. By the 1970s, when the manufacturing techniques for integrated circuits allowed high volume production, low cost, tiny size, relatively small energy needs, and enormous complexity; electronics entered a new phase of its history, having a chief characteristic of allowing electronic systems to be retrofitted into existing technologies. Low-cost microprocessors, for example, which were available from the late 1970s onward, were used to sense data from their environment, measure it, and use it to control various technological systems from coffee machines to video tape recorders. Even the human body is increasingly invaded by electronics; at the end of the twentieth century, several researchers announced the first microchips for implantation directly in the body. They were to be used to store information for retrieval by external sensors or to help deliver subcutaneous drugs. The integrated circuit has thus become part of innumerable technological and biological systems.

It is this remarkable flexibility of application that enabled designers of electronic systems to make electronics the defining technology of the late twentieth century, eclipsing both the mechanical technologies associated with the industrial revolution and the electrical and information technologies of the so-called second industrial revolution. While many in the post-World War II era once referred to an ‘‘atomic age,’’ it was in fact an era in which daily life was increasingly dominated by electronics.

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Title: towards system modelling to support diseases data extraction from the electronic health records for physicians research activities.

Abstract: The use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) has increased dramatically in the past 15 years, as, it is considered an important source of managing data od patients. The EHRs are primary sources of disease diagnosis and demographic data of patients worldwide. Therefore, the data can be utilized for secondary tasks such as research. This paper aims to make such data usable for research activities such as monitoring disease statistics for a specific population. As a result, the researchers can detect the disease causes for the behavior and lifestyle of the target group. One of the limitations of EHRs systems is that the data is not available in the standard format but in various forms. Therefore, it is required to first convert the names of the diseases and demographics data into one standardized form to make it usable for research activities. There is a large amount of EHRs available, and solving the standardizing issues requires some optimized techniques. We used a first-hand EHR dataset extracted from EHR systems. Our application uploads the dataset from the EHRs and converts it to the ICD-10 coding system to solve the standardization problem. So, we first apply the steps of pre-processing, annotation, and transforming the data to convert it into the standard form. The data pre-processing is applied to normalize demographic formats. In the annotation step, a machine learning model is used to recognize the diseases from the text. Furthermore, the transforming step converts the disease name to the ICD-10 coding format. The model was evaluated manually by comparing its performance in terms of disease recognition with an available dictionary-based system (MetaMap). The accuracy of the proposed machine learning model is 81%, that outperformed MetaMap accuracy of 67%. This paper contributed to system modelling for EHR data extraction to support research activities.

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