Cultivation theory: (Professor George Gerbner)

Online academic document: http://www.aber.ac.uk/, David Chandler

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/cultiv.html

Summary notes:

• developed by Professor George Gerbner
• Gerbner argues that the mass media cultivate attitudes and values which are already present in a culture: the media maintain and propagate these values amongst members of a culture, thus binding it together.
• Cultivation research looks at the mass media as a socializing agent and investigates whether television viewers come to believe the television version of reality the more they watch it.
• The focus is on ‘heavy viewers’. People who watch a lot of television are likely to be more influenced, especially regarding topics of which the viewer has little first-hand experience.
• It may be that lone viewers are more open to a cultivation effect than those who view with others (van Evra 1990, p. 171). (reading the papers is usually an independent process)
• cultivation theory presents television as 'not a window on or reflection of the world, but a world in itself' (1993, p. 100).
• Gerbner argued that the over-representation of violence on television constitutes a symbolic message about law and order rather than a simple cause of more aggressive behaviour by viewers
• Cultivation analysis usually involves the correlation of data from content analysis (identifying prevailing images on television) with survey data from audience research (to assess any influence of such images on the attitudes of viewers). Content analysis by cultivation theorists seeks to characterize ‘the TV world’. Such analysis shows not only that the TV world is far more violent than the everyday world, but also, for instance, that television is dominated by males and over-represents the professions and those involved in law enforcement.
• The cultivation hypothesis involves predicting or expecting heavy television viewers to give more TV answers than light viewers.The responses of a large number of heavy viewers are compared with those of light viewers. A tendency of heavy viewers to choose TV answers is interpreted as evidence of a cultivation effect. The difference in the pattern of responses between light and heavy viewers (when other variables are controlled), is referred to as the 'cultivation differential',
• Cultivation theorists argue that heavy viewing leads viewers (even among high educational/high income groups) to have more homogeneous or convergent opinions than light viewers (who tend to have more heterogeneous or divergent opinions). heavy viewers of violence on television come to believe that the incidence of violence in the everyday world is higher than do light viewers of similar backgrounds. They refer to this as a mainstreaming effect.
• Misjudging the amount of violence in society is sometimes called the 'mean world syndrome'. Heavy viewers tend to believe that the world is a nastier place than do light viewers.
• The cultivation effect is also argued to be strongest when the viewer's neighbourhood is similar to that shown on television. Crime on television is largely urban, so urban heavy viewers are subject to a 'double dose' , and cultivation theorists argue that violent content 'resonates' more for them. The strongest effects of heavy viewing on attitudes to violence are likely to be amongst those in the high crime areas of cities.
  

Criticisms of cultivation theory:

• Gerbner has been criticized for over-simplification. Denis McQuail argues that ‘it is almost impossible to deal convincingly with the complexity of posited relationships between symbolic structures, audience behaviour and audience views, given the many intervening and powerful social background factors' (in Boyd-Barrett & Braham 1987, pp. 99-100). Our attitudes are likely to be influenced not only by TV, but by other media, by direct experience, by other people, and so on.
• A correlation between television exposure and the beliefs of viewers do not, of course, prove that there is a causal relationship. There could be another common factor influencing the apparently associated ones.
• Rather than heavy TV viewing leading people to be more fearful, it may be that more fearful people are drawn to watching more television than other people
• Hirsch (1980, cited in Livingstone 1990, p. 16), argued that an apparent relationship between exposure to violence on television and fear of crime can be explained by the neighbourhood viewers live in. Those who live in high-crime areas are more likely to stay at home and watch television and also to believe that they have a greater chance of being attacked than are those in low-crime areas.
• Pingree & Hawkins have argued that breakdowns by content type are more useful than measures of total viewing, because viewers are selective.
• Also, different genres - and even different programmes - contribute to the shaping of different realities, but cultivation analysis assumes too much homogeneity in television programmes
• Asking viewers for their estimations of crime statistics is a crude measure of their beliefs about crime. Doob & MacDonald note that there is evidence of a cultivation effect with social questions (e.g. 'How many muggings were there in your neighbourhood last year?') but less so with personal questions (e.g. 'Are you afraid of being mugged?').
• Cultivation theory focuses on the amount of television viewing or 'exposure', and does not allow for differences in the ways in which viewers interpret television realities. Viewers do not necessarily passively accept as 'real' what they see on television.
• When the viewer has some direct lived experience of the subject matter this may tend to reduce any cultivation effect.