Final Exam Study Guide Cultivation Theory Ch 29 George Gerbner Objective Television is Society s Institutional Story Teller Ex The different ways that we view relationships on screen Bella and Edward from Twilight vs Kurt and Blaine vs Dr Grey and McDreamy What we view as acceptable and normal comes from the programs we watch Violence The simplest and cheapest dramatic means to demonstrate who wins in the game of life and the rules by which the game is played From lecture slides There are numerous gender and racial stereotypes There is not limited violence Things such as smoking drinking gender roles and popularity of political positions are seen on TV For example Carrie from Sex and The City she openly smokes in each episode making it look cool and sophisticated Another example from lecture was Two and a Half Men The show makes drinking and drugs look like an everyday part of life when in reality it is harmful Paradigm common interpretive lens Paradigm is the conceptual framework that calls for people to view events through a Ex The thought that women shouldn t work Is that still relevant in today s society Institutional Process Analysis Scholarship that penetrates behind the scenes of media organizations in an effort to understand what policies or practices might be lurking there If a media outlet produces this show then what may the gain by producing the show Final Exam Study Guide studio executives Need to conduct in depth interviews with the players producers accountants and Why do the media produce the messages that they do Message System Analysis Is the scholarship that involves careful systematic study of TV content usually employing content analysis as a research method Message System Analysis involves Quantitative Analysis For example in Blondes vs Brunettes why are blondes always depicted as good and brunettes bad We would need to count each individual show and count how many blondes vs brunettes there are and what they are portrayed as Dramatic Violence The overt expression or serious threat of physical force as a part of the plot When Gerber defined violence he eliminated all verbal abuse and threats and pie in the face slap sticks He did however include auto crashes and natural disasters His team then taped the television shows from 8pm to 11 pm and children s shows from 8 am to 2 pm He recorded how much violence was in each set of hours In TV shows 2 3 of the characters are caught up in some kind of violence 50 of characters are white and in the middle class TV glorifies the middle class causing everyone to believe they fit that description Men outnumber women 3 to 1 The victims are typically elderly children or women African Americans and Hispanics are more often beaten or harmed by some typed of violent act compared to Caucasians or threatened violence Gerbner found that more than half of prime time programs contain actual bodily harm Excluding the not so typical Office and Two and a Half Men dramas that include violence average five traumatic incidents per view hour On the weekends 20 children s shows per hour Final Exam Study Guide Cultivation Analysis This includes the research that attempts to support the idea that those who spend more time watching TV are more likely to see the real world through TV lens How does the content on TV affect its viewers TV cultivates various ways of seeing the world Example Law and Order pg 370 Cultivation takes time it works life a magnetic or gravitational field Michael Morgan Glenn Sparks Like the linear push process TV influences viewers much like the cur ball on a billiard tables that pushes all of the other balls into new locations upon impact It is a steady process that unfolds gradually through the steady accumulation of TV s messages cultivation process Gerbner thought that the experimental method was inadequate to detect the actual Gerbner used SURVEYS to indicate the amount of time that they spent watching TV and then their perceptions of their social reality Accessibility Principle that come to our mind the quickest would most likely come from the TV When we make quick judgments about the world we rely on small bits of information For those who watch TV often the information that would be on the top of their mind Final Exam Study Guide Mainstreaming distinctly skewed to the right Mainstreaming is the process of blurring blending and bending that those who have The Radio wants to Narrowcast which develops programming for segmented target The TV seeks to Broadcast which attracts that largest possible audience by celebrating heavy viewing habits undergo audiences the moderation of the mainstream TV homogenizes its audience TV viewers will share that same orientations perspectives and meanings Television is the mainstream of culture Heavy TV User 4 hours a day spent watching TV Sees themselves as a moderate The differences diminish among rich poor black white Catholics Protestants etc They favor lower taxes greater police protection and a stronger national defense Gerbner viewed as a television type a more benign term than couch potato There are more heavy viewers than there are light viewers Each group makes up about of the general population Sporadic Moderate TV Users 2 4 hours a day They may be labeled as more liberal or conservative There are very distinctive differences among rich poor black white Catholics Protestants etc Light Viewers Less than 2 hours a day Final Exam Study Guide Resonance No Before TV condition This includes the TV viewers whose real life and environment is very similar to the environment depicted on TV are very and particularly susceptible to the cultivating process TV enters our lives as infants As a baby we hear the sound and may see the bright pictures of the television though we may not even know that we are processing it Gerbner shuns the term media effects Instead he examines the cultivation differential Cultivation Differential is the difference in percent giving the television answer between comparable groups of light and heavy viewers There is a positive correlation with TV viewing There instills a fear of criminal victimization The perceived activity of the police who we think they are And the general mistrust of other people Mean World Syndrome the cynical mindset of general mistrust of others subscribed to by heavy TV viewers Meta analysis a statistical procedure that blends the results of multiple empirical and independent research studies exploring the same relationship between
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