Page 55 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

44 GERBNER ET AL.

viewers’ conceptions of social reality. In this chapter, we summarize and
illustrate our theory of the dynamics of the cultivation process, both in the
United States and around the world. This chapter updates and expands
material presented in earlier editions of this book (Gerbner, Gross, Mor-
gan, & Signorielli, 1986; 1994; for more detailed treatments, see Signorielli
& Morgan, 1990; Shanahan & Morgan, 1999).

TELEVISION IN SOCIETY

Television is a centralized system of storytelling. Its drama, commercials,
news, and other programs bring a relatively coherent system of images
and messages into every home. That system cultivates from infancy the
predispositions and preferences that used to be acquired from other “pri-
mary” sources and that are so important in research on other media.
Transcending historic barriers of literacy and mobility, television has
become the primary common source of socialization and everyday infor-
mation (usually cloaked in the form of entertainment) of otherwise het-
erogeneous populations. We have now reached an unprecedented junc-
ture at which television brings virtually everyone into a shared national
culture. Television provides, perhaps for the first time since preindustrial
religion, a daily ritual that elites share with many other publics. As with
religion, the social function of television lies in the continual repetition of
stories (myths, “facts,” lessons, and so on) that serve to define the world
and legitimize a particular social order.
Television is different from earlier media in its ever-centralizing mass
production of a coherent set of images and messages produced for large
and diverse populations and in its relatively nonselective, almost ritualis-
tic, use by most viewers. Programs that seem to be intended for very dif-
ferent market segments are cut from the same mold; when surface-level
differences are wiped away, what remains are often surprisingly similar
and complementary visions of life and society, consistent ideologies, and
stable accounts of the “facts” of life. Exposure to the total pattern rather
than to specific genres or programs is therefore what accounts for the his-
torically distinct consequences of living with television: the cultivation of
shared conceptions of reality among otherwise diverse publics.
In saying this, we do not minimize the importance of specific pro-
grams, selective attention and perception, specifically targeted communi-
cations, individual and group differences, and research on individual atti-
tude and behavior change. But giving primary attention to those aspects
and terms of traditional media effects research risks losing sight of what is
most distinctive and significant about television as the common story-
teller of our age.