ZUR 393k:
Effects of Mass Media
Priming, Cultivation, and Cultural Studies: Shifting the Focus
from Empiricism to Cultural Studies
Outline:
1. Priming: definition & conclusion
2. Cultivation Analysis: definition & conclusion;
underlying assumptions, research methods
3. Cultural Studies: introducing a new model of
communication; key terms: ideology & hegemony
priming effect as “agenda setting”
on an individual (psychological) level
1.
The presentation of a
certain stimulus with a
particular meaning
“primes” (or stimulates)
related concepts or
thoughts--and, in certain
cases, related actions.
The “priming” effect:
“cookie”
After viewing depictions of violence in the media,
under certain circumstances and for a short period of
time, there is an increased chance that viewers will:
1. have hostile thoughts that will color their
interpretations of others
2. believe other forms of aggression are
justified and/or will bring benefits
3. be aggressively inclined
BERKOWITZ’S CONCLUSION
“There is no longer a
question as to whether
the portrayal of violence
in the mass media can
increase the chances that
some people in the
audience will act
aggressively themselves.
Such an effect can occur
and often does.”
(Berkowitz, 1994, p. 44)
Cultivation Analysis
2.
Cultivation Analysis
• research initiated in
1967
• prompted by concern
about violence in the
media
• research funded by the
National Commission on
the Causes and
Prevention ofViolence
Cultivation Analysis
• research methods
(content analysis and
survey) derived from
empirical tradition
• theoretical concerns
derived from critical
studies
• attempts to investigate
long term effects at the
societal level
Cultivation Analysis
• “Violence Profile”: content analysis of a
sample week of prime-time television to
establish “base-line” data: amount of
violence in prime-time programming
• 1973: Gerbner begins to address “effects”
by adding in survey research
Television "cultivates" or creates a world
view that, although possibly inaccurate,
becomes the reality simply because we
believe it to be reality. We base our
judgments about our own, everyday world
on our own sense of "reality" (1973).
Key Argument:
“Cultural Indicators”
“... exposure to violence occasionally incites some
viewers to commit and/or imitate specific violent actions
and ... some people may also become desensitized to
violence. For most viewers, however, television's mean
and dangerous world tends to cultivate a sense of
relative danger, mistrust, insecurity, vulnerability,
dependence, and--despite its supposedly ‘entertaining’
nature--alienation and gloom.”
Gerbner’s Conclusion:
Underlying Assumptions
1. TV is unique from
all other mass media
because:
a. TV viewing
consumes more time
and attention than all
other media and
leisure time activities
combined.
http://www.bls.gov/tus/charts/leisure.htm
Underlying Assumptions
1. TV is unique from all other
mass media because:
b. TV viewers do not need
to wait for, plan for, go out to,
or seek out TV.
Underlying Assumptions
1. TV is unique
from all
other mass
media
because:
c. TV
requires no
literacy
Underlying Assumptions
1. TV is unique
from all other
mass media
because:
d. TV is a
cradle-to-grave
experience.
Underlying Assumptions
1. TV is unique from all other
mass media because:
e. TV is in the business of
assembling large,
heterogenous audiences and
selling their time to
advertisers.
http://www.census.gov/library/publications/2011/compendia/statab/131ed/information-communications.html
Underlying Assumptions
2. TV is the
central
cultural arm
of American
society.
Underlying Assumptions
2. TV is the
central
cultural
arm of
American
society.
http://afarian.com/blo
https://
www.washingtonpost.
com/news/the-switch/
wp/2015/11/03/teens-
spend-nearly-nine-
hours-every-day-
consuming-media/
Underlying Assumptions
3. TV cultivates a
general
consciousness
on which
people’s
conclusions and
judgments are
based.
Underlying Assumptions
4. TV works to stabilize
social patterns.
5. The measurable, identifiable contributions of TV
to culture at any one time are relatively small.
Underlying Assumptions
Research Methods
• content analysis of programs
• devise questions and survey individuals
• compare the social realities of light vs.
heavy TV viewers
• light = 0 - 2 hours/day
• heavy = 4 or more hours a day
Step 1: content analysis
• measure amount of violence on TV
• includes all evening prime-time and
weekend daytime
• argues viewers select when to watch
more than what to watch
• 5 - 6 violent acts / hour
of prime-time TV
• found in 2/3 of all
prime-time
programming
• Saturday AM: 21
violent acts / hour
• violence in 16% of all
TV news stories
Who commits violence?
Who is victimized by violence?
• MEN: 10 perpetrators : 11 victims
• WOMEN: 10 perpetrators : 16 victims
• MINORITY WOMEN: 10 perps : 22 victims
• FOREIGN WOMEN: 10 perps : 21 victims
Who commits violence?
Who is victimized by violence?
• only one group disproportionately villains
• DIVORCED WOMEN:
• 11 perps : 10 victims
Research: Step 2
Devise and administer survey
HYPOTHESIS:
Those who watch more television will express
greater interpersonal mistrust and perceive the
world as a "mean" place as well as endorse
statements that reflect alienation and gloom.
Research: Step 2
FIRST-ORDER CULTIVATION
• test perceptions of reality
• heavy viewers tendency to
give “TV answers”
1. Of all the crimes that occur in the US in
any given year, what proportion are violent
crimes like murder, rape, robbery, and
assault?
a. 15%
b. 25%
2. In any given week what are the chances
that you will be involved in some kind of
violence?
a. 1 in 10
b. 1 in 100
SECOND-ORDER CULTIVATION
• test overall feelings of alienation and gloom
1. Are there any situations you can imagine in
which you would approve of a man striking
an adult male stranger?
a. yes
b. no
2. Is there any area right around here (e.g.
within a mile) where you would be afraid to
walk alone at night?
a. yes
b. no
1. can we separate TV
from other media
(e.g. newspapers)?
Criticisms of
Cultivation Analysis
Criticisms of
Cultivation Analysis
2. cause vs. effect conundrum
• heavy TV viewing causes fear/alienation?
• fear/alienation causes heavy TV viewing?
(esp. in high crime areas or among
the elderly, ill, and unemployed)
Gerbner’s 3 Bs
• BLURRING of
traditional distinctions of
people’s world views
• BLENDING of realities
into television’s cultural
mainstream
• BENDING of the
mainstream to the
institutional interests of
TV and its sponsors
"The historical circumstances in which we find
ourselves have taken the magic of human life--living
in a universe erected by culture--out of the hands of
families and small communities. What has been a
richly diverse hand-crafted process has become--for
better or worse, or both--a complex manufacturing
and mass-distribution enterprise. This has abolished
much of the provincialism and parochialism, as well
as some of the elitism, of the pre-television era. It
has enriched parochial cultural horizons. It also
gave increasingly massive industrial conglomerates
the right to conjure up much of what we think about,
know, and do in common" (Gerbner).
Why this matters:
Nancy Signorielli:
"Fearful people are more dependent, more easily
manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to
deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and
hard-line postures--both political and religious.
They may accept and even welcome repression if
it promises to relieve their insecurities and other
anxieties. That is the deeper problem of violenceladen
TV."
http://
www.breitbart.com/
london/2015/11/07/
orbans-ratings-rise-
as-hungarian-fence-
deters-migrant-
invasion/
Cultural & Critical Studies
3.
Cultural Studies
• US research tradition
• origins in sociology
(M.Weber),
anthropology (esp. C.
Geertz), and literary
criticism
• concerned with:
“webs of significance”
Critical Studies
• UK research tradition
(precedes US )
• origins in Marxist (or
neo-Marxist) theory
(w/ some ties to
Frankfurt School
tradition)
• more explicitly
political
Stuart Hall
•
• critique of transmission (or transactional)
model of communication used in limited
effects tradition
James Carey
• advocates for ritual model of communication
James Carey
Ritual Model of
Communication
• shared sense of reality held by all who
participate in the ritual
• examines the ways communication
constructs, maintains, repairs, and
transforms reality
physical space of the classroom
physical space of the classroom
1995 2005 1996
19892010 2006
“thin description” vs.
“thick description”
• thin description: observable behaviors
e.g. content analysis
• thick description: "the meaningful
structures by which behaviors are
produced, perceived, and interpreted---
and without which they would not exist."
(C. Geertz)
transformation of
reality through language
“Reality is a product of work and action. . . It is
formed and sustained . . . and celebrated in the
ordinary business of living. To set the matter
up in this way is neither to deny, ignore, nor
mystify social conflict”
(Carey,“Reconceiving ‘Mass’ and ‘Media,’” p. 87).
• “Reality is, above all, a scarce
resource. Like any scarce resource it is
there to be struggled over.”
• “The fundamental form of power is the
power to define, allocate and display this
resource.” (Carey, “Reconceiving ‘Mass’ and ‘Media,’” p. 87).
• ideologies are structures
• ideologies as “grammar,” we grow up to
internalize a set of rules
• Stuart Hall: the frameworks of thinking and
calculation about the world--the "rules"
which people use to figure out how the
social world works, what their place is in it,
and what they ought to do.
Ideology defined
• ideology emerges as our “common sense”
view of the world
• Barker & Petley: “Academic work whose
methods and conclusions support populist,
‘common-sense’ assumptions and gel with
newspapers’ own ideological positions is far
more likely to receive coverage than that
which doesn’t. The latter is likely to be
ignored or travestied” (p. 8).
• Tony Bennett: The operations of ideologies
are not necessarily invisible, but their
invisibility is a condition of their effectiveness.
• THEY HAVE TO BE MADE VISIBLE.
exposing ideologies
WOMAN WITHOUT HER MAN IS NOTHING
WOMAN:WITHOUT HER, MAN IS NOTHING.
WOMAN,WITHOUT HER MAN, IS NOTHING.
ideologies
1. Ideologies exert material force; they
become real and have real consequences,
real effects. Ideology is material because it
is inscribed in practice.
(Even before that--“How we look at the
world is how it becomes" Wes Jackson.)
ideologies
2. Ideologies are the site of cultural struggle, a
contest for the power to define reality.
Because no ideology is ever fixed or static,
this struggle is on-going and important.
Ideologies are also the prize to be won in
that struggle, a form of power or currency.
to examine the struggle:
hegemony
• concept of “hegemony”
stems from the work of
Antonio Gramsci
(1891-1937)
• Prison Notebooks (1929-1935)
how do we come to want
what society wants us to want?
• A: hegemony
• cultural process involved in securing a
dominant ideology
process entails
• legal and legitimate COMPULSION (e.g. laws)
• but principally by winning the active CONSENT
of those classes or groups who are subordinate
• carrots and sticks
T.J. Jackson Lears:
“Ruling groups never engineer consent with
complete success. At best they mix approbation
with apathy; resistance with resignation.”
T.J. Jackson Lears:
The essence of hegemony is not manipulation,
but legitimation. Certain views and behaviors
get rewarded; others do not. The values and
experiences of the dominant group (or the
ideas and values that will benefit that group) are
validated in public discourse, while those of the
subordinate group are not.
double consciousness
• conflict between how you perceive your
own life to be and how it is described
(how it ought to be).
• every language contains the elements of a
conception of the world (Gramsci)
Mary Bourke, 1937
Dorothea Lange, 1937