Cultivation Theory

The Mean World Syndrome; an attitude caused by media

 

Cultivation Theory states that television tells us what exists, is important, and what is right.

Cultivation Theory of George Gerbner focuses on violence seen on TV and how it affects “viewers’ beliefs about the world around them and the feelings connected to those beliefs.”

Violence is defined as “dramatic violence” being an overt expression of physical force. This can be with or without a weapon, against one’s self or towards others, but does not consider things such as verbal abuse.

This theory brings up the fact that television plays a large role in why we think more bad things happen in our world than is statistically proven to be happening. This is called the “mean world syndrome”: *“the cynical mindset of general mistrust of others subscribed to by heavy TV viewers.” Gerbner defines heavy TV viewers as people who watch more than 4 hours of television a day and also claims that the more television someone watches, the more they are susceptible to the effects of the mean world syndrome.

Plane crashes, rape, pedophiles, serial killers, so many scary things – the more you watch the more you are exposed to these horrible images – the more you are susceptible to see the *“real world through TV’s lens” or a skewed perception of the real world stemming from TV’s cultivating power. Here is an example of a plane crash where the explicit details of people getting sucked out of the plane add drama to the scene, after seeing this in multiple different movies and TV shows, a plan crash becomes more of a reality and even more scary.

 

The mean world syndrome  actually makes a lot of sense when you start to realize how much violence is shown on TV, no wonder we are thinking there are more bad things happening, we are constantly bombarded with images that are sometimes even worse than reality actually can be – think about zombie apocalypse, vampires, and medieval themed shows such as Game of Thrones.

 

If you are anything like me, this scene makes your skin crawl and as soon as the blood starts squirting everywhere I have to turn it off. But if you love Game of Thrones, like a lot of people do, then this is not even comparable to the violence in some other scenes. Click here to read about critics of The Game of Thrones and to watch a clip that is One of the Most Gruesome Scenes in Television History. You are less sensitive to these images if you are exposed to them more.

It is somewhat of a mystery: We are becoming increasingly desensitized to violence (meaning it doesn’t faze us as much when we see violent images on TV). But at the same time we believe that violence is more prominent than it actually is. Both are resulting from the increase in violence on television.

Why is violence continuing to increase on television?

I really liked how our *textbook for this class described why media uses violence; it’s cheap to produce and it speaks in a language that is universally understood- giving the ability to export the product globally in order to realize maximum profits at minimum costs. The more violence they can show, the more they are making while at the same time the viewers are increasing.

One website I pulled up described the “ANYONE CAN DIE trope” and explained that unless a character’s name is in the show’s title, they are pretty much fair game to get killed off at any time. Read more: The Most Unexpected Deaths on Television. Violence on TV is no longer even restricted to stereotypes or bad guys, any one can be killed!

Think about the message that sends! Just another reason that reinforces the effect that watching television has on creating this “Mean World Syndrome.”

*Class Textbook
Griffin, Emory A. "Chapter 29: Cultivation Theory of George Gerbner." A First Look at Communication Theory. Boston: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009. N. pag. Print.