Cultivation Theory: The Cultivation Theory Of Television

Alison Jimmy

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CULTIVATION THEORY

In your lifetime, you must have heard the saying “Don’t sit in front of that idiot-box”, the idiot-box being the television. The television has always been our main electronic storyteller even though the internet is making an effort to grab that position, there’s a huge population that still prefers the TV over the Internet. But does TV create an impact on our mind-set on a large scale?Does it imbibe in morals and values? Well, George Gerbner has been trying to awaken the television viewers from their stupefaction. He believed that the television portrayed a particular vision of the world and that vision emphasized mostly on violence, perilous and repressive aspects of the society.

So, cultivation theory isn’t concerned with the ‘effects’ of TV but rather the most mainstream story that is told through this medium. It looks at television as a virtual story-teller, telling most stories across the world all the time. Gerbner, along with Larry Gross, conducted the Cultural Indicators project (this project’s aim was to identify the cultivated effects of television on viewers) which focuses on the content and the audience. The content that was depicted in the TV programs had an over representation of violence or certain tragedies and certain categories of people (mostly the dominant class). The audience were capable of getting easily influenced by the media as they kept prevail the interests of the dominant elites. The reinforcement by the media about certain ideologies leads to slowing down of social

The light viewers hold on to their predisposed opinions while on the other hand the viewers who use TV heavily are more liberal and less conservative with certain issues as their thoughts have been conformed because of TV. If the TV is okay with a certain issue then the heavy viewers will also accept the TV’s reality.

For example: In movies, the role of every ‘geek’ was a loner who lived in his/her parent’s basement playing videogames and helping the police with tech support. That was the most generalized role of ‘nerds’ in movies or television series. But the tables have turned, a new series came out, people surely took time to adjust to the fact that a beautiful looking woman would go on a date with a scientist (geek), The Big Bang Theory gained a huge success because of this story, as they kept reinforcing that Leonard dated a pretty woman like Penny and now every geek in the world can also do so.And over the time ‘The Geek culture’ has gained such a boom that viewers might actually consider being a geek as a