Cultivation Theory - Background

Background

"Gerbner attempted to devise a new, broad-based approach to the study of mass communication, one that focused on the process of mass communication itself." " According to Miller, cultivation theory was not developed to study "targeted and specific effects (e.g., that watching Superman will lead children to attempt to fly by jumping out the window) in terms of the cumulative and overarching impact has on the way we see the world in which we live". Hence the term 'Cultivation Analysis'. This theory has several assumptions, including:

• Television is essentially and fundamentally different from other forms of mass media

Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli argued that while religion or education had previously been greater influences on social trends, now "elevision is the source of the most broadly shared images and messages in history...Television cultivates from infancy the very predispositions and preferences that used to be acquired from other primary sources ... The repetitive pattern of television's mass-produced messages and images forms the mainstream of a common symbolic environment."

Due to its accessibility and availability to the masses, television has become the "central cultural arm of our society."

• Television shapes the way our society thinks and relates.

Gerbner and Gross write that “the substance of the consciousness cultivated by TV is not so much specific attitudes and opinions as more basic assumptions about the facts of life and standards of judgment on which conclusions are based."Cite error: A set of tags are missing the closing ; see the help page. Gerbner asserts that television's major cultural function is to stabilize social patterns and to cultivate resistance to change. We live in terms of the stories we tell and television tells these stories through news, drama, and advertising to almost everybody most of the time.

• Television's effects are limited.

Gerber’s ice age analogy states that “just as an average temperature shift of a few degrees can lead to an ice age or the outcomes of elections can be determined by slight margins, so too can a relatively small but pervasive influence make a crucial difference. The size of an effect is far less critical than the direction of its steady contribution."