Horror Studies Research Seminar: Horror, Desensitisation and Video Violence

If you are in Newcastle Upon Tyne on 25th November, please join us as we welcome Gavin Miller and Georgia Walton (University of Glasgow), who are presenting work coming out of their Leverhulme funded project ‘A Mutual Fascination: British Horror and the Psy Disciplines c. 1955-Present’ 

Date/Time: 25th November 2026, 3-4pm

Location: SQB 316, Squires Building, Northumbria Univeristy

Title: ‘Horror, Desensitisation and Video Violence – Secret Knowledge, Public Health

Abstract: This paper moves beyond familiar framings of the 1970s and 1980s controversy around media desensitisation to violence. Rather than employing theories of moral panic to analyse the ‘video nasties’ furore, our paper works within traditions from the history of psychology and from science and technology studies. Using neglected documentary sources, we show how proponents of the media desensitisation thesis drew upon, and elaborated, the disciplinary mythologies of behaviourist psychology. We then show how advocates of video censorship and control understood themselves not as socially and culturally conservative reactionaries, but as campaigners in a new area of technoscientific risk and control