2921| Violent Frames. Analyzing Internet Movie Database Reviewers’ Text Descriptions of Media Violence and Gender Differences from 39 Years of U.S. Action, Thriller, Crime, and Adventure Movies.

Abstract

The Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) is the largest and most successful website for movie information, yet crowdsourced contents of sites like these have rarely been studied. Therefore, using IMDb synopsis texts, reviewers’ movie descriptions were analyzed regarding movie contents that have been the subject of many previous media studies: the violent behavior and victimization of male and female film characters over time. Analysis of 1,396 synopsis texts reveals that both perpetrators and victims are mainly male (both 80%) and, against expectation, violence becomes less severe and more often nonlethal over the years. For the first time, our study using IMDb texts identifies male and female stereotypes and suggests that viewers’ descriptions of what they have seen could match the findings of traditional content analyses and actual crime figures.