Cultivation Theory

I have been looking into other audience related theories. I came across the Cultivation theory developed by Professor George Gerbner, dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania
The professor believed that television is responsible for shaping, or ‘cultivating’ viewers’ conceptions of social reality. This means that by people watching television overtime the media can shape the way we see things in the real world such as different religions, countries etc.
Research related to this theory included carrying out tests on people that watch a lot of television and people that only watch a little television. They discovered that people who watched less television had more sources of information and were more open minded then heavy television viewers.
This theory also supports the saying 'You watch too much television' which I'm sure most of us have heard in our lives.

Example of theory:
'In a survey of about 450 New Jersey schoolchildren, 73 percent of heavy viewers compared to 62 percent of light viewers gave the TV answer to a question asking them to estimate the number of people involved in violence in a typical week. The same survey showed that children who were heavy viewers were more fearful about walking alone in a city at night. They also overestimated the number of people who commit serious crimes. This effect is called ‘mean world syndrome’. One controlled experiment addressed the issue of cause and effect, manipulating the viewing of American college students to create heavy- and light-viewing groups. After 6 weeks of controlled viewing, heavy viewers of action-adventure programs were indeed found to be more fearful of life in the everyday world than were light viewers.' http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzicht/theory%20clusters/media,%20culture%20and%20society/cultivation_theory-1.doc/


I do think that this theory makes a lot of sense because if you compare older and younger peoples views on television the example supports this. It more common for a younger person to sit and watch more television so a violent scene may not be phase or offend them. However if an older person were to watch it they may be offended by it as they don't watch as much television and when they were growing up there either wasn't television  or wasn't much violence, swearing, sex etc. on television. Where as many younger people of this generation have become desensitised due to growing up with it.
The previous example however is interesting and important to our film as the target audience to our film is younger people. By reading this theory I now feel that our film has the potential to effect/scare young people as we are setting the film in a very normal/safe environment meaning we are dragging the audience into a false sense of security.