Cultivation Theory by George Gerbner

FOUNDATION OF THE THEORY

It all started when George Gerbner together with his colleague founded the Cultural Indicators
project (CIP) at Annenberg School of Communication (Univ of Pennsylvania) in 1960’s to content-analyze
and assess the impact of television violence on an audience’s perceptions and attitudes. The project
became a foundation for the development of cultivation theory. It had two major goals: to content-
analyze message systems so as to quantify what viewers saw; and to use cultivation analyses in evaluating
the consequences of growing up, living with, and learning from an environment dominated by TV content

This theory is rooted from the argument that human lives with the stories that they’ve built. These
stories wove together by time, created the fabric of society. Due to the tides of history, human story-
telling process change. It all started with print media when stories were first ever mass produced shift
from the tribalistic-communal way of communicating stories. Making it possible to generate a common
consciousness the embodiment of the “mass public”. Introduction of television revolutionized again the
story-telling process, Gerbner points out that it retribalized the story-telling process, meaning it is
ritualistic that the public thoroughly follows by the clock (patterns of TV watching), penetrating their
everyday life (a religion per se) because of the accessibility.

Story telling now become centralized, it become a marketing-oriented, formula driven and factory
assembly line process of stories narration. Stream of stories came from the small groups of conglomerates
selectively sells stories of distorted view of social reality thus Television creates its own reality; a synthetic
one for profit accumulation. From there on, it cultivates a common conception of reality among its
audience based on the amount of TV viewing as it possesses the dominant patterns of images and
messages into everyday life in the airwaves.

ASSUMPTION OF THE THEORY:

This part enlists the core assumptions, it is contextualized to a grand scheme of media platforms as
it tends to focus primarily on Television effects from its conception but as time progress this theory was
also heavily applied to other medium hence the assumptions generate inclusivity by using the term
“media”

 This theory suggests that cumulative exposure to the media overtime, gradually cultivates
audience’s perception of reality
 Media specifically Television (as this theory primarily was focused on), does not reflect the
world, it is a reality in its self.
 Amount of media usage which is the heavy and light users is the indicator to shape the
perceptions, attitude, feelings and values conception of reality. In television, Heavy viewers or
the habitual users can see a vast dramatic violence, which cultivates an exaggerated belief in a
mean and scary world.
 This theory focal point is the medium of Television and it assumes that:
1. Television is fundamentally different from other forms of mass media.
-an assumption highlighting the medium itself regarding its contrast to other media in the
time this theory was generated, it was the rise of television; a new media.

2. Television shapes the way individuals within society think and relate to each other.
 -an assumption highlighting the audiences, Gerbner asserts that television's major cultural
function is to stabilize social patterns and to cultivate resistance to change, as the medium become "a
centralized system of story-telling".

3. Television's effects are limited

-an assumption highlighting the effect of it to the audiences, asserts that television is a part of a
larger sociocultural system. Gerbner argues that watching television doesn't cause a particular
behavior, but instead watching television over time adds up to our perception of the world around us

ELEMENTS OF THE THEORY:

This part presents a short elucidation of some key terms, concepts and constructs that this
theory offers.

THREE PRONG OF ANALYSIS

Framework of the theory as Gerbner compared it to a three-pronged plug that TV was driven.
The three prong are associated with a particular type of analysis which is the:

1. Institutional process analysis: studies the “behind the-scene” of media institutions to

discover their policies and practices that may reflect to their produced content.

2. Message process analysis: it is a systematized examination of the content produced by TV

(usually done by “content analysis”), discovering the overreaching pervasive patterns that TV projected.

3. Cultivation process analysis: the last prong which is to determine the influence of this
content to the audience views of reality based on the notion that heavier watchers are more likely give a
“Television answers” seeing their reality to the lens of manufactured reality of the TV world.

TYPES OF AUDIENCES

 Heavy Viewer: those who watch TV four or more hours a day

 Light Viewer: those who watch TV less than fours a day.
 Moderate Viewer: watches TV, not more than four but not less than two hours.
TWO MAIN PROPOSITIONS CULTIVATION EFFECT:

1. MAINSTREAMING: THE TV WORLD BLURS, BLENDS AND BENDS MY WORLD

-Television tend to create a homogenization of view reality or outlooks to those who heavily
exposed.
This concept produces the three (3) B’s of television which are;
a. Television blurs traditional distinctions of people’s views of their world.
b. Television blends their realities into television’s cultural mainstream.
c. Television bends that mainstream to the institutional interests of television and its sponsor

2. RESONANCE: THE TV WORLD LOOKS LIKE MY WORLD, SO IT MUST BE TRUE

-Prevailing when viewers see things on television that are most congruent or identical with their own
everyday realities.
MEAN WORLD SYNDROME
 The cynical mindset of general mistrust of others created by the cultivated perception that’s
subscribed by heavy TV viewers.