29th Workshop on Aggression: Aggression, Media, and Digital Technologies
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Blood, Gore, and Video Games: Effects of Violent Content on Players
In today’s popular culture, the video game industry has established itself as a major force, surpassing the movie and music industries. Most people now play video games. They are played on consoles, computers, and handheld devices (including mobile phones). The top selling video games contain lots of blood and gore. Bushman will discuss a new meta-analytic review of violent video game studies (1,689 effects from 726 independent studies that included 416,351 participants). Using the General Aggression Model as a theoretical framework, he will focus on five violent video game effects: (1) aggressive cognition, (2) angry feelings, (3) physiological arousal, (4) hostile appraisals, and (5) aggressive behavior. He will also discuss potential moderators of these effects (e.g., gender, age, Western vs. Eastern country). Finally, he will discuss some reasons why people deny violent media effects.
Brad J. Bushman is a professor of communication at The Ohio State University. He has studied aggression and violence for over 30 years. He is the Editor of the American Psychological Association (APA) journal Psychology of Violence. He is also the Executive Secretary of the International Society for Research on Aggression. He was a member of President Obama’s gun violence committee as a violent media expert. He has co-chaired two reports on youth violence following school shootings and has testified before Congress on the topic. His research has been funded by federal grants, has been published in top journals, and has been featured extensively in the mass media.
When Teachers Intervene in School Bullying: How Morality and Bias Related to Peer Exclusion Shape Antibullying Efforts
Effective teachers' antibullying efforts reduce adolescents' involvement in school bullying, understood as aggressive behaviors characterized by power asymmetry between bullying and victimized students. While teachers believe that bullying (offline and online) is unfair, harmful, and deserving of intervention, they sometimes struggle to recognize these features in real-life incidents, especially in relational and online bullying. One critical reason for failing to recognize bullying in these contexts is the complexity of peer exclusion, an adversity that may precede or follow bullying or present a form of bullying. Teachers perceive that evaluations of peer exclusion are context-dependent and difficult, as peer exclusion is viewed as an inherent part of adolescent social functioning and relates to the developmental need of autonomy. Experimental research of these evaluations supports their context-dependency and suggests that teachers' moral reasoning about peer exclusion is shaped by ethnic and gender biases, as well as stereotypical beliefs about cross-group functioning. Moreover, teachers may alter power asymmetry in bullying using (in)appropriate teaching practices related to peer inclusion. Therefore, to reduce school bullying more effectively, teacher education should go beyond antibullying strategies and also focus on developing competencies to navigate peer exclusion, promote peer inclusion, and foster equal distribution of power among students.
Lenka Kollerová is the head of the Social and Emotional Development Lab at the Institute of Psychology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. She is also an assistant professor at the Faculty of Education at Charles University. She studies social, emotional, and moral development of adolescents within the context of peer relations at school. Her research focuses on bullying and peer exclusion, as well as on the crucial role of teachers in prevention and intervention efforts. Lenka Kollerová employs a socio-ecological approach to school bullying and peer exclusion and examines how various layers of the social environment, including parents, teachers, and peers, shape the dynamics of these negative phenomena and their negative consequences. Her main research projects examined child mental health in the school context, negative outcomes of victimization, predictors of defending victimized students, and teachers' perspectives on bullying by peer exclusion. She has also been involved in the evaluation of the KiVa anti-bullying program in the Czech Republic.
Cutting One Head, Growing Two: The Struggle to Combat Digital Hate
In recent years, digital hate - defined as any malicious expression performed by and directed against an individual or a collective online - has emerged as a pervasive and destructive force in the digital sphere. There is mounting evidence from around the globe that digital hate can create tremendous harm, by silencing others, fueling division between individuals and groups, leading to negative psychological effects, or even inciting real-world, violent action. The more difficult question, however, is, how digital hate can be stopped. In this talk, I will try to explain the reasons behind digital hate. Using data from several European countries, I aim to shed light on the perpetrators of digital hate, who they are, why they spread hate, and the psychological and social factors driving their behavior. Looking at regulation, content moderation, technology development and citizen competence, I will then discuss some common strategies to create safer digital spaces. But is it a "Digital Hydra" - a monster that will regrow two heads, for every head chopped off?
Jörg Matthes (PhD, University of Zurich) is Professor of Communication Science at the Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Austria, where he directs the Advertising and Media Psychology Research Group (AdMe). His research focuses on digital media effects, advertising and consumer research, sustainability communication, children & media, terrorism and populism as well as empirical methods. He has extensively published on these topics, with more than 250 journal articles. In 2014, he received the Young Scholar Award by the International Communication Association honoring the most outstanding research career worldwide seven years past the PhD. Two years later, he received AEJMC's Hillier Krieghbaum Under 40 Award which honors scholars "under 40 years of age who have shown outstanding achievement and effort in teaching, research and public service. In 2021, he was elected as a Fellow of the International Communication Association. He was recipient of an Advanced Grant (2.5 Million Euros) by the European Research Council (ERC) in 2022. Currently, he is Editor of Communication Theory.
Important dates
| Submission deadline |
June 15, 2025 |
| Notification of acceptance |
July 18, 2025 |
| Registration | July 18 - November 14, 2025 |
| Early bird registration deadline |
September 15, 2025 |
| 29th Workshop on Aggression in Brno |
November 26 - 28, 2025 |
Call for papers: Workshop on Aggression 2025
Call for papers: Thematic issue of the International Journal of Developmental Science (IJDS)
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The conference is organised as a part of the project „Research of Excellence on Digital Technologies and Wellbeing CZ.02.01.01/00/22_008/0004583“, which was co-financed by the European Union.
