1. Cultivation Analysis

2. 1. In 1973, George Gerbner embarked on the Cultural Index Project, conducting regular, periodic examinations of television programming and the “conceptions of social reality that viewing cultivates in child and adult audiences.” 2. Cultivation analysis suggests that mass communication, especially television, cultivates certain beliefs about reality that are held in common by mass communication consumers.

3. Assumptions of Cultivation Analysis 1. Television is fundamentally different from other forms of mass media. 2. Television shapes our society’s way of thinking and relating. 3. The influence of television is limited. Television’s measurable, observable, independent effect on culture at any given point is small but that impact is nonetheless present and significant.

4. The Process of Cultivation 1. Mainstreaming A. Occurs when television’s symbols dominate other sources of information and ideas about the world 2. Resonance A. Occurs when things on television are congruent with viewers’ actual everyday reality

5. 3 Bs of television Gerbner argues that “television blurs traditional distinctions among people’s view of their world, blends people’s realities into television’s cultural mainstream, and bends that mainstream to the institutional interests of television and its sponsors.”