In a single generation, communications technology has turned the planet into one small global village. Within minutes television and radio relay stories across the country and around the world. The same edition of newspapers can be printed simultaneously in cities everywhere and be on the street within hours. And, as we are all aware, the future of the mass media may not be just in the traditional forms of television, radio and newspapers but in the emerging technologies like the Internet that will shape the information highway. The Internet is an informal and rather anarchic network of computer networks spanning the globe. It has given access to the entire world for anyone possessing a computer and a modem. These new technologies and their impact on how we share information will force us to revisit fundamental issues such as freedom of expression and associated issues such as crime and crime prevention as well as cultural integrity. It is the pervasiveness and immediacy of this whole enterprise that has given mass me

among the boys who were then in their late teens, related to the amount of TV violence they had watched a decade earlier. Findings like these have been controversial and contradicted by various authorities over the years but there is a body of opinion that contends that media violence does lead to crime. George Gerbner, Dean Emeritus of Communications, University of Pennsylvania, who is recognized by many as the dean of research into violence on television, has documented these statistics: "We have scenes of violence an average of six times per hour in prime time in the evening. In children's programming there are between 20 and 25 times violent scenes per hour." But even this violence is not evenly distributed in the media says Gerbner. The victims, he says are victims as well of stereotyping: "For every ten males who commit violence, there are ten males who are victimized. For every female who is written into a script to assert that kind of power, there are seventeen women who get victimized. For every ten women of color who are put into a script there are 22 women of color who get victimized." But stereotyping as a major problem on television is not exclusive to programs. Often the content of commercial messages inserted in programs can be just as damaging. Research done by George Gerbner and others has shown that the average North American watches 10,000 hours of violent entertainment before the age of 21, and witnesses 36,000 murders before attaining the voting age. But whether media violence does contribute to aggressive and antisocial behavior has been open to lively debate. Since the media are part of the problem in creating our current culture of violence, the potential exists for them to become part of the solution. However, stories of community-based crime prevention programs do not often make the news. Many community groups feel a sense of powerlessness about media and technology, and are working on

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Approximate Word count = 1297
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)