CULTIVATION THEORY

Cultivation Theory is a social science concept that examines the long-term effects of television viewing on viewers' perceptions of social reality.

Cultivation analysis initiated by George Gerbner in the late 1960s. George Gerbner proposed a holistic approach to television's impact on public opinion known as the cultivation theory.

 George Gerber, Dean &Prof. for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, founder of the Cultural Environment Movement, and champion of cultivation theory. He began the cultural indicators research in the mid 1960. He conducts a research to find whether and how watching television may influence viewer’s ideas in everyday life.

He focuses on his research in related to four attitudes.

1. Chances of involvement with violence

2. Fear of walking alone at night—

3. Perceived activity of police—heavy viewers overestimate the size of law enforcement

4. General mistrust of people—heavy viewers are suspicious of others.

 

Cultivation Hypothesis

As proposed by George Gerber and his colleagues, the cultivation hypothesis states that the mass media (particularly television) have a preponderant role at the definition of people's cultural and social values. According to the hypothesis, the mass media “cultivate” those values, opinions, and concepts over an extended period of time. Following that rationale, proponents argue that the effects of exposure to television should be analyzed not in terms of immediate response but rather over the long term.

Findings of George Gerber

·         George Gerber argues that heavy television viewing creates an exaggerated belief in a scary world. Cultivation theory suggests heavy viewers will regard the world as more dangerous than light viewers. He argue that television has long term effect which are small, gradual , indirect  but cumulative and significance effect.

·   Gerber emphasizes the symbolic content of television drama. Television has belated religion as the key storyteller in our culture.  It is responsible for shaping or cultivation viewer’s conceptions of social reality. 

Violence is television’s principal message, and particularly for devoted viewers. Gerber found that the portrayal of violence varies little from year to year. Over half of prime-time programs contain violence or the threat of violence. Two-thirds of the major characters are caught up in violence; heroes are just as involved as villains.

·        

Gerber argue that the mass media cultivate attitude and values which are already present in a culture. The media maintain and propagate these values amongst members of culture thus binding together.  Old people, children, women, and blue-collar workers are more often victimized.

                    eg. Solvethellam Unmai

 Television places marginalized people in symbolic double jeopardy(risk) by simultaneously under representing and over victimizing them.   Not surprisingly, marginalized people then exhibit the most fear of violence as a result of television programming.

 Mainstreaming.  Gerber argue that media create  a mainstreaming effect among viewers.  A Mainstreaming is the process by which heavy viewers develop a commonality of outlook through constant exposure to the same images and labels. 

Gerber illustrates the mainstream effect by showing how television types blur economic and political distinctions.

1.     The media content assume that they are middle class.

2.     They believe they are political moderates.

3.     In fact, heavy viewers tend to be conservative.

 Resonance. It means an intensified (exaggerated) effect create on the audience by television. Resonance occurs when repeated symbolic portrayals of violence cause viewers to replay their real-life experiences with violence over and over. Rather than focus on the few people who imitate television violence, Gerber wants to look at the large majority of people who are terrified by the world.

 This theory highlights the cumulative impact of television exposure on individuals' beliefs and values, ultimately shaping the dominant culture in society.

 The central hypothesis of cultivation analysis is that people who spend more time watching television are more likely to perceive the real world in a way as most commonly depicted in television messages, as compared to those who watch less television, but are otherwise comparable in major demographic features (Gerbner, 1969).

 Television is the most pervasive and constant learning system in society. Cultivation analysis approaches television as a message system with aggregate and repetitive patterns of images, the contents of which were absorbed by viewers over long period of time.

 

 

Cultivation researchers argue that media effects are massive, long term, and cumulative, influencing a large and heterogeneous public by exposing the public to recurrent patterns of stories, images, and messages. If it is true that television is the common storyteller of our age, providing our diversified society with consistent and repeated messages and images, then the society becomes monotonous

As a primary storyteller in our society, television not only impacts on individual ideologies, but also influences society as a whole as the fundamental manifestation of the mainstream culture. Among heavy television viewers, the relatively common outlooks and values cultivated by television become the dominant or mainstream culture of that society, despite individual differences.

 

 

Findings of nearly four decades of cultivation research on television message systems have unveiled a ‘distorted’ reality: exaggerated crime rates, overrepresentation of violence, gender-role stereotyping, nontraditional family composition, the ‘mean world syndrome,’ and so on (Morgan et al., 2009).

 

Some of the major aspects in cultivation studies have examined television's influences in areas such as violence, gender-role stereotypes, health, family, (Signorielli and Morgan, 2009). and most recently, online gaming and psychological health implications.

Culture does not produce one standard meaning. "Meanings migrate from one context to another, sometimes ending up very far from where they started - they are always getting displaced, diverted, reworked and exchanged. It is the very process of meaning. The world has its own culture, countries have their own culture, cities have their own culture, and it is the influences within those boundaries which produce a culture.