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Cultivation Theory

Television Fiction as a Vector of Socialization

Jan Van den Bulck

George Gerbner and his colleagues of the Annenberg School for Communication started to develop the cultivation model of media effects in the late 1960s. In 1976 Gerbner and Gross, writing in the Journal of Communication, called the cultivation perspective a “new approach to research.” By the time this article was published Gerbner and his team had been collecting and compiling data for nearly 10 years.

Gerbner based his theory on the observation that much socialization in society takes the form of what he called storytelling. Communities create stories to illustrate what their social order is, what their norms are and to make their members accept them as normal (Gerbner & Gross, 1976, p. 173). In their classic text on the sociology of knowledge, social constructivists Berger and Luckmann (1976) described how hunters in primitive societies socialized young members of the community by telling stories. Unlike Gerbner, Berger and Luckmann do not appear to have realized that the hunters do not have to talk about events that really took place (Van den Bulck, 1999, 2010). It suffices to invent a story, even a funny or mythical one, to show other members of the tribe what the norms are and what the penalties for transgressing them are. Societies thus use stories to offer their children “a coherent picture of what exists, what is important, what is relevant to what, and what is right” (Gerbner & Gross, 1976, p. 176).

By the time Gerbner and his colleagues launched their views it had become apparent that television had become the most important source of stories about the real world. Gerbner and his team noted how much violence there was in television stories. They argued that the violence was essential to telling the story. A much-quoted definition said that:

Cultivation theory thus argued that violence is the vehicle stories use for illustrating norms and values.

While cultivation research is usually conducted by studying individuals, Gerbner set out to study societies within the much wider frame of what he called the Cultural Indicators Project. For this, he felt, three aspects of the role of stories in society needed to be studied (Gerbner, 1966, 1969). The first was institutional process analysis, which aimed to chart the power structures and societal processes that govern the production of media messages. The second was message system analysis. Quantitative content analyses were conducted to analyze the TV demography. It showed which groups were under- and overrepresented, which types of people tended to be victims and which people tended to be perpetrators of violence and crime. In a number of “violence profiles” (Gerbner & Gross, 1976; Gerbner, Gross, & Eleey, 1977a; Gerbner, Gross, & Signorielli, 1979), Gerbner and his associates calculated the prevalence of crime and violence and computed “risk ratios” that showed which groups in the TV world were more likely to be perpetrators and which were more likely to be victims of crime (Gerbner & Gross, 1976). The novelty of Gerbner's approach is probably best captured by his contention that “‘Good guys’ were of course most likely to be the killers” (Gerbner & Gross, 1976, p. 190, italics added). While the idea of describing the positively depicted protagonist of a story as a killer must have been an unusual approach, it was perfectly logical from Gerbner's perspective. As explained earlier, violence was seen as a vehicle by which social norms and power structures in society were illustrated. By that logic the “good guy” has to kill because that is how the viewer knows what is approved by society and what is not.

The third element of the Cultural Indicators Project was called cultivation analysis. By using quantitative surveys Gerbner and his team assessed people's level of TV exposure and their perceptions of the world. Respondents were divided into heavy, medium, and light viewers and their answers on a number of questions were compared. There were several types of questions, including “Can most people be trusted?” or “During any given week, what are your chances of being involved in some type of violence?” (Gerbner & Gross, 1976, p. 192). Questions were devised using a forced-choice technique offering two answers, a “television answer” reflecting television reality or the television demography (suggesting that people were not to be trusted, that many men worked as detectives, etc.) and another answer that was closer to the real world. The percentage of light viewers giving the television answer was subtracted from the percentage of heavy viewers giving that answer and the resulting statistic was called the cultivation differential. This is the measure Gerbner originally used to illustrate the impact of television.

The first studies focused on perceptions of violence, victimization, and the number of people working in law enforcement (see Chapter 10, this volume). Later studies looked at other topics in a similar way, including gender roles (Signorielli, 1989; see Chapter 11, this volume), health (Gerbner, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1982; Signorielli, 1993), politics (Gerbner, Gross, & Morgan, 1982; Morgan & Shanahan, 1992) and so forth (for early overviews see: Signorielli, Gross, & Morgan, 1982 – Signorielli & Morgan, 1990).

As the theory evolved two modifications were introduced. Some TV messages correspond with what viewers already think or believe. The most likely effect of television in those cases is reinforcement. The Gerbner team called this process resonance (Gerbner, Gross, & Morgan, 1980a, p. 15). The other refinement referred to what happens to subgroups with different (or even opposing) views and perceptions (conservatives versus liberals, men versus women, etc.). TV viewing offers members of different groups the same view of the world. Gerbner et al. (1980) believed this would lead to mainstreaming: because of their exposure to the same TV world view, heavy viewing members of subgroups would, in time, start to differ less from each other than the light viewing members of the same groups (Gerbner et al., 1980a, p. 15).

Early Criticism

The theory and methodology of Gerbner and his team's cultivation research attracted a lot of criticism. At times some of the criticism had the flavor of an ideological debate. Even the television industry felt threatened enough to respond in academic journals (see, for instance, Blank, 1977; Gerbner, Gross, & Jackson-Beeck, 1977b).

The first type of criticism dealt with the statistical analyses of cultivation. Hughes (1980) reanalyzed the data from the National Opinion Resource Center (NORC) General Social Survey used by Gerbner and claimed that by introducing a number of control variables the relationships disappeared. The cultivation effect, he argued, was little more than a spurious relationship explained by third variables, a possibility entertained by a number of authors (Doob & Macdonald, 1979; Potter, 1988a; Tamborini, Zillmann, & Bryant, 1984; Weaver & Wakshlag, 1986). Hughes introduced an often quoted alternative explanation of the relationship between TV viewing and fear of violent crime. He argued that both fear and viewing volume were related to how much time people spent outside their homes. People who were more frightened were less likely to leave the house. People who spent more time at home were likely to watch more television. Being afraid would thus lead to watching more television, instead of the other way around (Hughes, 1980, p. 290; see Gerbner, Gross, & Morgan, 1980b for Gerbner's reply). Drawing on Cook, Kendzierski, and Thomas's (1983) argument that personal experience with crime or personality traits such as alienation or anomie (McLeod, Ward, & Tancill, 1965; Potter, 1988a) may make people afraid to leave the house, Van den Bulck (2004) called this the withdrawal hypothesis.

The most outspoken of the early attacks on cultivation theory came from Paul Hirsch (1980, 1981a, 1981b) who also reanalyzed some of Gerbner's findings. Gerbner and his team replied at length to Hirsch's comments (Gerbner, Gross, & Morgan, 1981a, 1981b). Hirsch argued that the cultivation hypothesis was unfalsifiable. He felt that this was especially true after the introduction of the resonance and mainstreaming concepts, as existing views were likely to appear either to be reinforced (resonance) or mitigated (mainstreaming). Hirsch felt that Gerbner et al.'s relationships were random fluctuations and argued that judgments and attitudes were likely to affect TV viewing rather than the other way around.

A closer look at Hirsch's criticism shows a fundamental flaw. Hirsch supported his ideas by comparing non-viewers with extremely heavy viewers. He noted elevated feelings of fear among the non-viewers, but not among the extreme viewers. According to Hirsch the “television answer” (higher levels of fear) should not have been found among non-viewers and should have been very prevalent among the heaviest viewers. The Gerbner team argued that it was “a little bit like trying to study religion by comparing atheists and fanatic fundamentalists” (Gerbner et al., 1981a).

Other critics felt that a quantitative content analysis was the wrong tool. “Content analysis, designed to measure manifest and quantifiable content [...] cannot satisfactorily reveal complex, connotative and ideological meanings” (Livingstone, 1990, p. 25). Counting violent acts gave every act the same weight and failed to take into account that the meaning of a violent act depended on the context. “The question for researchers is not how much violence might be available for personal involvement, but rather, what does violence mean to the respondent?” (Newcomb, 1978, p. 274). Some have argued that this view required a semiotic approach to television content to show how television constructs meaning (Van Poecke, 1980, p. 428) but others pointed out that this would not make much difference as “a major problem with this kind of analysis is that it assumes that the messages defined by the analysis are the same as those absorbed by the audience” (Wober & Gunter, 1988, p. 13). McQuail (1994) labeled such approaches to media content and media effects “transmission models.” They are blamed for treating viewers as passive receivers (Neuman, Just, & Crigler, 1992, p. 16) who simply “reproduce” the meanings put into television messages by the producers (Wilson, 1993, p. 46). Qualitative and by now classic studies such as those by Morley (1980), Ang (1985), and Liebes and Katz (1990) argued that meaning is not constructed by television, but by the viewer. Newcomb therefore suggested that cultivation theory would benefit from an ethnography of the audience because “different members of the mass audience will attach different meanings to the same messages” (Newcomb, 1978, p. 280).

Can Cultivation Survive the Active Viewer?

Has effects research become trivial and meaningless as a result of the introduction of the active viewer model, as Livingstone (1993, p. 10) seemed to suggest?

Krippendorff (1993, p. 38) argued that it is no longer acceptable for effects researchers to assume that a media message has a single, measurable meaning. The same television program can have different meanings for different viewers. A murder in a televised movie can tell one viewer that the world is a dangerous and unpredictable place, while another viewer may believe that the story confirms the impression that criminals are generally less intelligent than the police. Wilson (1993, p. 46) remarked that a cognitive or semiotic distance exists between “text” and “reader.” This distance has to be bridged for any kind of communication to take place. Beck (1994, p. 38) therefore made a distinction between data and information. Technical appliances transmit data. When as a “cognitive system” (a person) receives and interprets the data they become information. What is stored by the viewer is the interpretation of the data, not the data themselves.

Although some claim that there are as many interpretations as there are viewers this is not what the founders of the active viewer model suggested (Buckingham, 1993; Dayan & Katz, 1992; Livingstone, 1993; Morley, 1980). Viewers cannot attribute just any meaning to a text. “Texts are not infinitely open and may allow a limited number of possible readings. Perhaps the New York Times can be read as pornography, but that is unlikely to be its statistically dominant use” (Blumler, Gurevitch, & Katz, 1985, p. 260). Texts (particularly in the mainstream of television) usually have “preferred readings” (Livingstone, 1990), which are the interpretations most likely to be evoked in average viewers. North American action drama might make some more fearful while suggesting to others that “good” always wins from “bad” and other viewers may be entertained without taking away any message, but not many viewers will get the impression that mainstream television is supporting the belief that the world is becoming safer and that crime rates are decreasing.

Television messages offer boundaries within which different interpretations are possible. Interpretations that fall outside the boundaries (such as “the world is becoming safer”) are unlikely to be produced by the confrontation of the data and the viewer. Such a perspective sees television “as the embodiment of a system of causal restraints, of a network of boundaries restricting the range of available information, views and images, and not as an evil demon manipulating the viewers as if they were programmable robots or marionettes” (Seaman, 1992, p. 307). By limiting the range of interpretations supported by its messages television produces a boundary-setting effect (Van den Bulck, 2003) whereby only world views falling within the boundaries are reinforced. This is comparable to what Gerbner called the “mainstream pull” of television (Gerbner, Gross, & Morgan, 1994). When the boundaries within which interpretations are likely to occur become very narrow it may therefore be more appropriate to speak of a data-setting effect as very little interpretation is added to the televised data before it is stored as information.

Depending on the extent of “audience activity” or “cognitive processing” required from the observer, television messages can allow only a limited range of conclusions (data-setting) or a wider range allowing for “multiple readings” (boundary-setting) (Van den Bulck, 1996, 2003, 2010).

The Cognitive Revolution

In 1988 Berger and Chaffee (1988, p. 317) felt that communication and media research was entering a “golden age of cognition” that would see an integration of knowledge from cognitive psychology, interpersonal, and mass communication. A similar evolution could be observed among cultivation researchers, who had started to argue that finding effects (or, more accurately, relationships) did not suffice. The “how and why” of effects had to be explained as well (Shrum, 1995, p. 402). “Exposure to a communication is not a direct cause of social-reality decisions. Instead people must use various mental processes to interpret those communications and eventually to build a picture of the world. The influence of a communication must be mediated by these mental processes” (Shapiro, 1991, p. 3). According to some, cultivation was a label for a correlation rather than the explanation of an effect as long as there was no theory of how television fiction might affect viewers' perceptions of reality (Hawkins & Pingree, 1990; Potter, 1993). Shapiro and Lang (1991, p. 686) even felt that the absence of a theory explaining the path from TV viewing to effect might lead to a considerable underestimation of the size of TV's effects. What all of this meant was that “the perennial black box of mass media effects can be better illuminated by examining the black box of human information processing that goes on within it” (Geiger & Newhagen, 1993, p. 42). The aim was high: Hawkins and Pingree (1990, p. 36) felt that calling media effects “learning processes” offered no explanation either – it just added one more label to the relationship.

The challenge was considerable. Beyond the age of 11 (Wright, Huston, & Truglio, 1995, p. 1707) most people recognize television fiction as being fictitious (Busselle & Greenberg, 2000; Potter, 1988b). They realize that television fiction does not show events that are actually happening in the real world. Any theory arguing that such fiction tells people something about the real world would therefore need to explain how this might work (Hawkins & Pingree, 1990, p. 36). It would have to go further than just offering an implicit theory approach (Roloff & Berger, 1982, p. 17) that suggests that people “form impressions” about the world around them from all kinds of input.

First Order, Second Order, On-Line and Off-Line

Two distinctions have influenced a lot of thinking about the processes explaining cultivation effects: the distinction between first-order and second-order cultivation measures; and the distinction between on-line and off-line effects. Both distinctions have become intertwined.

The distinction between first- and second-order judgments was introduced by Hawkins and Pingree (1981, 1990). First-order judgments were “judgments related to the prevalence of particular constructs” (Shrum, Burroughs, & Rindfleisch, 2004, p. 183). They entailed estimates of frequencies and probability, such as the number of policemen; the proportion of the total workforce working as doctors; the divorce rate, and so on. For first-order estimates it is possible to make a distinction between a “television answer” (reflecting the television demography) and a “real world answer” (reflecting the demography of social reality). Second-order judgments referred to attitudes and beliefs (Hawkins & Pingree, 1981, 1990; Potter, 1991, 1993; Shrum, 1995). For second-order measures it is much more difficult to define what represents television's view of the world and, even more so, what the real world answer is (Hawkins & Pingree, 1990, p. 49; Hawkins, Pingree, & Adler, 1987, p. 553; Shrum, 1995, p. 404). The Gerbner team has acknowledged the distinction (Gerbner, Gross, & Morgan, 1986) but Morgan and Shanahan (1997) remarked it was only useful when studying how cultivation works on a cognitive level. From the start it was assumed that television would affect first and second-order judgments differently (Hawkins & Pingree, 1982, 1990).

At first Hawkins and Pingree assumed that people store first-order judgments and use them to arrive at second-order judgments (Hawkins & Pingree, 1981; Shapiro, 1991; Shapiro & Lang, 1991). They expected first-order effects to occur as a result of accidental learning, made possible by low viewer involvement. “Second, the individual may use these bits of information to construct more general and integrated conceptions of the world, and it is probably here that the ‘higher’ processes like inference or weighing television against other sources of information occurs” (Hawkins & Pingree, 1981, p. 358). Shrum and O'Guinn (1993, p. 438) called the first step the learning process and the second step the construction process. Such a relationship between first-order and second-order judgments is a common assumption. Social cognition theorists have remarked that

To their surprise Hawkins and Pingree did not appear to find a relationship between first-order and second-order judgments (Hawkins & Pingree, 1990, p. 43; Hawkins et al., 1987, p. 575). They had to conclude that “the two types of beliefs seem to be independently influenced by viewed television content” (Hawkins & Pingree, 1990, p. 43)

L. J. Shrum argued that the puzzle could be solved by looking at the type of judgment first and second order referred to. He applied the views of Hastie and Park (1986) and Tversky and Kahneman (1973) about judgment formation. Hastie and Park (1986, p. 261) made a distinction between memory-based processes, in which people use memories to arrive at a judgment, and on-line processes, in which people form judgments in response to stimuli from the environment. On-line processing occurs when people make a judgment at the time of encoding, or, in other words, as a stimulus is presented or as events occur. Shrum argued that this is when second-order judgments are formed. While viewing, viewers process information and are influenced in their attitudes and beliefs. Shrum argued that first-order judgments (such as estimates of prevalence or set size) were memory processes. Shrum's heuristic processing (2002) or accessibility (2007) model argued that Tversky and Kahneman's (1973) availability heuristic explained first-order cultivation effects.

Kahneman and Tversky demonstrated that the ease with which people can recall (if they remember examples) or imagine (if relevant memories are not accessible) an event positively correlates with higher estimates of the prevalence of that event in the social world. Shrum argued that television fiction makes memories easier to recall or imagine. When people are asked to produce a first-order judgment (for instance, when answering survey questions) they make an estimate based on what they can think of most easily. If they are motivated to take the source into account they seem to realize (at least intuitively) that they are using memories of fictitious stories. “[T] he model implicitly assumes that if heuristic processing leads to the use of television information in the construction of prevalence estimates, and hence produces a cultivation effect, then inducing people to avoid the use of a heuristic processing strategy should eliminate the cultivation effect” (Shrum, 1997, p. 350).

Shrum's ideas about memory-based television effects may make the cultivation effect look like an artifact. In his studies the impact of television does not occur until people try to answer survey questions. Memory-based processing of television images is, however, equally likely to occur in real life. Some crisis situations, for instance, require a quick judgment on probabilities and risk. Research on people's perceptions of the success rate of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) shows, first, that television fiction considerably overestimates the success rate of CPR (Diem, Lantos, & Tulsky, 1996) and, second, that heavy viewers of such fiction are likely to overestimate this success rate as well (Van den Bulck & Damiaans, 2004). In a medical emergency where people would have to make quick decisions regarding the effectiveness of CPR (for instance when deciding whether or not to sign a “do not resuscitate” form) the same kind of process (and television effect) may occur.

The Final Word on First- and Second-Order Processes?

The distinction between types of judgments (first vs. second order) and the time frame of the process producing the television effect (on-line vs. memory based) has done much to advance our understanding of cultivation, but it appears to have reduced the scope of research on cultivation as well. If we return to some old definitions cultivation effects should comprise more than the first- and second-order judgments and the presence of on-line and off-line (memory-based) processes may not be as clear cut either.

First, revisiting some of the definitions of cultivation suggests that there should be more than two types of measures that are indicators of a cultivation effect. Definitions of cultivation used by Gerbner's team are very broad. In their review of two decades of cultivation theory, Morgan and Shanahan, for instance, argue that the empirical strategy of cultivation research is to assess “the degree to which heavy viewers are more likely to give responses that are demonstrably emphasized in the television world” (Morgan & Shanahan, 1997, p. 11). This operationalization means that the validity of the cultivation hypothesis depends on empirical proof that “television viewing cultivates assumptions about the facts of life that reflect the medium's most recurrent portrayals” (p. 8). In another definition, Gerbner, Gross, and Morgan (2002) delineated cultivation effects as “the independent contributions television viewing makes to viewer conceptions of social reality” (p. 47). Most definitions of cultivation seem to focus on learning about reality by viewing television, with a special emphasis on the effects of fiction and “storytelling.” All of this suggests that cultivation theory is a theory about the role of television fiction in the social construction of reality: it occurs when television fiction affects people's image of the real world.

If this interpretation of the definition of cultivation is accepted, then first- and second-order measures do not cover the whole range of potential outcomes. First-order measures in particular appear to be part of a larger array of effects that can be referred to as social reality construction. Research on fear effects of crime fiction (Cantor, 2004; Custers, 2010a; Sparks, 1989) shows that exposure to television fiction can lead to social reality effects that are neither first nor second order. Affective effects should probably be studied as a third-order effect.

Second, the distinction between on-line and off-line processes may not be as straightforward as current research suggests. When the viewer undergoes a sudden change in views, as is the case when a “Drench” effect (Greenberg, 1988) or “sudden insight” (Potter, 1993) occurs, this is an on-line effect. Similarly, research on the “affect heuristic” (Slovic, Finucane, & Peters, 2007) and the “risk as feelings perspective” (Loewenstein, Weber, & Hsee, 2001) claims that changes in fear can lead to changes in risk perception. Experiencing fear is sometimes used as an indicator of risk, whereby people reason “I feel fear therefore the risk involved must be high.” Since it has been well documented that TV viewing can elicit fear “on-line” (Cantor, 2004; Custers, 2010b), it is possible that people's perception of risk and similar probabilities may change on-line as well as off-line.

Challenges for Cultivation Theory in the Twenty-First Century: From a Psychological to a Sociological Revolution?

Cultivation theory is among the most often cited theories in media and communication research (Bryant & Cummins, 2007; Bryant & Miron, 2004). It has survived over 40 years of scrutiny and criticism. Will the theory and the study of this type of effect survive long enough to see the medium it studies celebrate its centennial? After all, the TV world is still a mean and violent place (Hetsroni, 2007; Signorielli, 2003; Smith, Nathanson, & Wilson, 2002).

To survive and to thrive cultivation theory will have to deal with a number of challenges.

(1) The relationship between television exposure and cultivation measures is small. A well-known meta-analysis by Shanahan and Morgan (1999) reviewed hundreds of cultivation studies and found an overall effect size of r = .09. Another meta-analysis (Dossche & Van den Bulck, 2010) found evidence of publication bias: small, underpowered studies tended to report higher correlations (r = .12) than adequately powered studies did (r = .05). In both cases, however, the results held under multiple controls. A separate meta-analysis looked at (extremely rare) experimental cultivation studies (Dossche, 2010). The overall effect size was much bigger (r = .16), even though similar evidence of publication bias emerged with published underpowered studies (with N < 100) producing much larger relationships (r = .26) than adequately powered ones (N 100 and up: r = .15).

If cultivation research is to develop further it will have to devote more attention to the issue of small effects sizes. Are they spurious relationships, as some have argued (Potter, 1988a; Tamborini et al., 1984); are they actually large relationships hidden by poor methodology (Geiger & Newhagen, 1993; Mulac & Kunkel, 1989; Potter, 1993) or do we need to make a distinction between the size of an effect and its importance, as, for instance Rosenthal (1986, p. 142) argued? A small effect on a large population may be extremely relevant in its consequences.

(2) Cultivation research needs to start worrying about its exposure variable. Remarkably little attention has been given to the exposure variable in cultivation research. Originally the Gerbner team argued that viewers “watch by the hour” (Signorielli, 1986) in which case measuring overall TV viewing sufficed: all who watch a lot of television are exposed to a very similar picture of the world. Some have argued that different genres may have different effects (Bilandzic & Busselle, 2008; Segrin & Nabi, 2002), but there appears to be little interest in going into more depth than that. It is remarkable to note how many different operationalizations of the television-viewing variable have been used, all implicitly claiming to measure the same thing. As a result the construct validity of the exposure variable is often fairly poor (see Allen, 1981; Salomon and Cohen, 1978 for old, but still relevant observations). There are extreme differences in the measurement of TV viewing. Some examples will illustrate this. Doob and MacDonald (1979) counted the number of programs respondents had listed. Perse (1986) asked respondents how much TV they had viewed the day before the interview and how much they viewed on an “average” day and computed a mean from those values. Others used self-reports, diary methods or even set meter data (Bryant, Lucove, & Evenson, 2007).

There is another reason why the exposure variable may become a cause for concern in the future. Television viewing used to be an activity that was easy to delineate: there were relatively few channels. With recent developments TV viewing is becoming increasingly difficult to measure. People can watch TV on TV sets, computers, even mobile phones. They watch what is being broadcast, but may be equally likely to pay per view or call up content “on demand.” New generations emerge who may not watch entire programs, but rather look at particular scenes on Internet channels such as YouTube. It is becoming increasingly difficult to measure TV exposure reliably.

(3) The challenge from other disciplines. Many general introductions to sociology psychology or political science hardly mention the media when they deal with how people are socialized or learn about their environment and the world. Bandura (1994, p. 67) remarked that “most psychological theories were cast long before the advent of enormous advances in the technology of communication. As a result, they give insufficient attention to the increasingly powerful role that the symbolic environment plays in present-day human lives.” The same applies to sociology, political science, anthropology, and other fields. This appears to be changing rapidly. Many fields are becoming aware of the potential impact of the media in general, and television fiction in particular. Studies now appear which are, in essence, cultivation studies. Much of the research on “the CSI effect” (based upon the hypothesis that the way in which forensic science is presented in the crime show called CSI is influencing how juries perceive evidence in court cases) was published in law journals (Kim, Barak, & Shelton, 2009; Tyler, 2006). Medical journals have published on the potential impact of medical fiction on people's knowledge of medical techniques (Van den Bulck & Damiaans, 2004), or on opinions and attitudes (Czarny, Faden, & Nolan, 2008; Wicclair, 2008). Other studies have appeared on risk perception (Bakir, 2010), risky behavior (Beullens, Roe, & Van den Bulck, 2008; Beullens & Van den Bulck, 2008; Villani, 2001), and so on.

Some of this research is fairly limited and simply applies the idea of fiction effects to areas media scholars have not thought of. The potential impact of emergency room drama on perceptions of the efficacy of resuscitation techniques is probably a typical example (Van den Bulck & Damiaans, 2004). In the long run, however, these developments pose two threats to the field of media effects and cultivation research. First, researchers from other fields generally fail to acknowledge (and are probably largely unaware of) the work done in our field. Second, not all of these studies can be catalogued as trivial applications of the idea that fiction may affect perceptions. Sociologists, psychologists, and others may be publishing interesting avenues for further research that have direct relevance to our own discipline (Bryant et al., 2007).

Cultivation researchers (and media effects researchers in general) should catalogue and monitor what other fields do with (and to) this subject.

(4) What IS cultivation? As new media and new types of content emerge, people have started to wonder what other types of media content may have cultivation effects. Some have looked at the news (Gross & Aday, 2003), or computer games (Beullens et al., 2008; Van Mierlo & Van den Bulck, 2004; Williams, 2006), but questions about the effects of Internet pornography (Peter & Valkenburg, 2009), music videos (Givens & Monahan, 2005), or other messages may be as important as the much older question of whether even cartoons can contain lessons about reality (Funkhouser & Shaw, 1990; Gerbner et al., 1980a; Potter, 1988b; Shapiro & Chock, 2003; Snow, 1983).

The Final Challenge: Toward a Sociology of Cultivation?

Cultivation theory is usually referred to as a media effects theory and much of the recent research on cultivation has been conducted from a psychological point of view by looking at processes explaining how, why and when television messages affect people's perceptions or judgments. While the Gerbner school has acknowledged the advances made by those seeking to understand how cultivation might work (Morgan, 2009), a psychological approach to cultivation may not do justice to the theory. Empirical research on cultivation typically yields the small relationships discussed above. Jensen and Rosengren (1990) once remarked that television viewing never explains more than 10–20% of the variance of effect variables. Cook et al. (1983), however, pointed out that the correlations found are usually in that .10 to .20 range, which actually means that television viewing only explains about 1–4% of the variance.

This apparent weakness of cultivation research may be a limitation of the approach, not of the theory. Most research on cultivation has been done using cross sectional designs. There are rare exceptions using experimental approaches. Gerbner remarked long ago, however, that finding evidence of cultivation may not be that easy. First, light and heavy viewers of television all live in the same world. Those who do not watch television may be influenced by those who do (Morgan & Signorielli, 1990, p. 20). Busselle (2003), for instance, showed that children whose parents watched a lot of crime on television became more frightened about crime themselves, regardless of how much crime they watched themselves. Conversely, Van den Bulck and Van den Bergh (2005) remarked that children often influence, even socialize, their parents. Children also socialize each other. Those who do not watch a particular TV show may join in play with children who do watch it and may therefore be exposed to certain meta-narratives indirectly. Finding differences between heavy viewers and light viewers may thus be difficult. If both extremes of the TV viewing spectrum have been influenced the absence of a correlation between effect and TV viewing becomes meaningless.

Second, cultivation is a long-term process (Rosengren, 1994). It assumes that continuous exposure to countless similar messages will gradually affect people's world view. As such it is unlikely for a large effect to be demonstrated in the short run (Gerbner et al., 1994). In fact, on several occasions Gerbner and his co-authors remarked that cultivation theory was not a stimulus-response theory (Morgan & Signorielli, 1990, p. 18). “Thus, television neither simply ‘creates’ nor ‘reflects’ images, opinions and beliefs. Rather, it is an integral aspect of a dynamic process” (Gerbner et al., 1994, p. 23). Too often researchers have assumed that “no change means no effects” (p. 45), while the lack of change (and the preservation of the status quo) may be one of the most important societal effects of the media.

Even though further developments in the psychology of cultivation, studying the processes through which narratives affect people's perceptions of the real world, are important, cultivation theory is now in need of a macro theory, a sociology of cultivation. Some attempts have been made, for instance, to apply Berger and Luckmann's (1976) sociology of knowledge to the study of media effects (Bilandzic, 2006; Vanden Bulck, 1999).

Communication and media research once developed out of the interests of a number of sociologists, but the two disciplines drifted apart (Pooley & Katz, 2008). Sociology is only now, and quietly, rediscovering the media as a field of study. A comprehensive theory on how the symbolic environment of television is affecting the Lebenswelt might be just what the doctor prescribed.

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FURTHER READING

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