Cultivating Reality Beliefs

Question 1

The Cultivation Theory

Answer 1

• Central question: how do media representaitons shape our culture?
• What is culture?
  
  • Way of life
  • ‘Web of significance’ or meaning system
  • Representations (stories, images, heroes & villians) and symbolic environment

Question 2

The Approach

Answer 2

• The ‘cultural indicators’ research:
• Goal: two develop a set of indices to systematically document cultural representations of our time.
• Condition: the centrality of TV (60s-80s)
• Components:
  
  • Institutional process-analysis
  • Message system analysis
  • Cultivation analysis

Question 3

The Cultivation Analysis

Answer 3

• Key concepts:
  
  • Cultivation effect
  • Cultivation differential

Question 4

Key Assumptions

Answer 4

• Key assumptions
  
  • Assumptions from the ‘cultural indicator’ to ‘cultivation effects’
    
    • TV as the ‘chief storyteller’ the recovering themes
    • Cultural production: controlled by profit-seeking media conglomerates
    • TV viewing: passive and ritualistic
    • Growing up in a common symbolic environment
      *

Question 5

Cultivation Effect (Cultivation Analysis)

Answer 5

• Long term, gradual, cumulative, cognitive effect on people’s perception of reality
  
  • Perceptions does not equal knowledge
  • Perceptions does not equal attitudes
  • Perceptions <–>judgments & inferences

Question 6

Cultivation differential (Cultivation Analysis)

Answer 6

margin of difference in reality perceptions between light and heavy TV users

Question 7

Shrum (2011) Study Design

Answer 7

• Cultivation Theory
• Content analysis
• Does TV viewing cultivate materialistic beliefs, which in turn, dim life satisfaction?
• Reality perceptions: a type of judgment
  
  • Online vs. memory-based judgment
• Transportation: “a process by which audience members are absorbed into the narrative”
• Surveyed around ~1000
  
  • Did watching “ “ cultivate materials belief among those in high transportation condition.

Question 8

Summary

Answer 8

• Cultivation effects:
  
  • TV viewing –> accessibility
  • TV “distortion”: among some but not all viewers
  • TV distorted beliefs: attitudinal and behavioral consequences

Question 9

Doob & MacDonald 1979 findings

Answer 9

• People’s perception of crime rates was highest in inner city (not suburban)
• Fear is higher in high crime areas
• TV viewing alone is not a direct cause of people’s fear
• “Convergence Effects”: TV reinforces real-world experiences
• TV as a source of information, but not ‘fear’
• Those with lower levels of education are more likely to believe the world is mean.

Question 10

Gerbner: Mainstreaming

Answer 10

• Homogenization
  
  • TV viewing brings those with college level education to level of uneducated in terms of believing in a mean world.

Question 11

Gerbner: Resonance

Answer 11

• Divergence
  
  • Those living in the inner city are more likely to be involved in crime after TV viewing.