Audiences: Cultivation Theory - Gerbner

Question 1

What factors give television the ability to effect world wide change

Answer 1

• Easily decidable
• Access is largely cost free
• Television consumptions outweighs others
• It’s a centralised and homogenous producer of cultural symbols
• Television products using realism - its reflective of the real world therefore its hard for us to not understand fictional products as a constructed version of reality

Question 2

The violence index

Answer 2

8 out of every 10 programmes across all networks contained some element of violence

9/10 children’s programmes at weekends contained violent content

Elderly women, single and non white females were especially prone to victimisation

Question 3

Cultivating fear
Viewing effects

Answer 3

• Resonance: double does effect on those living in high crime areas

Mainstreaming: He also concluded that heavy viewers who were less informed about real life crime became far more concerned by it

Question 4

Violence on television represents symbolic power

Answer 4

• Media violence defines powerless characters
• Media violence defines powerful characters
• Narrative conventions reinforce authority: Law and authority always win, the good guy never dies
• News reportage stigmatises key group
• Audience protest is subjugated - they overly rely on establishes authority sources for protection therefore passive when confronted with real world authorities

Question 5

Encultration

Answer 5

The process of learning social norms or behaviours through watching others or by engaging with culture. The media contributes to the enculturation of individuals by making them adopt specific attitudes or outlooks

Question 6

Homogenised cultural effects

Answer 6

Television has a homogenous cultural effect in that is reach and lack of content diversity makes us think the sane things or adopt the same attitudes.

Question 7

Mainstreaming

Answer 7

Suggests that some groups are less likely to be affected by television (more educated audiences). Although the attitudes of these groups are affected to a lesser extent by the media, they are still prone to some attitudinal shift as a result of consumption.

Television can, therefore, cultivate problematic attitudes and beliefs within mainstream society where they had not existed before)

Question 8

Mean world syndrome

Answer 8

An outlook that considers the world to be far more violent or selfish than it really is

Question 9

Middle of the road reportage

Answer 9

The use of balanced reporting to foster large-scale audiences and boost advertising revenue. Middle-of-the-road reportage positions new or radical ideas as dangerous subtly enforcing existing power structures.

Question 10

Resonance

Answer 10

The process of amplifying an idea, attitude or belief already held by audiences through media consumption

Question 11

Stigmatisation

Answer 11

The process of amplifying an idea, attitude or belief already held by audiences through media consumption

Question 12

Stigmatisation

Answer 12

the process of demonising groups, individuals or ideas through media representations

Question 13

Symbolic power

Answer 13

Those who have power in media narratives 9in terms of gender, class, ethnicity) are legitimised as real-world power sources