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Cultivation Theory
Cultivation Theory, is a theory founded by George Gerbner. The theory states that people who watch lots of TV are more susceptible to media messages and the belief that they are real. Those who watch lots of TV, are exposed to more Violence and therefore think the world is more violent than it actually is compared to someone who doesn't watch as much television.

Professor George Gerbner founded the Cultivation theory in 1976 after doing research projects on how television affects viewers. He compared the socializing aspect of television that of religion and said since televsion has more violence it can cause people to develop Mean World Syndrome, meaning people think the world is worse than it actually is.

=== Process === Gerbner and his research team designed a series of content analyses that slimmed down their focus from all forms of mass media to just television, saying that commercial television have both drama and news produced to the same viewers unlike other forms of mass media. Gerbner then went on to only focus on prime time and children's weekend morning programming shown on the three most popular networks at the time since they reasoned these programs had the largest amount of viewers. As research went on they slowly grew there topic of violence to looking gender roles, marriage, family etc while still staying within television entertainment.

While doing cultivation analysis, Gerbner's team used 5 key features : "national probability samples, cross sectional surveys, assumption of stable TV viewing, focus on beliefs as cultivation indicator and categorical analyses of relationship between TV exposure and cultivation indicators".

The team while using Gerbners idea's did as one thing to the research by adding "constructs of mainstreaming resonance". Meaning using similarities between their viewing groups and having data from both real world messages and TV messages. They predicted these viewers would have a higher cultivation; resonance effect.

Assumptions

 * 1) Since TV programs are mass produced and have a central role in culture, it is way more influential than other mass media forms
 * 2) Tv can't encourage violent behavior, it just helps form peoples attitudes and beliefs about society
 * 3) values and attitudes that already exist in society are just cultivated by TV and TV just reinforces it
 * 4) Watching TV for X amount of time will make everyone have Mean World Syndrome
 * 5) TV creates an alternate reality

=== Research Findings === Some researches have found some common themes about heavy TV watchers and cultivation theory


 * 1) Magnified fear of becoming victim to a crime
 * 2) more suspicious of people
 * 3) Maximized perception of police activity

=== Year without TV and Cultivation Theory === Teal Burrell a Journalist for the Washington Post wrote an article about how she went a year without watching lots of TV, she said that we as Americans are obsessed with television and spend an average of 5 hours a day watching television and that TV rules our lives. She states that although we spend lots of time with TV, we are repaid very nicely by television saying that people who watch lots of TV are more unhappy, heavier and worse sleepers, a fact most doctors tell us on the regular.

Studies have found children and teenagers who watch more TV have worse attention spans, lower grades, and different brain structures than someone who watches an average amount of television.

After feeling poorly and wanting to achieve some goals she had set for herself she decided to give up TV and make an experiment out of it as she found herself discussing the latest TV shows often with her friends.

Once giving up TV, she found that she was enjoying her weeknights more and about 3 months in she nearly caved after having a hard day and just wanted to watch Tv, she wondered does Tv give our brains are stress relief?

She did some research and found that Michael Grabowski, who is a media studies researcher related what she was thinking to the Cultivation Theory. The theory says if we watch things with more violence we develop mean world syndrome but if we were to sit down a watch a comedy it would likely distress you but more research needs to be done on this part of the theory.

Almost a year later, Burrell she was happier and more motivated to do things because of the lack of TV in her life. She wasn't being dragged down by violent or mind numbing shows that would make her thinks the world is scarier than it actually is.

=== Cultivation and Crime === Gerbner when developing this theory noted at the time more than 75% of television dramas contained acts of violence and I'm confident that number has increased over time. Bryan Reber and Yuhming Chang wrote an article discussing the Cultivation theory and crime.

There article focused on a study done by Jane Stevens and Lori Dorman at Berkeley Media studies center and completed by undergraduate students. Each student was given a randomly selected phone number and had to complete 15 surverys. The Survey focused on how the cultivtion theory would play out in a small midwestern market.

The 3 research questions were

Do the findings support Cultivation Theory?

What do respondents want form their news sources?

Is there evidence of support for the principles of public health reporting?

Once the study was completed, the answer if Cultivation Theory had to be answered. The answer was that it was "modest". Among the more than 25 questions related to media only 2 directly had to do with cultivation and that the attention having to do with local crime was more about fear than what was seen on the television that was impacting how these students reacted to crime. As a result of this study, researchers did find out that the respondents thought media spends way too much of its attention of crime news.

=== Social Media and Cultivation Theory === While there is not as much information on the effects of Social Media and Cultivation Theory, it is known that social media can have a negative effect on people's mental health. Since Cultivation means using the outside world and relating it to your personal world, it is possible that the cultivation theory could come into play with Social Media. But rather than seeing the world as more violent, people see others on Instagram, using filters and making it seem like they are doing all these amazing things with their life ex. taking exotic trips, going to cool restaurants even though most of the time that is not reality. People end up thinking that everyone on Instagram is living his/hers best life when in reality they are not. Similar to the Cultivation theory that there is lots of violence on TV, the world must be violent people on Social media thinks this girls is living such a cool life, most people are living cool lives also.