CULTIVATION ANALYSIS

KNOWN STUDIES ON TV VIOLENCE

1. Experiment by Albert Bandura in the 1960s
2. Study by Leonard Eron and Rowell Huesman in the
1960s
- follow- up studies in 1971 and 1982
They maintained that there is a clear association between
watching violent TV and aggressive behavior.
3. Craig Anderson and Karen Dill in the Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology in 2000 reported that
college students who spent a lot of time playing violent
video games are more aggressive in their general behavior
than those who did not play as much.

What are the odds youll be involved in some kind

of violent act within the next seven days?

Cultivation analysis postulates a relationship between

heavy television viewing and peoples worldview.
George Gerbner suggests that exposure to vast amount
of symbolic violence on the screen conditions viewers
to view the world as a mean and scary place.

EFFECTS RESERCH:
Hypodermic Needle Theory- direct media influence

Two- Step Flow Theory- friends and family affect

the impact of media messages

Diffusion of Innovation- spread of innovation to society

Fredric Werthams Seduction of the Innocent

- glorification of violence in comic books
Dolf Zilmanns Excitation Transfer Theory
-recognizes that TV has the power to stir up strong
feelings

Albert Banduras Social Learning Theory

-predicts the use of force modeled on television today
may erupt in antisocial behavior years later

INDEX OF VIOLENCE
Dramatic violence is defined as the overt expression
of physical force (with or without weapon, against
self or others) compelling action against ones will on
pain of being hurt and/ or killed or threatened to be so
victimized as part of the plot. It also includes the
physical abuse presented in a cartoon format, auto
crashes and natural disasters.
-used a formula that included the ratio of programs
that scripted violence, the rate of violence in the
programs that did, and the percentage of characters
involved in physical harm or killing.

FINDINGS:
1. Dramas that include violence average 5 traumatic
incidents per viewing hour.
2. Almost all the weekends childrens shows major in
mayhem averaging 20 cases an hour.
3. Two- thirds of the major characters are caught up in
some kind of violence.
4. Old people and children are harmed at a much greater
rate than are young or middle- aged adults.

5. By the time the typical viewer graduates from high school,

he or she has observed 13,000 violent deaths.
VIEWER PROFILE

1. Light viewers
2. Heavy viewers

4 TARGETED ATTITUDES
1. Chances of involvement with violence
1 out of 10- heavy viewers
1 out of 100- light viewers
1 out of 10,000- actual statistics
2. Fear of walking alone at night
3. Perceived activity of the police
4. General mistrust of people

2 FACTORS OF CULTIVATION ANALYSIS

1. Mainstreaming
TV homogenizes its audience so that those with heavy
viewing habits share the same orientation, perspectives,
and meanings with each other.
2. Resonance
Gerbner thinks that repeated symbolic portrayal on the
TV screen can cause the viewer to replay the real- life
experiences over and over on his or her mind. Also,
he claims that heavy viewers grow more apprehensive
through the process of resonance.