The Centre for Social Sciences Research (CSSR) and the  Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa  (IDCPPA) at the University of Cape Town invite you to join us for a lunchtime seminar on 11 March 2025 at 12:45pm. The seminar will be presented by Muya Koloko.

About the Seminar:

"This will never happen in real life": Local tweens' responses to violence in digital games

Research into video game violence has often continued the tradition of gauging whether children being exposed to representations of violence will internalise/imitate the violence. Rarely have studies examined children's perspectives on violence, especially in the Global South or countries with high rates of violent crime such as South Africa. In addressing how tweens (children aged between ten and twelve) from low to mid socioeconomic backgrounds responded to video game violence, a sequential exploratory mixed methods design was implemented.

Qualitative data revealed access and preference differences by gender and location. Violence in video games was accepted as fictional and justified by the narrative and rules in the video game, which often included a backstory that justified violence as retaliation. Such retaliatory violence was the focus of a subsequent quantitative survey administered to a larger sample of children (n = 217), which investigated potential congruence between support for retaliatory violence in video games and in their life-worlds. A moderate positive correlation was found between support for retaliatory violence in video games and in life, suggesting that the ideas of acceptability of violence presented in video games are not internalised by most children. Merged, the findings reflect the nuances of children's experiences with video game violence and suggest that contextual cues from the video games played, peers and caregivers shape how children perceive video game violence.

Speakers

Muya Koloko holds a BSocSc, BSocSc(Hons), and an MA in Psychological Research from UCT. He joined the Centre for Film and Media Studies at UCT for his PhD studies. He is a founder of UCT's ParaSports Club and a proponent of sports for people with disabilities. Having now completed his PhD he hopes to pursue a postdoctoral research fellowship in disability studies focusing on fostering inclusivity in university environments through sport for people with disabilities.

  11 March 2025
  12:45 - 14:00 SAST
   CSSR Seminar Room, 4.29 Robert Leslie Social Science Building, UCT

Hosted by the Centre for Social Science Research and the Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa