relative video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFeNLEnV8r4

1. N THEORY
CULTIVATI
YIYANG ZHANG

2. INTRODUCTION
Television is the mainstream of the common symbolic environment into which
our children are born and in which we all live out our lives.
In the 1960s, George Gerbner developed a research project called Cultural
Indicators, which was designed to provide a broad-based, integrated approach to
studying television policies, programs and impacts.

3. CULTURAL INDICATORS
The Cultural Indicators paradigm entails a three-pronged research strategy ----------
(1) institutional process analysis, (2) message system analysis, (3) cultivation
analysis.
In cultivation analysis, we want to determine whether those who spend more
time watching television are more likely to perceive social reality in ways that reflect
the potential lessons of the television world than are those who watch less television,
other things held constant.
The concept of “cultivation” thus refers to the independent contribution television
viewing makes to audience members’ conceptions of social reality.

4. TELEVISION IN SOCIETY
Television is centralized system of storytelling. Television provides a daily ritual that
elites share with many other publics.
Cultivation researchers approach television as a coherent system of messages
produced for large and diverse populations and consumed in a relatively nonselective,
almost ritualistic, way by most viewers.
Compared to other media, television provides a relatively restricted set of choices for a
virtually unrestricted variety of interests and publics. Even with the expansion of cable and
satellite channels serving ever narrower niche audiences, most television programs are by
commercial necessity designed to be watched by large and heterogeneous audiences.

5. TELEVISION IN SOCIETY
Viewing decisions depend more on the clock than on the TV program.
What is most likely to cultivate stable and common conceptions of reality is the
overall pattern of programming to which total communities are regularly exposed
over long periods of time.
Cultivation analysis focuses on the consequences of long-term exposure to the
entire system of messages, in the aggregate.

6. THE SHIFT FROM “EFFECTS”
TO “CULTIVATION” RESEARCH
Traditional effects research is based on evaluating specific informational
educational, political, or marketing efforts in terms of selective exposure and
measurable before/after differences between those exposed to some message and
others not exposed. Scholars steeped in those traditions find it difficult to accept the
emphasis of cultivation analysis on total immersion rather than selective viewing.
Cultivation does not ask people what they think about television texts .
Rather, cultivation looks at what people absorb from their exposure to massive flows
of messages over long periods of time.

7. THE SHIFT FROM “EFFECTS”
TO “CULTIVATION” RESEARCH
Cultivation does not see television’s contribution to conceptions of social reality
as a one-way, monolithic “push” process. The point is that cultivation is not conceived
as a unidirectional but rather more like a gravitational process. Cultivation is thus a
continual, dynamic, ongoing process of interaction among messages, audiences, and
contexts.

8. METHODS OF CULTIVATION ANALYSIS
Cultivation analysis begins with messages system analysis to identify the most
recurrent, stable, and overarching pattern of television content.
There are many critical discrepancies between the world and the “world as
portrayed on television.”
Some questions are semi-projective, some use a forced-choice or forced-error
format, and others simply measure belifs, opinion, attitudes, or behaviors. (None ask
respondents for their views about television itself or about any specific program or
message.)

9. THE FINDINGS OF CULTIVATION ANALYSIS
Heavy exposure to the world of television cultivates exaggerated perceptions of
the number of people involved in violence in any given week, as well as numerous
other inaccurate beliefs about crime and law enforcement.
But cultivation analysis is not limited to cases when television “facts” vary from real
world ( or even imaginary but different) statistics. The repetitive “lessons” we learn
from television, beginning with infancy, can become the basis for a broader world
view, making television a significant source of general values, ideologies, and
perspectives as well as specific beliefs.
An example: "mean world" syndrome.

10. EXAMPLE: IDEA OF RACISM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFeNLEnV8r4

11. COGNITIVE PROCESSES
The 1990s saw a great deal of progress in illuminating explanations for the
cognitive mechanism of cultivation: how does it “work”?
Shrum(1997) presented evidence that people do not typically consider the source
of their information when making social reality judgements, because TV images are
“heuristically” available to heavy viewers, they tend to use them more readily in
making mental judgments, in a kind of cognitive shortcut.
It also suggests that television does not necessarily change attitudes, but that it
makes them stronger.

12. MAINSTREAMING
Television’s status as the primary story-teller in
out society makes it the fundamental manifestation
of the mainstream of our culture. This mainstream
can be thought of as a relative commonality of
outlooks and values that heavy exposure to the
television world tends to cultivate.
The concept of “mainstreaming” means that
heavy viewing may absorb or override differences
in perspectives and behavior that ordinarily stem
form other factors and influences.
the fear
of crime
low socioeconomic status
high socioeconomic status
the frequency of
viewing television

13. MAINSTREAMING
Mainstreaming represents the theoretical elaboration and empirical verification
of television’s cultivation of common perspectives.
Through mainstreaming, television may have become the true “melting pot” of
the American people — and increasingly of other countries around the globe.

14. INTERNATIONAL CULTIVATION ANALYSIS
Cultivation analysis is ideally suited to multinational and cross-cultural
comparative study. For examples, exposure to U.S. television was associated with: (1)
in Korea, more "liberal perspectives about gender-roles and family values among
females, but (2) in Japan, heavy viewing cultivating traditional views about gender
expecially among females.
The extent to which cultivation will occur in a given country depends on various
structural factors, such as the number of channels available, overall amount of
broadcasting time, and amount of time audiences spend viewing. But it seems
especially to depend on the amount of diversity in the available content, which is not
necessarily related to the number of channels.

15. RECENT FINDINGS
Crimes
• race neutral
• ownership of a gun
• not direct experience of crime but fear
• children's own estimates of crime frequency
• neighborhood with high percentages of blacks
Health and Mental Health
Politics
Sex Roles, Sexual Behaviors
• earlier onset of smoking initiation & positive smoking attitudes
• negative perceptions of people with mental illness
• lower political participation
• beliefs about sex
• body ideals (surgical body alterations)
• conceptions of women

16. CULTIVATION IN THE 21st CENTURY
Technological developments such as cable and satellite networks, VCRs, DVDs,
DVRs and the internet have brought a significant erosion in audience share (and
revenue) for the old “Big Three” broadcasting networks and have altered the
marketing and distribution of programming.
All this is being accompanied by massive and unprecedented concentrations of
ownership of media industries and program sources. Whether the most successful
entertainment is delivered through television networks or in the form of video-on-demand
thorough fiber-optic cable, satellites, or some other medium may make little
difference if the messages don’t change.

17. DISCUSSIONS
It seems that most studies about the cultivation theory claim that the cultivation of long-term
television viewing would lead to the negative effects, such as the mean world
syndrome, crime, violence, etc. Do you think there is any positive cultivation effects of
television? And why?
According to the textbook, “Technological developments such as cable and satellite
networks, VCRs, DVDs, DVRs and the internet have brought a significant erosion in audience
share (and revenue) for the old “Big Three” broadcasting networks and have altered the
marketing and distribution of programming.” Could cultivation theory be applied to other
forms of media rather than television? If so, do you think that the cultivation effects in newer
media should be greater than in television when individuals spend the same time on
using/viewing them? Why?

18. END
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