Violent video games: Poorer quality studies, which tended to highlight negative findings, received more citations in scholarly sources, get more news media coverage

Copenhaver Allen, Mitrofan Oana, and Ferguson Christopher J.. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. November 2017, ahead of print. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2017.0364

Abstract: News coverage of video game violence studies has been critiqued for focusing mainly on studies supporting negative effects and failing to report studies that did not find evidence for such effects. These concerns were tested in a sample of 68 published studies using child and adolescent samples. Contrary to our hypotheses, study effect size was not a predictor of either newspaper coverage or publication in journals with a high-impact factor. However, a relationship between poorer study quality and newspaper coverage approached significance. High-impact journals were not found to publish studies with higher quality. Poorer quality studies, which tended to highlight negative findings, also received more citations in scholarly sources. Our findings suggest that negative effects of violent video games exposure in children and adolescents, rather than large effect size or high methodological quality, increase the likelihood of a study being cited in other academic publications and subsequently receiving news media coverage.