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Theories of Communication MCM 511

LESSON 19

CULTIVATION OF PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL REALITY

Since the dawn of mass mediated entertainment, people have feared powerful and harmful media

effects, especially on the children. Through the years the research findings have varied, but a number of

studies have shown that the connection between viewing violence and committing violent acts is not

merely a public perception. Today research continues and many answers have been determined, but

many questions remain.

The cultivation hypothesis developed as one attempt to explain the influence of television on its

viewers. The cultivation tradition grew out of a media violence research project called the Cultural

Indicators Project, headed in the 1960s by George Gerbner, a University of Pennsylvania

communication scholar. Investigators explored the relationship of long-tem television viewing, to the

inculcation of various perceptions, values, and beliefs on the part of audiences.

Simply stated, the cultivation hypothesis proposes that over time, heavy viewers of television develop

views of the world similar to what they see on television. The basic assumption underlying the

cultivation or enculturation, approach is that repeated exposures to consistent media portrayal and

themes influence our perceptions of these items in the direction of the media portrayals.

In effect, learning from the media environment is generalized, sometimes incorrectly to the social

environment.

History

Some early research studies indicated that media portrayals of certain topic could have an impact on

audience perceptions, particularly if the media were the main information sources. DeFleur in 1967

found that television had a homogenizing effect on children's perceptions of occupations commonly

shown on television.

Then to study the viewer perceptions of social reality stems from the Cultural Indicators project of

George Gerbner and his associates. Since 1968 they have collected data on the content of television and

have analyzed the impact of heavy exposure on the audience. Some of the many variables that have

been content analyzed are the demographic portraits of perpetrators and victims of television violence,

the prevalence of violent acts, the types of violence portrayed, and the contexts of violence.

They found that long-term exposure to television, in which frequent violence is virtually inescapable,

tends to cultivate the image of relatively mean and dangerous world. The basic hypothesis of cultivation

analysis is that the more time one spends living in the world of television, the more likely one is to

report conceptions of social reality that can be traced to television portrayals. In their finding indicated

that the perceptions of reality were cultivated by television.

Conceptual roots

Cultivation adherents argue that television as a `whole sale distributor of images is different from other

mass media. It serves as the great storyteller of our age.

Programs are produced to appeal to the entire population. Even very young viewers find it easy to

become enthralled by an entertaining television show. According to these researchers the diverse publics

all tend to think more alike when watching television because they all receive similar messages.

All television program, from entertaining action program to news programs, possess

similar, repetitive patterns sometimes called myths, facts , or ideologies. These patterns are thought to

influence viewers' perception of the world.

Long-term exposure to these overall patterns of television programming is most likely to result in the

`steady entrenchment of mainstream orientations for most viewers.'

Mainstreaming and Resonance

Mainstreaming is one of the principal concepts that underlie cultivation analysis; another is resonance.

Theories of Communication MCM 511

Mainstreaming

Mainstreaming assumes that dominant sets of attitudes, beliefs, values and practices exist within

cultures. Patterns also emerge across the spectrum of television programming-patterns regarding

outcomes to various situation, gender roles,, minority representation and so froth.

These patterns result in a "mainstream set of attitudes beliefs and values that are repetitively presented

on television. Heavy television viewers tend to cultivate similar mainstream views , cultivation

researcher Nancy Signorielli and Michael Morgan defined the concept in this way"

Mainstreaming means that heavy viewing may absorb or override differences in perspectives and

behavior which ordinarily stem from other factors and influences, in other words, differences found in

the responses of different groups of viewers, differences that usually are associated with the varied

cultural, social, and political characteristics of these groups, are diminished or even absent from the

responses of heavy viewers in these same groups. So mainstreaming is a leveling effect.

Heavy viewing resulting in a common viewpoint washes out differences in perceptions of reality usually

caused by demographic and social factors.

Resonance

Resonance occurs when real world support the distorted image of reality shown on television. Whenever

direct experience is in agreement with the messages from television, the messages are reinforced- they

resonate- the cultivation effect is amplified.

So resonance is when the media reinforce what is seen in real life, thus giving an audience member a

`double dose' the resulting increase in the cultivation effect is attributed to resonance. For example,

research has shown that the heavy television viewers who are most likely to fear crime are those who

live in inner-city areas where crime rates are high. Cultivation researcher stresses that the concept of

cultivation assumes that television and its publics interact in a dynamic process.

The extent to which person cultivates the messages seen on television depends upon a number of

factors. Some people are more susceptible to cultivation influence due to personality traits, social

background, cultural mores (education) and even their past television viewing experiences.

Gerbner and his associates explained the interactive process in this way:

Although a viewer's gender or age of class makes a difference in perspective, television viewing can

make a similar and interacting difference. Viewing may help define what it means, for example, to be an

adolescent female member of a given social class. The interaction is a continuous process as is

(cultivation) beginning with infancy and going on from cradle to grave.

Theoretical developments

After an extensive literature review scholars concluded that there was evidence for a link between

viewing and beliefs regardless of the kind of social reality in question.

However additional research has also shown that cultivation hypothesis may be more complicated than

first thought.

There is evidence that cultivation may be less dependent on the total amount of TV viewing than on the

specific types of programs viewed.

Research also indicates that cultivation effect is more pronounced among active viewers than among

low-involvement viewers and that personal experience with crime was an important mediating variable

that affected the impact of TV programs on cultivating an attitude of vulnerability toward crime.

Additionally it was found out that the perceived reality of the TV content had an impact on cultivation.

Similarly other variables such as identification with TV characters, IQ, and informational needs of the

viewer had differential effects .In other words, different people react indifferent ways to TV content,

and these different reactions determine the strength of the cultivation effect.

Theories of Communication MCM 511

Apart from these there are other multivariate model of cultivation which are taken into account by

researchers like:-

· Is viewing done to meet informational needs or as diversion

· The number of information alternatives available.

Research has shown that maximum occurs among heavy viewers who watch for information, believe the

content to be real and have few alternative sources of information. Tapper in 1995 presents a possible

conceptual model of the cultivation process that is divided into two phases.

· Phase one deals with content acquisition and takes into account such variables as motives

for viewing, selective viewing, the type of genre viewed, and perceptions of the reality of

the content.

· Phase two is the storage phase and elaborates those constructs that might affect long-term

memory.

Researchers have presented a psychological model of the cultivation process based on the notion of

accessibility of information in a person's memory. They posit that human memory works much like a

storage bin. When new information is acquired, a copy of that new information is placed on top of the

appropriate bin. Later when information is being retrieved for decision making, the contents of the bin

are searched form the top down, thus information deposited most recently and most frequently stand a

better chance of being recalled.

Similarly researchers have also reported the results of their empirical test that the faster a person's able

to make a response, the more accessible is the information retrieved. Consequently, when confronted

with a social reality judgment, heavy TV viewers should be able to make judgments faster than light

viewers and their judgments should also demonstrate cultivation. (e.g. soap operas)

There are two discrete steps in performing a cultivation analysis.

· First, descriptions of the media world are obtained from periodic content analyses of large

blocks of media content. The result of this content analysis is the identification of the

messages of the television world. These messages represent consistent patterns in the

portrayal of specific issues, policies, and topics that are often at odds with their occurrence

in real life. The identification of the consistent portrayals is followed by the construction of

a set of questions designed to detect a cultivation effect. Each question poses two or more

alternatives.

One alternative is more consistent with the world as seen ton television, while another is

more in line with the real world. (e.g. 60% homicide done by strangers in real life 16%.

The question base on this discrepancy was. Does fatal violence occur between strangers or

between relatives and acquaintances. The response `strangers' was considered to be the

television answer)

The second step involves surveying audiences about their television exposure , dividing

sample into heavy and light viewers(4 hours a day is usually the dividing line) and

comparing their answers to the questions that differentiate the television world from the real

world. in addition, data are often collected on possible control variables such as gender, age

and socioeconomic status. A statistical procedure consists of correlation analysis between

the amount of television viewing and scores on an index reflecting the number of television

answers to the comparison questions.

In sum, cultivation has proven to be an evocative and heuristic notion. It is likely that future research

will concentrate on identifying key variables important to the process and on specifying the

psychological processes that underlie the process.

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