Cultivation Theory

Cultivation theory, also known as cultivation analysis, is one approach to finding answers to broad questions concerning television and its effects on children. It is the third component of a research paradigm that investigates (1) the institutional processes that underlie the media and the production of its content, (2) the prevalent images in media content, and (3) the relationships between watching television and audience beliefs and behaviors. Simply, cultivation analysis is designed to assess the contributions television viewing makes to people's conceptions of social reality. In its simplest form, cultivation analysis asks if those who watch more television have views that are more reflective of what they see on television compared to people with similar demographic characteristics but who watch less television.

Television is the United States' and the world's storyteller, telling most of the stories to most of the people, most of the time. As such, it has become our most common and constant learning environment, one that very few can or even want to escape. Children today are born into homes in which most stories are told by a centralized commercial institution rather than parents, peers, schools, or the church. Television is only one of many venues that help explain the world. Television's version of reality, however, bombards everyone with basically the same perspectives at the same time. These views are not much different from those found in other media or imparted by other powerful socialization agents. Yet, television is unique not only because it provides a common set of images to virtually all members of society but also because people tend to spend more time with television than other media. Since television's inception there have been concerns about its effects. The popular press and the government continue to ask, What does television do to us? Teachers and parents wonder if television makes children more aggressive or if it helps or hinders learning. Although seemingly simple, these questions are complex and the answers are far from simple or straightforward.

The methods and assumptions of cultivation analysis differ from those typically found in mass communication research. Research on media effects has often focused on a stimulus-response model—how specific messages produce immediate change in people's behaviors or attitudes. Cultivation analysis, on the other hand, is concerned with the long-term, general, and pervasive consequences of cumulative exposure to television's messages. Cultivation does not imply immediate short-term responses to exposure. Rather, cultivation is concerned with the long-term cumulative exposure to television's repetitive and stable messages that persist despite the increased channel offerings available today to most people. Cultivation implies that some viewers may develop new conceptions of social reality though viewing for others may result in the maintenance of existing conceptions of social reality, all of which may be traced to their cumulative and steady exposure to the world of television.

Cultivation studies typically begin with identifying and assessing the most recurrent and stable patterns in television content by looking for those images and values that cut across most program genres. These [Page 149]findings are then used to generate questions that ask about people's conceptions about social reality. Using surveys, these questions are posed to samples of children, adolescents, or adults. In addition, some cultivation analyses are secondary analyses of large data sets. A key element in these surveys is the assessment of television viewing. Viewing questions typically ask how much time the respondent watches television on an average day, with the analyses determining light, medium, and heavy viewers on a sample-by-sample basis. The analyses look for differences in amount of viewing, not specific amounts of viewing. The questions of cultivation analysis do not mention television but rather provide answers that reflect (a) the dominant views or images seen on television and (b) reality. The resulting relationships between amount of viewing and the tendency to respond in terms of what is seen on television reflects television's contribution to viewers' conceptions of social reality (cultivation).

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