"I am sick to death of these images of death that we see on TV each day. I really do not want to see them anymore," Campbell said during the session on media and child rights.

Campbell also noted that these images provide a boost for the criminals who carry out the gruesome acts. She also told the forum that criminals study the images to get ideas for perpetrating more gruesome acts.

Here to stay

But Dr Marjan de Bruin, senior lecturer and director of the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication, says gory images in The media are here to stay.

"You have to live with the sensational media because they are not going to change," de Bruin said at the conference, which was held at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston.

In her presentation titled 'Exploring Teenagers Media Behaviour in Jamaica - Watching Television', de Bruin said her research explored media behaviour of Jamaican youth (10-12 and 13-15) through the use of focus groups, in-depth interviews and content analysis. The findings confirmed that environmental, household, socio-economic and personality factors, among other things, determine the complex process of media use.

Most popular

In a paper titled 'Electronic Media Consumption of Adolescents: Opportunity Rather than Threat', Althea Bailey, lecturer in the Department of Community Health and Psychiatry at the UWI, found that cable television was the most popular form of electronic media consumed by adolescents aged 12-18.

Local televisions shows focusing on music, competitions or teen participants and hosts ranked second. Internet access was limited and was used mainly for chat-room and instant-messaging communication.

The presenters at the two-day conference, which ended on Wednesday, included a number of Jamaican academics from the University of the West Indies, Mona.

More than 200 students from across Jamaica also attended to the conference.