1. Anne Suryani Dani Vardiansyah Novita Damayanti Universitas Multimedia Nusantara 2010 1

2.  Paul Lazarsfeld: selective exposure  Two-step flow of communication: 1.The direct transmission of information to a small group of people who stay well-informed 2.Those opinion leaders pass on and interpret the messages to others in face-to-face discussion 2

3.  George Gerbner  Heavy television users develop an exaggerated belief in a mean and scary world  The violence on television can cultivate a social paranoia that counters notions of trustworthy people or safe surroundings  Television is one of dominant forces in shaping modern society  TV’s power comes from the symbolic content of the real-life drama shown hour after hour, week after week  TV is society’s institutional storyteller  A society’s stories present “a coherent picture of what exists, what is important, what is related to what and what is right  Communication media & violence: tv, comic books, computer games 3

4.  Dramatic violence: the overt expression or threat of physical force (with or without a weapon, against self or others) compelling action against one’s will on pain of being hurt and/or killed or threatened to be so victimized as part of the plot  Examples: verbal abuse, idle threats, pie-in-the-face- slapstick, including cartoon movies.  Cultural indicators project: the systematic tracking of changes in television content and how those changes affect viewers’ perceptions of the world 4

5.  Research findings (US television):  Dramas that include violence average 5 traumatic incidents per viewing hour  Children shows during weekend: 20 cases an hour  Old people and children are harmed more frequently than are young or middle age adults  Victims: minority groups (African Americans, Hispanics, female, blue-collar workers)  Gerbner’s Cultural Indicators project revealed that people on the margins of American Society are put into a symbolic double jeopardy.  Their existence is understated, but their vulnerability to violence is also overplayed 5

6.  Surveys of viewer behavior and attitudes (Gerbner)  Heavy viewers: TV viewers who report that they watch at least four hours per day; television types  Audience: consumers  Control group: the pervasive presence of television  Light viewers: more selective, turning the set off when a favourite program is over 6

7.  Cultivation differential: the difference in the percentage giving the television answer within comparable groups of light and heavy TV viewers  comparison between before and after TV exposure  Four attitudes: 1.Chances of involvement with violence 2.Fear of walking alone at night 3.Perceived activity of police 4.General mistrust of people  => Mean world syndrome: the cynical mindset of general mistrust of others subscribed to by heavy TV viewers 7

8.  Mainstreaming: blurring, blending & bending process by which heavy viewer attitudes develop a common socially conservative outlook through constant exposure to the same image and labels 8

9.  Resonance: the process by which congruence of symbolic violence on television and real-life experiences of violence amplifies the fear of a mean and scary world  The resonance hypothesis is an after-the-fact explanation of why a large group of people who watch lots of television find the world an extra- scary place 9

10.  It’s been over 30 years  The social cost of fear: ◦ “fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard- line postures...” Critique Michael Morgan & James Shanahan: conducted a meta analysis of 82 separate cultivation studies Meta analysis: a statistical procedure that blends the results of multiple empirical and independent research studies exploring the same relationship between two variables (eg. TV viewing & fear of violence) 10

11.  Reference: Griffin, 2009. pp. 346-358 11