Ilyas El Omari

Using Cultivation Theory to Understand American College Students’

Perceptions of Arabs in the Media
Samer Melhem & Narissra M. Punyanunt-Carter
Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs
Purpose

The purpose of the study is to examine the amount of exposure to representations of

Arabs in the media and the content, measuring the types of representations. The study

aims1investigate how interactions between Americans and Arabs affect the Americans

m211ainstream’s perception of Arabs. It also examines the relationship between how the

American mainstream views Arabs and the TV content to which it is exposed.

Method and Data Collection

The researchers used a series of online questions which consisted of both quantitative

and qualitative questions to collect their data. For this study, 429 undergraduate students from

a major university in the Southwest were chosen. 77% of the participants were female, and

23% were male, and they reported an average age of 20.7 years. The participants were

assigned to complete an Institutional Review Board approved series of questions regarding

Arabs in the media and media perceptions which took them 20 to 25 minutes. The participants

completed the questionnaire online and received extra course credit.

The Major Findings

The results of the study came as follows:

 A vast majority of the participants claimed that media, news, television, and friends

are their sources of information of Arabs while some of them did not know where their

primary source of information about Arabs came from.

Ilyas El Omari

 College Students believe that what they see in Television is real, and that the

portrayals of Arabs are mainly stereotypical.

 Several participants used the words “Terrorists”, “Muslims”, “bad people”,

“negative”, and “Islam” to describe their perception of Arabs. These perceptions were

influenced by news, television, media, and personal experiences with Arabs and

friends.

 Several responders think that Arab women are oppressed and have a difficult life,

while men are hard, dominant, and horrible.

Critique

The researchers investigated the limitations and criticism of the previous studies that

used the cultivation theory and aiming to extend the theory. The researchers made two

modifications on the theory. The first one is the inclusion of personal communication and the

second is the inclusion of content-based measures.

The gender balance can be considered a limitation of the study since the number of

female participants is much bigger than the males. Another limitation is the little presence of

the native Americans who represented only 1% of the participants.

Ilyas El Omari

Reference

Melhem, S., & Punyanunt-Carter, N. M. (2019, April 3). Using Cultivation Theory to

Understand American College Students’ Perceptions of Arabs in the Media. Journal

of Muslim Minority Affairs, 39(2), 259–271.

https://doi.org/10.1080/13602004.2019.1625258