I can see clearly now the rain is gone

Just had my tutorial with Fred and it's finally clear what I'm doing in my essay. Or at least more so than the last tutorial.
I started with just looking at media and fear. I want to show a link between the two, at this point the rough phrasing for my question is 'How does media affect our perception of fear?'. My problem last week is that I just had some ideas of what I wanted to write about just floating around with no central pillar to hold them together. I had a mild freakout but Fred set neon the right route by telling me I needed some kind of theory to back my work up. It turns out if you type theory after general buzz words in google the results are really useful.
I've spanned off to three theories about how media affects people;

Copy cat/ Modelling theory
The copy cat theory relates to something publicised in the media that creates a lot of attention. The well known example of this is copy cat murderers, suicides and other violent acts that come with no other motive other than attention, caused by seeing the same acts in the media, be it film, television or books.

Desensitisation Theory
Desensitisation is the belief that there is so much violence shown in the media, people have less of an emotional impact to violence and feel less sensitive towards it. For instance if you watch a lot of violent movies, you will not feel as upset about the violence than you would have if you hadn't watched a lot of violent movies. But does consuming violent media make you less sad about real life violence.

Cultivation Theory
Cultivation theory is about how peoples attitudes and beliefs are impacted by the media, rather than just behaviours. For instance someone who watches a lot of violent movies may have a darker and unrealistic outlook on the world, thinking that there is more violence in their community than there really is. Whereas someone who doesn't watch as many movies may have a more realistic view on the world.

We figured out a flow chart of how the murders I was looking at linked to horror film and vice versa. Each of these link in with one of the theories I have looked into. The first one is the copy cat theory, instead of it being the general example of this theory which is copy cat murder the flow chart focuses in on copy cat films. I think that the chain of copy cat films that follow a successful horror film over do all its tactics and thats how it leads on to the second flow chart where the tactics have been so over used that the audience becomes desensitised. 

an example for the first flow chart would be John Wayne Gacy; the killer clown. A man who dressed up as Pogo the clown and ended up trapping and killing over 30 young boys. His case was the inspiration for the clown in the movie 'It'. 'It' was a very successful and popular horror and after it there has been a string of clown horror; Mr. Jingles, Stitches, clown house, amusement. 

An example for the second flow chart would be the Chuckie franchise which is plays with the concept of children involved with murder. But it puts it into the form of a doll. But audiences become desensitised and less bothered by the effects. The movies try and outdo each preceding one in the franchise. The example for murder would be the James Bulger case where the two ten year old boys brutally murdered him after watching Chuckie 3 and mimicked some of the things they had seen on their victim. The boys watched many horror films not intended for children but they also lived in an abusive home so it is unclear which is the real reason. But their case also kind of links to the copy cat theory because they were mimicking what they had seen. But one point of the copy cat theory is that the people who copy already have the mental capability and are already mentally ill and the film, in this case, was just the extra push they needed.

The next flow chart went from more horrific murders to media reports but at this point I'm unclear what will go next. The final one will be support the cultivation theory. In this one I think it will then branch out from film into other medias such as games, music and comics. This is the part where I want to branch out and show that our society has now reached a new level of fear. We are drowning in the amount of fears we have and children are being brought up thinking that the world is a very dangerous place where they could be abducted and murdered or raped at any minute. We've created a culture of fear and I want to discuss the effect of that on how we act as a society.