Monday, December 16, 2013

Define Cultivation Theory

Cultivation Theory suggests that television is responsible for shaping or cultivating viewers' conception of social reality. This theory was an approach developed by Professor George Gerbner in the mid 1960s, to study whether and how watching television may influence viewers' ideas of what the world is like.

Gerbner argues that the mass media cultivate attitudes and values which are already present in a culture. And the media maintain and propagates these values amongst members of a culture, thus binding together. Cultivation theory asserts that viewers who have a constant diet of television have attitudes that are cultivated primarily by what they watch on television. George Garbner views this television world as reality itself.

Viewers tend to have more faith in the television version of reality the more they watch television. This constructed version of the world makes viewers assume things about violence, people, places, and other fictionalized events which do not hold true to life. Television acts as a socializing agent that educates viewers to a new reality.

(Source - Internet)

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