Page 60 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

3. GROWING UP WITH TELEVISION 49

ronment are subtle, complex, and intermingled with other influences.
Moreover, the question of “which comes first” is misleading and irrele-
vant, as is the presumed dichotomy between an “active” or “passive”
audience (see Shanahan & Morgan, 1999). People are born into a symbolic
environment with television as its mainstream; viewing both shapes and is
a stable part of lifestyles and outlooks. Many of those with certain social
and psychological characteristics, dispositions, and worldviews, as well as
those who have fewer alternatives, use television as their major vehicle of
cultural participation. To the extent that television dominates their sources
of entertainment and information, continued exposure to its messages is
likely to reiterate, confirm, and nourish—that is, cultivate—its own values
and perspectives (see Gerbner, 1990; Morgan & Signorielli, 1990).
The point is that cultivation is not conceived as a unidirectional but
rather more like a gravitational process. The angle and direction of the
“pull” depends on where groups of viewers and their styles of life are with
reference to the line of gravity, the mainstream of the world of television.
Each group may strain in a different direction, but all groups are affected
by the same central current. Cultivation is thus a continual, dynamic,
ongoing process of interaction among messages, audiences, and contexts.

METHODS OF CULTIVATION ANALYSIS

Cultivation analysis begins with message system analysis identifying the
most recurrent, stable, and overarching patterns of television content.
These are the consistent images, portrayals, and values that cut across
most types of programs and are virtually inescapable for regular (and
especially the heavy) viewers. They are the aggregate messages embed-
ded in television as a system rather than in specific programs, types, chan-
nels, or genres.
There are many critical discrepancies between the world and the
“world as portrayed on television.” Findings from systematic analyses of
television’s message systems are used to formulate questions about the
potential “lessons” viewing may hold for people’s conceptions of social
reality. Some of the questions are semiprojective, some use a forced-choice
or forced-error format, and others simply measure beliefs, opinions, atti-
tudes, or behaviors. (None ask respondents of their views about television
itself or about any specific program or message.)
Using standard techniques of survey methodology, the questions are
posed to samples (national probability, regional, convenience) of adults,
adolescents, or children. Secondary analyses of large-scale national sur-
veys (for example, the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social
Surveys) have often been used when they include questions that relate to