Gerbner and his colleagues have been influential in identifying television as a shaping force in society. Cultivation Analysis helps explain the implications of viewing habits, and it has been a very popular theory in mass communication research. In a study conducted by Jennings Bryant and Dorina Miron (2004) surveying almost 2,000 articles published in the three top mass communication journals since 1956, CA was the third most frequently utilized theory after Uses and Gratifications and Agenda Setting.

Heurism

When we examine CA against our criteria from Chapter 3, we find that it measures up quite well with regard to heurism. For example, Cultivation Analysis has been applied to crime (Signorielli, 1990), fear of victimization (Sparks & Ogles, 1990), attitudes toward racism (Allen & Hatchett, 1986), feelings of alienation (Morgan, 1986), anxiety (Zillman & Wakshlag, 1985), gender stereotyping (Carveth & Alexander, 1985; Preston, 1990), affluence (Potter, 1991), the aged (Gerbner et al., 1980), American stereotypes (Tan, 1982), civil liberties (Carlson, 1983), divorce (Potter, 1991), materialism (Reimer & Rosengren, 1990), values (Potter, 1993), health issues (Molitor, 1994; Potter, 1991), and Spanish-language TV (Glascock & Ruggerio, 2004).

Cultivation Analysis has been criticized, however, on a number of other criteria, including logical consistency, utility, and the test of time.

Logical Consistency

Critics who fault the logical consistency of CA note that the methods employed by CA researchers do not match the conceptual reach of the theory. They note that the research supporting Cultivation Analysis employs social scientific methods typically identified with the transmissional perspective and limited effects findings. Yet Cultivation Analysis examines larger cultural questions most often raised by humanists. Horace Newcomb (1978) writes, “More than any other research effort in the area of television studies the work of Gerbner and Gross and their associates sits squarely at the juncture of the social sciences and the humanities” (p. 265). By asserting cultural effects, Cultivation Analysis offends many humanists, who feel that their turf has been improperly appropriated and misinterpreted. “The question,” writes Newcomb, “‘What does it all mean?’ is, essentially, a humanistic question” (p. 266). Many humanists, quite at ease when discussing the relationship between literature (novels, art, music, theater) and culture, have great difficulty accepting television as the culture’s new, dominant “literature.”

Utility

CA is also criticized because its claims are not always useful in explaining the phenomenon of interest: how people see the world. First, Newcomb (1978) argues that violence is not presented as uniformly on television as CA assumes, so television cannot be reliably responsible for cultivating the same sense of reality for all viewers. In addition, Cultivation Analysis is criticized for ignoring other issues such as the perceived realism of the televised content, which might be critical in explaining people’s understanding of reality (Minnebo & Van Acker, 2004). Further, other researchers (Wilson, Martins, & Marske, 2005) found that attention to television might be more important to cultivating perceptions than simply the amount of TV viewing. The fact that Cultivation Analysis seems to ignore cognitive processes such as attention or rational thinking style renders it less useful than is desired (Berger, 2005).

Test of Time

As we’ve noted, CA is heuristic, but two issues may be working against it thirty years after its inception. First, studies based on its tenets are failing to find results consistent with CA’s predictions. Leo Jeffres, David Atkin, and Kimberly Neuendorf (2001), for instance, found that heavy television viewing seemed to be cultivating more diversity of opinion about public issues rather than mainstreaming people’s perceptions as Cultivation Analysis predicts. In other words, the three Bs that Gerbner and his colleagues discussed did not obtain in Jeffres, Atkin, and Neuendorf’s study. Jeffres and his colleagues called the effect they found “scatter-streaming” and noted that it provided weak support for CA. Consistent with the Mean World Hypothesis, they did find that heavier users of TV expressed a greater need for gun control than did lighter users.

Second, as James Shanahan and Michael Morgan (1999) observe, times and media use are changing: “As more and more people grow up with TV, it is possible that it will become increasingly difficult to discern differences between light and heavy viewers” (p. 161). In addition, as TiVo, DVDs, VCRs, cable, and other technologies alter our manner of TV viewing, it is likely that some of CA’s contentions will no longer hold true. For instance, if viewers can organize programming for themselves, it is unlikely that heavy viewing will mean the same thing for all viewers. Heavy viewing of cooking shows, for example, would be expected to cultivate a different reality than would heavy viewing of soap operas or crime shows.

Cultivation offers responses to these criticisms. First, although there may be many more channels and people may have greater control over selectivity than they once had, television’s dramatic and aesthetic conventions produce remarkably uniform content within as well as across genres. Second, because most television watching is ritual-that is, selected more by time of day than by specific program or the availability of multiple channels-heavy viewers will be exposed overall to more of television’s dominant images. Further, most viewers, even with dozens of channels available to them, primarily select from only five or six, evidencing a very limited range of selection.

Criticism aside, Cultivation Analysis has been and remains one of the most influential mass communication theories of the last two decades. It is the foundation of much contemporary research and, as we’ve seen, has even become an international social movement. Another source of its influence is that it can be applied by anyone. It asks people to assess their own media use alongside the socially constructed reality of the world they inhabit. Imagine yourself as Joyce Jensen preparing to cast an important vote. You may well undergo the same mental debate as she. Yet think of how even a passing understanding of Cultivation Analysis might help you arrive at your decision and understand your motivations.