Your first thoughts

Crime and the Media

Good idea to provide an argument against simplistic “media effects” theories. See
http://www.theory.org.uk/david/effects.htm for a good destruction of the argument.

The trouble with your idea is that it does not quite fit into the Crime and the Media description. You could MAKE it fit, by focusing on games which DO REPRESENT crime, the police or criminality. GTA would work , but I’m not sure about the others – you’ll have to discuss them with me. Could you find a game where you play as a COP? That would make an interesting comparison.

Also, I think that what you’ll have to do is look at what has been written on crime and TV (cop shows, etc) and then see if it translates into computer games. So your hypothesis could be:

Why is there such a cultural fascination with crime narratives, and how has this fascination translated into computer games?

I can supply you with a few good chapters exploring crime drama on TV, as well as more stuff dismanting crude effects studies.

Your alternative, which would work, is to do Children and the Media, but because GTA is an 18 you would need to argue that it is played by many children (and you’d need evidence – which would be easy to amass, I would guess).

Either way we need to discuss this and look at the Exam Specs together.