Cultivation Theory (1)

The work of George Gerber and his colleagues - cultivation theory - states that television brings about a shared way of viewing the world. Through their studies of television, they developed what they call cultivation theory. They begin by contextualizing television and its importance as a medium.

Television is a centralized system of storytelling. It is part and parcel of our daily lives. Its dramas, commercials, news, and other programs bring a coherent world of common images and messages into every home. Television cultivates from infancy the very predispositions and preferences that used to be acquired from other primary sources. Transcending historic barriers of literacy and mobility, television has become the primary common source of socialization and everyday information (mostly in the form of entertainment) of an otherwise heterogeneous population. The repetitive pattern of television's mass-produced messages and images forms the mainstream of a common symbolic environment.

 

Gerbner calls this effect cultivation because television is believed to be a homogenizing agent in culture or cultivating a common culture. Cultivation analysis concerns the totality of the pattern communicated cumulatively by television over a long period of exposure rather than by any particular content or specific effect. In other words, this is not a theory of individual media "effects" but makes a statement about the culture as a whole. It is not concerned with what any strategy or campaign can do but with the total impact of numerous strategies and campaigns over time. Total immersion in television, not selective viewing, is important in cultivating ways of knowing and images of reality. Indeed, subcultures may retain their separate values, but general overriding images depicted on television will cut across individual social groups and subcultures, affecting them all.

 

One of the most interesting aspects of cultivation is the "mean-world syndrome." Although less than 1 percent of the population are victims of violent crimes in any one-year period, heavy exposure to violent crimes through television can lead to the belief that no one can be trusted in what appears to be a violent world. Nancy Signorielli undertook a study of the mean-world syndrome, analyzing violent acts in more than 2000 children's television programs, including 6000 main characters, between 1967 and 1985. Signorielli found that about 71 percent of prime-time and 94 percent of weekend programs included acts of violence. Prime-time programs averaged almost five acts of violence each, and weekend programs averaged six. That amounts to over five acts per hour during prime time and about twenty per hour on weekends. The study established that a considerable amount of violence is presented on television.