Violence in the mass media: Today and tomorrow

In the author's opinion, the two popular beliefs that violence is growing in the world and that this negative tendency is being reinforced by the mass media, are erroneous. The article describes mechanisms which create the illusion of growing violence, to argue the point that in fact violence is not growing, it is being consistently sublimated from the physical into the symbolic and virtual spheres, while the modern mass media play an essential part in strengthening the tendency. The real problem, however, is that decrease of violence is not intensive enough, which, in conditions of unpredictable development of technologies, might lead to a global disaster. The author allows himself cautious predictions as to how the situation might develop in the coming decades.