Nhung Nguyen

Key Scholars

• George Gerbner

• Larry Gross

Seminal Readings

Gerbner, G. & Gross, L.(1976). Living with television: The violence profile.Journal of Communication, 26(2), 172-199.

Gerbner, G.; Gross, L.; Morgan, M.; Signorielli, N.; Shanahan, J. Growing up with television: Cultivation processes. Vol. 2. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum; 2002.

Gerbner G, Gross L, Signorielli N, Morgan M. Television violence, victimization, and power. American Behavioral Scientist. 1980; 5(23):705–716.

Morgan, M.; Shanahan, J.; Signorielli, N., editors. The cultivation differential: State of the art research in cultivation theory. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishers; 2012.

Morgan M, Shanahan J. The state of cultivation. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. 2010; 54(2):337–355.

Key Concepts

Mean World Syndrome

First Order

Second Order

Cultivation Differential

Main Premise

Gerbner began studying this in the 1960s when he was studying media effects relating to whether watching television would influence the audience’s ideas and perceptions of everyday life.  He also wanted to know how watching television would influence audience perception of everyday life.

The theory states that viewing television at a high frequency makes a person more susceptible to media messages.  They are more likely to believe those messages are real and valid. Viewing in a high volume can have long-term effects on the audience that gradually grow over time.  The focus of research is on the effects of viewing opposed to created behavior by a person’s natural environment.

Suggest that cultivation of attitudes is already present in society and the media represents the attitudes in different ways to audiences.  Looking at it from this point of view researchers believe the media cultivate attitudes to the status quo and they do not challenge it.

• Factors
  • Viewer is unaware of the extent they absorb media
  • Think of themselves as moderate viewers when they are actually heavy viewers
    • This makes them think they are not absorbing that much and they continue to absorb more

Frameworks

• How messages are selected, produced and distributed
• How media are addressing recurrent images in content
• How exposure to messages affects audience

Studies focus on: violence, hot topics, topics that have been focused on over and over,  and can be expanded to cover gender, race, cultural representations, political attitudes, etc.

Being exposed to more violence, whether through news or shows, causes a person to believe the world is worse and more dangerous than it actually is, this is known as Mean World Syndrome.

Two levels of Cultivation

First-order: general beliefs a person holds about the world

Second-order: specific attitudes developed such as hatred or reverence of law, protests, etc.

Cultivation Differential: difference between light and heavy viewers and the extent to which an attitude on a topic is shaped by television

Common Methods

Observation

Experiments

Content Analysis

In-depth Interviews

Focus Groups

Surveys

Limitations

One of the arguments historically about the theory is that there has rarely been a difference in categorization between different types of violence.  For instance, cartoon violence is often categorized with realistic violence.

Research is often focused on measuring effects and not the people affected.  It often does not look at people’s backgrounds or other environmental factors that may play a part in a person’s attitudes.

Developments

Many of the studies still focus on children watching violence on television and how it may affect them when they are older.  Research has focused on how children react to watching violent cartoons.

Research also looks into how adults may be influenced by watching television and their perspectives.  This would be true on how adults view the political climate based on how much media, or a certain type of media, they are constantly exposed to and how it affects their attitudes about a party or candidate.

For example, a recent study looked at Fox News and NBC and the impacts of the news. Cultivation plays into the idea of “if it bleeds it leads” a common phrase in TV news. The glorification of bad news is something cultivation plays with, specifically the impact of a constant barrage of bad news as we see so often.

This research has been used to study how exposure to certain religious values can have an affect on a person later in life.  For instance, this has been used to study churches like the Mormon church and why people may choose to stick to their values or leave the church.  This has been something researchers have looked into recently based on shows, but also based on how religion is playing a part in politics.

This is also used in research around social media exposure.  People who are exposed to the same content on social media, which are put on your page based on algorithms to what you search for, may be affected by the content they are exposed to.  Over time this might have change a person’s values or at least play a part in how they view the world.

Typical Research Questions

How does exposure over time affect a person’s attitude about a topic?

Does exposure to violence impact the way a child will act later in life?

How does long-term exposure to violence affect the way a person sees the world?