Page 62 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

3. GROWING UP WITH TELEVISION 51

MAINSTREAMING

Most modern cultures consist of many diverse currents but in the context
of a dominant structure of attitudes, beliefs, values, and practices. This
dominant current is not simply the sum total of all the crosscurrents and
subcurrents. Rather, it is the most general, functional and stable main-
stream, representing the broadest dimensions of shared meanings and
assumptions. It is that which ultimately defines all the other crosscurrents
and subcurrents, including what Williams (1977) called “residual and
emergent strains.” Television’s central role in our society makes it the pri-
mary channel of the mainstream of our culture.
This mainstream can be thought of as a relative commonality of out-
looks and values that heavy exposure to the television world tends to culti-
vate. “Mainstreaming” means that heavy viewing may absorb or override
differences in perspectives and behavior that ordinarily stem from other
factors and influences. In other words, differences found in the responses
of different groups of viewers, differences that usually are associated with
the varied cultural, social, and political characteristics of these groups, are
diminished in the responses of heavy viewers in these same groups. For
example, regional differences, political ideology, and socioeconomic differ-
ences are much less influential on the attitudes and beliefs of heavy view-
ers (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1980; Morgan, 1986).
As a process, mainstreaming represents the theoretical elaboration and
empirical verification of television’s cultivation of common perspectives.
It represents a relative homogenization, an absorption of divergent views,
and an apparent convergence of disparate outlooks on the overarching
patterns of the television world. Former and traditional distinctions
(which flourished, in part, through the relative diversity provided by
print) become blurred as successive generations and groups are encultur-
ated into television’s version of the world. Through the process of main-
streaming, television may have become the true “melting pot” of the
American people—and increasingly of other countries around the globe.

THE FINDINGS OF CULTIVATION ANALYSIS

Clear-cut divergences between symbolic reality and independently
observable (“objective”) reality provide convenient tests of the extent to
which television’s versions of “the facts” are incorporated or absorbed
into what heavy viewers take for granted about the world. For example,
we found in an early study that television drama tends to sharply under-
represent older people. Although those over 65 constitute a rapidly grow-
ing segment of the U.S. population, heavy viewers were more likely to